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Series: Boys of Hawthorne Asylum #1
Publication date: January 7th, 2021
Pages: 178
Spice: 🔥🔥
Synopsis:
Welcome to Hawthorne Asylum.
Welcome to hell.
This place isn't run by the doctors who make you talk or the orderlies who force you to swallow your pills.
It belongs to them, to the Infamous Four.
Tabloids, talk shows, documentaries--their faces have been plastered everywhere. Not because of their impressive rap sheets, but because of how they look.
And when I arrive, they take notice. Especially their king: Lincoln "Laces" Caster.
He's dark and disturbed.
He's controlling and possessive.
Exactly the kind of boy I should stay away from if I want to clear my name and get out of here.
*LACES is not intended for readers under seventeen. This book does have strong language/cursing and triggering scenes (that might not be suitable for everybody)
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Review:
Gambrielle isn't meant to be at Hawthorne Asylum. Her only crime is being witness to the worst moments in her sister's life and subsequent death and then when trying to alert someone to it, her powerful stepfather made her disappear. Gambrielle is nothing but a scapegoat for a very twisted and abusive man. All she can do now is bide her time in the Asylum until she can garner enough favor with the staff to be able to let out so she can find proof to her story being true. But that may be harder than she had imagined when she comes face to face with the Infamous Four: Laces, Reyes, Thorne, and Varla. Laces takes a particular interest in Gambrielle and starts to wonder if there is more under the girl with an obvious cases of PTSD who spends her time rocking back and forth and singing a song about a bumblebee. But there is more to everyone's stories than meets the eye and Gabrielle may find out soon enough that the people she placed her trust in may be even worse enemies than she had thought.
The romance between Gambrielle and Laces is very slow burn. Both are fighting their attraction and hiding behind a lot of games that lead to nothing but prolonging the inevitable. Laces sees something in Gambrielle that intrigues him and makes Hannibal Sketcher focus on something else beyond the scope of his macabre drawings. Gabrielle just wants to be able to trust someone for once. Everyone she had ever known has turned their backs on her so she kind of latches onto Laces and refuses to let go.
The story felt very underdeveloped. I know it is meant to be a series but it's marketed as a reverse harem but there was zero element of that. It was also listed as Dark which, some of it is dark subject matter but there wasn't a whole lot of bullying that I would have thought would go with some sort of title like that. I feel like the author got half way through writing the book, threw a cliffhanger onto the end and called it a day. They stopped mid-development, mid-romantic interest, mid-plot points. It's just so incredibly unfinished to me to the point of it being jarring.
That being said, will I be reading the next book? Yes. The story has promise if the author fleshes it out a little bit more in the following book. Also, if you're going to market it as a reverse harem, maybe get the other people involved at some point too?
That being said, will I be reading the next book? Yes. The story has promise if the author fleshes it out a little bit more in the following book. Also, if you're going to market it as a reverse harem, maybe get the other people involved at some point too?
