Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Den of Vipers by K.A. Knight

116 reviews

breannloveland's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This may be the darkest book ever written.  Very gory. I don’t usually have triggers but this book triggered me. I don’t think it’s a bad book at all. But if you have any triggers at all, I would skip this one.

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marleyjade123's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5


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starryaqua's review against another edition

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HARD DNF at page 49

CW: domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, rape, coercion, violence and uhh…. gross misogyny, etc, etc

I took a risk with this one. I thought this was gonna be a chill, turn-your-brain-off kind of romance. I can do dark romance without an issue. But this? Is truly something else.

The writing is extremely immature and barely edited. Way too shallow to handle content of this nature, even if it’s supposed to be mindless. I was catching blatant errors (like forgetting the character’s pov mid-chapter and having them accidentally say their own name in dialogue). Physical descriptions were giving teenage Wattpad fanfiction. Like filling a paragraph with the main character talking about her getting dressed. Ebony D’arkness Dementia Raven Way type of prose.

Speaking of, the fmc was THE most “not like other girls”, edgy and damaged and “tough” fmc I’ve ever read. The ~silver~ hair and piercings and tattoos and clunky boots. Not her calling herself a “rocker chick” as she put on a concert shirt for The Killers. I wish I was making this up. Just her and her bat and her overpowered skill to knock out four huge men against the world. She was bland, tired, and miserable to follow. I simply did not care about her and definitely didn’t care for the fact that we were told EVERYTHING about her. Like she was directly blabbing to the reader.

The other main characters (love interests? I guess) are equally insufferable and horrendously trope-y. All comically huge and tough and spewing the most constant stream of misogynistic vitriol it was actually gross to read. Their inner monologue was either annoying and boring or downright disturbing. All of them were insanely sexually charged at all times, some getting off on gratuitous displays of gore and violence. If any of them were supposed to be redeemable in the eyes of the reader or if their actions were justified, I didn’t care to keep reading. Nor could there ever be an excuse to their calling dibs on their new “property”, discussing raping her, and immediately sexually assaulting her, or threatening her with needless violence.

The plot was as thin as a tissue. Mafia made a deal with fmc’s dad, he falls through, they collect the debt by kidnapping his daughter to “own” her. Why? No reason. 2013 fanfiction was calling I guess. I didn’t read more to find out what happens, but I don’t need to to know that whatever sex occurs won’t be consensual. Dubious at best. Coercion isn’t consent. Threats aren’t consent. There’s nothing safe and sane about holding someone captive and immediately pushing your <i>actually</i> psychopathic murderous sadism on someone. That’s not how this works. It’s a shaky line of fantasies and actual harm in its portrayal, leaning hard on the incredibly unethical practices.

For the level of strength, sheer walls of muscle mass, and penitent for violence, it truly made no sense that the men were even human? Everything about them (especially Diesel) read like they were some sort of inhuman force. His lust for blood and biting at people’s skin (he ripped an earlobe off with his teeth?) was so unnatural for just a regular human dude. An extremely fucked up human, but still. Human. If this was fanfiction of some kind I wouldn’t be surprised.

TDLR: yikes. If you want to write unethically violent rape-y fantasies, at least get an editor with better eyes.

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lethridge's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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amateur_bookworm's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

My summary: 
Diesel, Ryder, Garrett, and Kenzo are The Vipers. Ryder is the front man and face of their legitimate and illegitimate companies. Garrett is the enforcer. Kenzo is the bookie. And Diesel is the assassin. They are ruthless, brutal, and sexy as hell. They run this city and nobody crosses them. When Rob racks up a debt to them that he can’t pay, he offers to sell his daughter, Roxxane, to them to cover it. Roxy has been on her own since she was 17 and is now 24–and a total badass. She owns Roxers, a dive bar in town. When the Vipers come to collect her, she knows she has no way of getting away from them. But as infuriated as Roxy is by being taken as property, she soon can’t help but be attracted to her captors. And once she realizes they’re all broken in their own way, they all find ways to help each other heal. 

My thoughts: 
If you’re going to read this book, you’re going to have to get really cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. I imagine there is a niche for this book, however, it is not exactly *my* niche. 

I saw an out of context, smutty quote on Bookstagram and immediately downloaded it from Kindle Unlimited. And, wow, let me tell you, I did not have any idea of exactly what I was diving into with this one. 

This is a VERY dark mafia romance. The content is, well, a lot. The list of trigger warnings is very long for this book. I highly suggest anyone look through all of them before reading this book. It has tons of smut, a lot of violence, and some plot. 

I feel like I should be disgusted by this book, and I somewhat am, but I also could not stop flying through the pages. Some (most?) parts were just gross, and I don’t see how even a contortionist could’ve made some of these scenes possible, and some was just too over the top for me. “Why choose” has never been my favorite trope but this isn’t the worst that I’ve read. 

I’m actually more concerned that I’m not more concerned about this book. I absolutely do not recommend this for most people, but if this is your thing, then definitely have at it and enjoy. 

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flora_fcrp's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The book was great.
A perfect example of men that we love in book but not in real life !

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beckyremillard's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book is definitely dark - read trigger warnings. 

I have mixed feelings. Overall I think I liked it? Definitely dark and definitely dragged on in parts, but I’ll give it 4/5 stars. 

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bexxii00's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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katreads6's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

There were parts where I  enjoyed this book but it definitely dragged on. Super spicy parts, I really love spicy books but it felt like that’s all the book was - to the point I’d skim through it. It was repetitive and every chapter (I think there was like 70 chapters) had a spicy scene that was the same as the last time she slept with that person. Jen I was halfway through and saw it was only A WEEK she’s been there… and she’s loving them? Please. Roxy bothered me a lot. She was really irritating and cringey, the best way I could describe it was she had the pick me energy and it was annoying. Ryder was definitely my number one but everytime I got to his POV it was like 5 minutes long and everyone else’s was like 15-20. As much as I LOVE a spicy, f’ed up dark romance, I almost looked forward to parts where they were just existing and having fun together and for once NOT having sex. I truly don’t know how I made it through this book I remember towards the end I was rolling my eyes and huffing and puffing because there was still like 80 pages to go. I wanted to DNF it but I was so close to the end I sucked it up and I’m mad I spent my time reading this book. It was on my TBR for awhile and I kinda wish I kept it there lol. It also didn’t need to be this long of a book… it felt like writing a paper and having to reach a certain character limit because it was repetitive. Ugh honestly save your time and sanity and don’t read this, or do but the reviews mentioning the same things were right and I wish I read them before hand. So if you read it, good luck

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writtenmelodies's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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