Synopsis:
They say when you take revenge against another you
lose a part of your innocence. But I’m not innocent.
I haven’t been for a very long time.
My innocence was stolen from me. Taken was the life I was supposed to have. The soul I was born with. The ruby heart embedded in a life full of hopes and dreams.
Gone.
Vanished.
I never even had a choice.
I mourn that life. Mourn the what-ifs.
Until now.
I’m ready to take back what was always meant to be mine.
But every plan has a fatal flaw. Sometimes it’s the heart.
**Due to the dark and explicit nature of this book, it is recommended for mature audiences only as some scenes may be particularly disturbing.**
Rating: 3.5/5 StarsGenres: Adult, Erotica, Contemporary Romance, Thriller
Recommended for: fans of Fifty Shades of Grey, Love Me With Lies, On Dublin Street, Crossfire.
My thoughts:
Have you ever felt like the words you've
been reading had etched into your soul? That they have a life of their own and
that they won't rest until you've had them all sucked into your being? Bang is like that. Every word, every
idea, every undertone makes it difficult to catch a break and escape from that
dark, twisted world -- a world that, for some, is the never ending reality.
You're trapped into its merciless cobwebs of sentences, disturbed by their
meaning and hurt by their intensity. You feel yourself delving deeper into that
hopeless yet scorching land where lies are truths and pain is weakness. And
still -- you keep coming back, ignoring that imperative need to press DELETE
and erase it all from your thoughts. You want more. You crave more. You goddamn
ache for more.
Our main character is Elizabeth who's
living a double-life as Nina Vanderwal in the shape of a wife's mogul. Her
husband, Bennett, is so enamoured of her that he's oblivious to the hatred that
lives inside her soul. We got pages of her life filled with horrors that no one
should ever encounter, so the readers don't know what to expect until the very
end where things start to click into place. But there's one thing we know for sure:
she's here for revenge.
Take Leah from the Love Me With Lies series by Tarryn Fisher and multiply her
cunningness ten times. Strip her bare of all that is lovable. Make her
unforgiving, restless and wicked to the bone. If you felt that Leah would have
your mind reeling in shock like no other, then you're not ready to experience
the confusing storm that is Elizabeth. But whereas I down-right hated Leah
although I couldn't help than pity her, Elizabeth truly amazed me. She's
strong, patient, calculated. Determined and vicious. Broken. But she's also the
villain that's about to go on a killing spree, shredding her only hope of
redemption.
“The truest part of a person is always the
ugliest. And with your evasiveness, I would bet that you’re pretty damn ugly
beneath all that gloss.”
Elizabeth's story is complicated and
disturbing and definitely not for the weak-minded. It makes you painfully aware
of how life can be a cruel bitch and how monsters really do exist. It's
gut-wrenching, terrible and depressive and Elizabeth is the result of all that
was unforgiving in her life. I wasn't exactly shocked about her childhood,
because such subjects have made their way into my regular reads quite often,
but believe me when I'm saying it still wasn't easy to stomach.
It was so easy to hate Elizabeth in this
book. She reminded me of Emily from the Revenge
TV Show, but unlike Emily's targets, who deserve to rot in hell, I'm not sure
Elizabeth's victims truly deserve what she's planed for them. I don't know how
to explain this without spoiling anything, so I'll just say that Elizabeth's
mentality is quite harsh and she's not judging things clearly because of her
tragedy.
“One day, when
we’re out of this mess, I’ll find a way to make you happy.”
“I don’t believe in happiness,” I weep. “I don’t believe in anything anymore.”
He brushes my hair back and scoots down to look me in the eyes. “Believe in me.”
“I don’t believe in happiness,” I weep. “I don’t believe in anything anymore.”
He brushes my hair back and scoots down to look me in the eyes. “Believe in me.”
In order to finally have a shot at her
missed happiness and to rebuilt her life, she's messing around with three guys:
Bennett, her husband; Pike, her best friend and brother; Declan, the
game-changer and the man that falls for the devil. But her complex scheming
makes her double-question her reasons, because there's one glitch to her master
plan: she didn't expect to fall in love.
I really liked Bennett. He's caring,
thoughtful, sweet. His devotion knows no bounds and he's so helplessly in love
with his wife. Too bad she's just a demon in disguise. The true motive behind
Elizabeth's need to take him down was really the only thing anticlimatic for me
-- I expected something much more cruel and worthy of such plotting. But I
guess that in Elizabeth's mind, Bennett's role in her downfall is the worst.
Again, subjective (and kind of immature) thinking.
I adored young Pike. I couldn't have been
more happier that poor Elizabeth wasn't alone in her darkest times and that she
was able to find a true support and friend in Pike. He was hopeless yet
protective, caring and determined, miserable himself and still powerful enough
to bring a smile to her sister's face. Despite my love for the kid, I had
countless issues with the adult Pike. I don't know, he just made my skin crawl
and he seemed such an obsessed freak. I never trusted him completely. And that
horrible thing he did in the end? That was the lowest blow he could land and it
showed how selfish and desperate he really is.
Now imagine a mix between a tamed Christian
Grey (FSoG) and a Braden Carmichael (ODS) and wipe your drool off your chin
cause he's mine: Declan McKinnon. He's so intense and addictive, alone and
lovable! My heart ached for him every time I remembered how he's playing right
into Elizabeth's hand. He also had his fair share of self-loathing and regrets
which only increased my love for him. He's a sexy and swoon-worthy alpha-male
and trust me when I say you'd want someone like him to wait you at the end of a
tiring day and yes, I'm implying a ton of things right now.
Bang ended so quickly and I felt that the last few pages were meant to
be the sucker punch. The emotional trigger. The final piece to my mind's
downfall. And oh, it succeeded. The ending left me shocked, heartbroken, scared
and rattled completely. So many things happened and I couldn't keep up with the
feelings that followed. And, as expected, there was a sort of cliffhanger that
somehow managed to satisfy me with the last resolutions we were left with.
Echo, the sequel, better come out quick cause otherwise I'll be turning insane.
This is my first book written by the
mastermind that is E.K. Blair and I've had my eyes set on her others for a long
time now, but damn, if they're as intense as Bang, then a well-deserved break is in store for me before I catch
up with her books. She had a way of creating the story and unraveling it
afterwards in a unique way that had me hooked from start to finish. I was
disturbed, angry, captivated and desperate for more. I guess that's what kept
me reading -- the desire to find out all the pieces to this puzzle.
Bang is just a book but at the same time it's so much more than that.
It's a powerful weapon, it's manipulative, it's confusing and it's sometimes
unbearable. The Black Lotus series is
the queen of mind-fucks and it has definitely started its dynasty with Bang. She's here to stay and she
doesn't mind collateral damage in the form of her readers' bewilderment. Read
it, dissect it, live it, shy away from it. God knows I did and I still don't
know if I'll ever recover completely.
ENJOY! ©
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