Synopsis:
When Ophelia Winters accepts a scholarship at a prestigious Scottish university to prove that her parents’ death was the fault of Cain Green, an American aviation tycoon, her plan is simple; keep her grades up and her head down. The last thing she wants is to wind up in a mafia war or step on the toes of royalty.
Her plan gets off to a rocky start when the mysterious man that almost kills her on her first day turns out to be Cain’s eldest son. As far as she’s concerned, Alex Corbeau-Green is a younger version of his billionaire father. A monster hiding beneath a beautiful facade.
Loneliness has been Ophelia’s only dependable companion for years, but when anonymous threats and mysterious occurrences start to haunt her time at Sorrowsong, she wonders if she really can survive there on her own.
Between being paired together for a project and ending up as each other’s alibi for a murder, avoiding Alex becomes increasingly impossible. She begins to fall for the soft heart that hides beneath his hard exterior.
Tormented by a malicious stalker and growing closer to Alex, Ophelia’s desperation for revenge wavers for the first time. Can she really bring herself to pull the trigger on Cain now that she knows the family it’ll split into two?
Review:
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I DEVOURED this book. It combines a lot of familiar ideas and troupes into something that I didn’t want to put down. It’s dark academia in setting, thriller in the plotline, and enemies-to-lovers romance.
While this is set in a University, these aren’t your usual students as they all come for extremely wealthy and powerful families, except our mc Ophelia, an orphan who barely has any money. Her link to the University is her parents who worked there and died in an unusual staff helicopter crash. The mafia aspect comes in because various students’ parents are mafia, and in a sense all of the rich families are in a mafia of their own, with rivalries and hatred all around.
Basically no one in this book is a good person, you can argue that Ophelia and Alex are good people, but they really are the only ones. Everyone else is either outright bad, or does bad things to protect those they love. You get past the ‘they’re all bad people’ aspect fairly quick, and I did start caring for even those characters who definitely did bad things to protect others. You learn to love it when it’s protecting the main two.
I finished Nightshade and immediately pre-ordered the next in the series. It ends on such a cliff-hanger and I finished the book after spending a long train ride reading at least 150 pages in that sitting. I was hooked.
I really enjoyed the romance. It was satisfying to me with the right amount of pining and time before they actually even acknowledged their feelings. He is then totally out to protect her (and are his friends), and honestly I love that in a romance so I was sold.
With a thriller plot woven in – she’s being stalked, and there’s also the question of why did the helicopter carrying her parents crash – there is plenty to keep you hooked. Whether you’re reading for romance or for a thriller with romance you’ll have a good time.
This is a great romance for the Autumn. Set in Scotland in an old university it really gets the atmosphere just right for a Autumnal read.
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