Gather Lords Of Pain (The Royals Of Forsyth University, #1) Created By Angel Lawson Issued As Textbook

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of Pain

Im not even sure where to begin with this review! This has been my most anticipated read forwell, maybe ever! Since I waited for the completion of the trilogy, Ive seen lots of quotes, tidbits, and opinions even a few spoilers.
But, I was not prepared for all that is the Lords!

As with most fiction, its necessary to suspend reality on a number of plot points.
Particularly that LDZ isnt even a secret society, but a well known frat in the community, as are their rivals, the Counts, Barons, and Princes.


Each Lord is quite different, but they all share one thing in common: theyre fucking infuriating! Its clear there is some trauma or at least “reasons” the trio are assholes and Im interested to see how they redeem themselves.
Particularly after Story learned about the game,

As for Story, Ive vacillated between wanting to be her and wanting to smack her upside the head! However, Im trying to reserve judgment because its clear that Sam an Angel have lots more secrets and twists before all will be revealed! I cant wait to see where they take us, find out who TF Ted is, and then meet the other Royals of Forsyth U.
.

“Everyone thinks you like it nice, but I know better, Youd rather have me tear you open on my cock, ”  His voice is raw as he grinds back, “Thats exactly what you fucking deserve, Maybe then, everyone would know its mine, ”

i wish i never read this when it first came out, i wasn't a romance reader let alone dark and RH romance books, to be fair i thought it was like a historical fiction book with all the counts, princes, lords.
i was so WRONG.

anyway, the darkness is right up my alley hehehe lti love it lt

killian

crazy and psycho but i'm digging it lt
soft spot for the h
athlete

rath

mysterious and illiterate boy lt
smartest one of the lot
artist

tristain

blonde
pretends to be cold but is really a ball of sunshine
clean eater yuck

story

dumb bitch
dumb bitch
dumb dumb bitch

ted

what you doing bro
obsessed with cherries
crazy Are you triggered by sexual assault
This book isnt for you.

Do you think Hardin Scott from the After series is a toxic bully
This book isnt for you.

Do you hate having your boundaries pushed while you read
This book is NOT for you.

Do you have any triggers at all
This book is probably still not for you.

Even if you're into dark themes but haven't read too many dark reverse harems, I would advise you to go with a tamer book first.

The only people I would recommend this book to are unhinged humans such as myself,

I really enjoyed this book, It's addictive and the writing is fine, I think the characters felt fleshed out enough to make me really hate them, The psychological aspect of it was really interesting, How Story feels so conflicted and why, I think that's exactly what happens in toxic relationships in real life.
We are able to get attached to horrible monsters, It's true. It happens. It was an interesting twist to the whole abusive man thing, In this book, the heroine doesn't love the guys, She doesn't make excuses for them, She knows they're awful even through those times of uncertainty when they're kind,

I know these guys are all awful, I know that's the point, Regardless, I thought Killian was the absolute worst, He's such a cringey creep, The hovering over the bed

thing Iugh, dude, I know hes supposed to be the leader, the best one or whatever, but no, I was dreading that Story would choose him because as I previously mentioned, IUGH,
Rath was pretty whatever for most of it for me, He did some fucked up shit and some cute shit but I feel like for the most part, he was in the background.

Tristain. Oh Tristain, you're such a creep too, but I think you're my favorite,

SO in conclusion, don't read the book if you're triggered easily, Killian is hot trash. Ok, thanks for coming to my ted talk, bashfully grins





First, please don't take my five star rating as any sort of endorsement or recommendation for this book.
This is one of those ratings/reviews that is purely for myself like all my reviews, really, Both Nenia amp Namera have better reviews if you're trying to decide whether or not this book would be up your alley.
Warning for a long, rambling review too with some mild spoilers,

Thanks to Maddy for bringing this book to my attention : A couple nights ago I was having trouble sleeping amp wanted something inane amp easy to read since this book was on my radar I decided to give it a go.
Instead of helping my insomnia by putting me to sleep, it worsened it, I got less thanhours of sleep that night amp finished this book inday,

I knew this book was likely going to be good when I read the authors' introduction note:

If you are a friend or family member turn back now.
We love your support. Dont read this book. Well never be able to look you in the eye over dinner again

Lol.
I'm totally starting to judge books by the introductions authors leave, This introduction itself was funny, while also expressing how entirely inappropriate this book is, It set the tone, and I was not disappointed,

Gosh, this book relieved some stress amp anxiety I had been feeling, wasentertaining, and made me happy amp laugh.
I'm at the point right now where if a book can do that, I'm inclined to give itstars.
The authors infused this story with so much dark humour that what could have been an incredibly offensive book came across as a comedy to me.
I consider this a black comedy, and there were elements of this book that slightly, distantly reminded me of The Virgin Suicides.

Keeping tabs on Story was like an addiction back then, I wanted to know what she smelled like, what she sounded like, what she looked like under the clothes.
It was easy enough and it consumed me, I had to share a bathroom with her, giving me access to her things, her scent, her presence.
I knew what kind of shampoo she liked, and that she preferred white toothpaste to the blue gels.
That her fucking long hair clogged up everything, I knew when I saw the crumpledup papers in the trash that she was on the rag,

The shared bathroom provided something elsesomething unintentional: access to her room, to her secrets, To her. I spent hours sitting with my back against the cool tiled walls, listening as her voice carried through the vent from her bedroom.

I don't know about you, but this gave me major Virgin Suicide vibes.


In fact, if I ever spoke to the authors, the first question I would ask them would be if they read that book.
Though my comparison to The Virgin Suicides is super distant, For a bully romance to even remind me of that book in the slightest I'm impressed, I think it's difficult for authors to pull off dark humour, Purely dark, melodramatic romances that tend to take themselves too seriously being easier to write, It takes clever writing amp wit to pull off a reverse harem dark bully romance black comedy, Which imo is what this is,

So, I'm about to do what is considered impolite in a review, and compare this book to another book by another author.
I usually try not to do this, but in my mind I kept comparing the two while reading, I couldn't help it.
This book was everything I wanted Untouchable by Sam Mariano to be, If you enjoyed Untouchable by Sam Mariano, I'm glad, I don't mean any offense whatsoever, I'm new to reading the bully/new adult romance genre, After reading Vicious by LJ Shen which I loved I wanted more, I started Untouchable with high hopes, but was sadly let down,


The biggest similarity to this book amp Untouchable:



The heroine is sexually assaulted forced blowjob by the MMC in the first scene.
Well, one the MMCs in this case, since this is RH,

The similarities end there, and this is by no means unique to those two books, but reading that scene in this book did make me think of Untouchable.
It's also why Untouchable got so many negative reviews, It got my hopes up, because I started Untouchable wanting a dark, depraved, sick, twisted, and mean bully romance.


What did I get instead A melodramatic, selfimportant, sappy romance masquerading as dark, Just imo, I totally recognize I'm in the minority for not liking this book, I think an issue I had was that it didn't make sense to me that the Hero from Untouchable immediately like the day after the sexual assault, goes to the heroine's house amp starts pretending to be her boyfriend.
Treats her pretty respectfully for the most part, amp even tries to woo her, What made even less sense to me, was that the heroine completely forgets about the sexual assault amp becomes wooed by the Hero.
Thus proceeds some push amp pull that leads to marriage amp a baby, They indulge in some consensual nonconsent, which was supposed to add some edge to the story, I suppose.
In Lords of Pain the authors didn't pull any punches when it came to dubcon/noncon, This is way darker than Untouchable in that sense,

What I wanted, craved was a dysfunctional, mean, angsty push amp pull from the Hero amp Heroine.




Lords of Pain delivered that.
I'm eating up Killian amp Story's dysfunctional, messed up relationship, Are they dating Nope, which is perfect, No one in their right mind tries to date the guy who allows them to be sexually assaulted, and Story doesn't do that.
She hates Killian, but in a twisted, messed up way can't forget about him, Killian's obsession with Story fulfills my desire to read about mean, messed up MMCs, which is what I want when reading a bully romance.
Unlike some other books, the author hasn't gone out of her way to give Killian a melodramatic, OTT tragic backstory to try to excuse his misbehavior to the reader well, criminal behavior if we're being honest.


The portrayal of sexual assault:



Was no doubt problematic throughout this book, but at least it was recognized by the heroine.
She calls out Tristian after he invites her to lunch with hisyear old sisters, to ironically give them advice about being bullied.
These entire scenes had some humour, while also nuance, While not all guys commit sexual assault, there are many who have acted like assholes to women at some point in their lives to later question that when confronted on how they would like it if a guy treated their sister, mother, or daughter in the same way.
I liked how the author incorporated this element into the story,

This was completely lacking in the other book, I can't even criticize more than that, because it was so lacking, After that first scene in that book, the sexual assault is literally never addressed again, not even by the heroine.
In Lords of Pain, the reader sees the heroine's past is something that hasn't quite left her, It's something she's having to confront, in some of the worst ways possible, This made the book much darker, and more compelling for me to read,

Dialogue:



A here.
These really felt like teenagers/ youngs to me, Unlike the other books where the high schoolers have ridiculously deep conversations, with ridiculously impressive vocabularies, while at the same time trying to give the kids local dialects.


In Lords of Pain, the dialogue was good, The authors pulled it off, They nailed how these guys in their youngs would speak, without dipping into OTT 'Alpha speak' that some authors end up doing, or something so immature it's incredibly cringeworthy amp obnoxious bordering on annoying.
With that said, some of the dialogue from the guys was misogynistic, but it was ballsy for the authors to go there, amp I ended up chuckling to myself amp simultaneously questioning myself for finding this the least bit funny.
It was disturbingly funny.

Location:



In Lords of Pain the exact location remains vague.
Sure, we know it's a college called Forsyth clearly private, has a football team, but the exact locations city, state remains rather vague.
I appreciated this choice by the author, Untouchable was most offensive to me, not because of the sexual content but the incorrect locale details, Advertising a book so strongly on being a small Texas town, but getting so many details incorrect was painful to read.


Humour:



I've already touched on this, but props to authors for infusing humour into this story.
This isn't easy to pull off, and is refreshing considering the amount of books in this genre that take themselves way too seriously.


Back to the portrayal of sexual assault:



While I liked how a couple things were handled, this book in no way handles sexual assault responsibly.
If it's in an any way shape or form a trigger for you, I don't suggest reading this book.


These authors. I can't believe they had the audacity, the nerve, the guts to go here with the MMCs in this story.
I was slack jawed when onlyKillian admits to doing this:



internally, Im already imagining it.
Sneaking into her room, looking at her there, all tucked into her bed, I remember the way her lips always looked, puckered in concentration as she dreamed, The way they felt around the hard tip of my dick, so soft and wet, The way Id leave some of my come on them, spreading it around, marking her as my own.
Story was always a hard sleeper, Barely anything could wake her up



Um, yeah, That is appalling, horrific, but also written so blatantly, so unapologetic in its frankness, . . I laughed Please please don't think I'm a horrible person, but it was just so OTT ridiculous, I couldn't believe the authors went there.
That the authors were doing this at onlyAnd later in the story more details are revealed that do not redeem Killian in the slightest, but make him look worse Killian has it bad.
Totally irredeemable amp I appreciate how the author isn't going out of her way to make Killian seem sympathetic to the reader.


The psychology behind Rath amp Killian



Loved how the author made Rath a dark empath!

By nature, Im an empath.
Not one of those touchyfeely soulful types, No. I can assess strong emotions and quickly determine how to capitalize on themhow to dominate, On the soccer field, I knew within moments how a player would react, Its like having another sense that could hone in on my opponent, Were they nervous, intimidated, filled with adrenaline, high on ego I reacted accordingly, Successfully. Winningly. In music, its even better, Its the knowledge of how to evoke feelings, where to lead people, how to coax them,

Dark empaths are a real thing, that I'm not sure most people know about.
They're fantastic at manipulating people, At times I even started feeling comfortable when Rath came on screen, until I was cleverly reminded by the author that no, he's not to be trusted either.
Honestly anytime any of these guys showed an act of kindness I was on edge wondering what the catch was

With Killian, I appreciated how his friends might have joked around that he was psychopath, but it was made clear that no, he's not really.
He just has a poker face amp a serious mean streak, I'm so tired of authors trying to write real psychopaths in books, when in no way are they anything close to real psychopaths.
Killian's emotional level reminds me of second graders, When I was in second grade I had a crush on a boy, but instead of telling him I was mean amp teased him.
Killian is like that, but to the nth degree, He's emotionally stunted amp just wants to seem tough, but is probably feeling the most out of all the guys here.




I also think another reason this book worked for me, is that I don't consider this a romance.
Irl I wouldn't want to go near any of these guys with afoot pole, This read like a wellwritten trainwreck that I could not peel my eyes away from, I know I'm not the typical romance reader, but I couldn't care less about the HEA, Though I'mon board for the next book and can't wait,

Ok, even though I just said I don't care about the HEA And I truly don't, with these bully romances, if I see the heroine gets married and god forbid becomes pregnant to the "Hero", if I feel any real emotion, it's worry for the child.
I do want to see these guys deal with the big realization that Story has now found out about The Game.
Oh, and that's another thing, this book slightly reminded me of Things I Hate About You.
After finding out about The Game, it looks like Story has finally grown a backbone, If these guys want any chance at winning her over, they're going to have to make some pretty big overtures.






Can't wait to see where this trainwreck lands, I have to admit I'm crossing my fingers there's more dysfunction before we get to the grovelling It's been too much fun to read.
.