A review by ladysadiereads
Darkness Embraced by Tillie Cole

4.0

Tanner Ayers was raised in violence to be the perfect White Prince - to bring the race war that his father so believes in. Adelita Quintana was raised in an ivory tower built by her father’s cartel. Can these two lonely souls from opposite sides of the underworld find solace in each other?

Redeeming the unredeemable is Tillie Cole’s strength as a writer. How she made me sympathize and fight for a man who is literally a fascist racist neo-nazi was impressive. (To be clear he stops being all of these before the book starts but there are flashbacks.) Adelita though is pretty much awesome - a warrior princess who loves deeply and will fight for that love no matter what the world throws at them.

This was a slightly different Cole story - no cult (I needed a break from that storyline so I was glad) and really it had a lot more of the couple actually falling in love. This is anything BUT insta love and had the change that the affection that they felt for each other on the page versus happening in the background and I really loved that. I did want to shake both characters at times purely because they were so reactionary and didn’t talk things out - though things were happening pretty fast and it fit the pace of the story.

This was also interesting because I really can’t read enemies to lovers and essentially this is that complete with a hate sex scene? But the way the story was told it was how the world had made them hate each other on principle not in reality and it made me really want to know how they could possibly be together.