Birds of Paradise by Anne Malcom
This review is from 2020 and is kept here for reference. Titles, prices and availability may have changed.
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Recommendation
The story of Lucyan and Elizabeth is a dark rabbit hole of complicated love to fall into. He is supposed to kill her but has second thoughts after watching her and becoming so enthralled with the shell of a woman she is. Her character is a very broken one and she welcomes the notion of death. Their dynamic is an odd one which is why I was so fascinated with this story. Watching it develop into what it becomes will completely captivate you. I grew to really admire and love Lucyan. His demeanor makes a shift which I think even surprised him. Anne Malcom did a fantastic job with their characters and with setting the scenes. I really loved this little messed up world she created for these two!
Excerpts
She was doing it again. Biting the inside of her lip. More violently this time. Violently enough to draw blood. Oliver’s toes twitched inside his loafers, urging him forward so he could snatch her sparrow-like arms in his grip, yank her to him and claim her mouth, taste her blood on his tongue.
Taste her pain, devour it.
I was sure he was fucking her. Mostly because she was beautiful and he’d met her. Christopher liked beautiful women—still a mystery as to why he’d married me—and he loved fucking them. He loved forcing me to watch too. Watch how he’d fuck them roughly, but the right kind of rough, the kind of rough those women liked. The kind to make them scream in pleasure. He taunted me with that. Because once they were gone, with a handful of cash and a flushed face, he’d fuck me.
Instead of turning his back to me and leaving, his hands grasped each side of my neck once more. But this time he used his grip to yank me to him roughly and land his lips on mine. To attack the mouth that was still scrambling for air. White-hot heat flowed into my cells, into my bones as his tongue moved against mine, as his hands moved from my neck to tangle in my hair, yank at it, almost ripping it from my scalp.
Publisher synopsis
He collected beautiful things.
Rare things.
Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor.
The problem was I wasn't beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being.
He came to kill me.
That was his business.
Death.
He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I'd created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things.
I hated him.
I still hate him.
But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I'd stay dead.
In all of my hideous splendor.
Because my murderer can only possess dead things.
And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.
Review published April 24, 2020