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A review by highladyofdelulu
Lovely Bad Things by Trisha Wolfe
5.0
My song for Lovely Bad Things: Dark Matter by Les Friction
“Want will drive you right into the maddening depths, I assure you. But you have to want with a fire, with a passion. The day you stop wanting, is the day you decide to die.”
This review contains out-of-context quotes that could be considered as spoilers
I listened to the audiobook but was so roped in that I ended up parallel reading the ebook. If you like audiobooks, I absolutely recommend it – Kallum’s voice was a substantial factor of my being lulled in by his allure. I still hear it in my mind…
What is more, it was, in my opinion, one of the best narrated books I have ever listened to and that goes for both the male and female POV.
“You fear everything about me. The way I tempt you to lose control. The way I dare you to rattle the cage of that dark prison in your mind. But most of all, you fear the way I make you feel.”
Kallum – the bad boy of academia – is not only hot and tattooed, but, more significantly, brilliantly intelligent and dangerously eloquent, powerful in the conviction of his self and his beliefs. He does feel like the devil and I found myself wanting to get burnt by him, if only to see myself through his gaze.
I have immense respect for any author who so successfully composes and presents the mind of a villain as depraved and dangerous as Kallum. More so for an author who makes him the most alluring, intriguing not through the lense and filter of another, but through his very own POV.
“Come back to me, Halen”
Halen, while being troubled by the typical guilt and moral restraints, justifying her obsession through condemnation and anger, has a depth that is less obvious. Only hesitantly do we get a glimpse into her abyss and while her POV offers essential conflicts, it is through Kallum’s POV that Halen receives dimension.
“Falling through suffering is a descent into chaos. (…) It’s the darkest obscurity, the ultimate terror. But the ascent out of the abyss reveals itself in the most tender moments.”
The clash that derives from the difference in intrinsic and extrinsic percipience – for both characters – is ingeniously coherent and makes for an essential extra layer of dynamic and the gradual outlining of both characters. It also leaves the assumption that while we think we know what we see, the truth of this story lies in the obscure – just like with any good crime.
“His evil calls to mine.”
Dark romance, especially contemporary dark romance, needs a base, a fundament that frames the darkness in order to make it approachable – in order to make a villain truly, acceptably bad and let him get away with showing it. Without the cringe. Trisha Wolfe succeeded in that in every sense.
“Before I even saw you, I felt your pain. It called to me like a siren, my muse of heartbreak. I wanted to taste it, to feast on it, your pain is that irresistible. All I wanted was to drop to my knees and devour every last drop of you just so you could breathe… so I could fucking breathe.”
I love a good Criminal Minds vibe crime and the fact that Halen is a profiler who is actually well written enough that she can get away with it. Planting a crime solving arc at the base of a plot of anything but a crime fiction can easily feel like a means to an end – clue hunting can feel dragged out in an attempt to offer a timeline.
Lovely Bad Things, in my opinion, is a prime example of how to do it right – of to how to spin a story that is so intertwined, where all levels string together and into each other until the plot does not work without the crime and its investigation.
"She is my flame. And I am all but pleading for my muse to burn me alive.”
Making Kallum the expert that needs to be consulted is, of course, one step to do that. For me, however, the alchemy lies in the brilliance and madness, backed up by the philosophic layers and evolving relationship. In the way the lines blur until the case is not floating along but an entangled thread determines the relationship of Kallum and Halen – or is it vice versa?
“True strength is having the fraught will and calm surrender to accept our sickness, to awake every day and feel our pain, embrace our suffering, and choose to live in spite of our great losses.”
Besides being brilliantly written and backed by knowledge I can only assume to be expertly, Lovely Bad Things is a book that made me think, contemplate and understand as the characters do, challenges me and my own believes.
Not only in the way that a good dark romance – by daringly shifting the axis of morality – in my opinion, needs to. But by additionally using the mind of someone like Kallum as a prism through which we decipher philosophical principles alongside the characters.
It is one of these books that were picked up blindly and ended up being exactly what I didn’t know I needed. It is also one I, personally, will talk about for a long time and I cannot wait to read the second book.
“Want will drive you right into the maddening depths, I assure you. But you have to want with a fire, with a passion. The day you stop wanting, is the day you decide to die.”
This review contains out-of-context quotes that could be considered as spoilers
I listened to the audiobook but was so roped in that I ended up parallel reading the ebook. If you like audiobooks, I absolutely recommend it – Kallum’s voice was a substantial factor of my being lulled in by his allure. I still hear it in my mind…
What is more, it was, in my opinion, one of the best narrated books I have ever listened to and that goes for both the male and female POV.
“You fear everything about me. The way I tempt you to lose control. The way I dare you to rattle the cage of that dark prison in your mind. But most of all, you fear the way I make you feel.”
Kallum – the bad boy of academia – is not only hot and tattooed, but, more significantly, brilliantly intelligent and dangerously eloquent, powerful in the conviction of his self and his beliefs. He does feel like the devil and I found myself wanting to get burnt by him, if only to see myself through his gaze.
I have immense respect for any author who so successfully composes and presents the mind of a villain as depraved and dangerous as Kallum. More so for an author who makes him the most alluring, intriguing not through the lense and filter of another, but through his very own POV.
“Come back to me, Halen”
Halen, while being troubled by the typical guilt and moral restraints, justifying her obsession through condemnation and anger, has a depth that is less obvious. Only hesitantly do we get a glimpse into her abyss and while her POV offers essential conflicts, it is through Kallum’s POV that Halen receives dimension.
“Falling through suffering is a descent into chaos. (…) It’s the darkest obscurity, the ultimate terror. But the ascent out of the abyss reveals itself in the most tender moments.”
The clash that derives from the difference in intrinsic and extrinsic percipience – for both characters – is ingeniously coherent and makes for an essential extra layer of dynamic and the gradual outlining of both characters. It also leaves the assumption that while we think we know what we see, the truth of this story lies in the obscure – just like with any good crime.
“His evil calls to mine.”
Dark romance, especially contemporary dark romance, needs a base, a fundament that frames the darkness in order to make it approachable – in order to make a villain truly, acceptably bad and let him get away with showing it. Without the cringe. Trisha Wolfe succeeded in that in every sense.
“Before I even saw you, I felt your pain. It called to me like a siren, my muse of heartbreak. I wanted to taste it, to feast on it, your pain is that irresistible. All I wanted was to drop to my knees and devour every last drop of you just so you could breathe… so I could fucking breathe.”
I love a good Criminal Minds vibe crime and the fact that Halen is a profiler who is actually well written enough that she can get away with it. Planting a crime solving arc at the base of a plot of anything but a crime fiction can easily feel like a means to an end – clue hunting can feel dragged out in an attempt to offer a timeline.
Lovely Bad Things, in my opinion, is a prime example of how to do it right – of to how to spin a story that is so intertwined, where all levels string together and into each other until the plot does not work without the crime and its investigation.
"She is my flame. And I am all but pleading for my muse to burn me alive.”
Making Kallum the expert that needs to be consulted is, of course, one step to do that. For me, however, the alchemy lies in the brilliance and madness, backed up by the philosophic layers and evolving relationship. In the way the lines blur until the case is not floating along but an entangled thread determines the relationship of Kallum and Halen – or is it vice versa?
“True strength is having the fraught will and calm surrender to accept our sickness, to awake every day and feel our pain, embrace our suffering, and choose to live in spite of our great losses.”
Besides being brilliantly written and backed by knowledge I can only assume to be expertly, Lovely Bad Things is a book that made me think, contemplate and understand as the characters do, challenges me and my own believes.
Not only in the way that a good dark romance – by daringly shifting the axis of morality – in my opinion, needs to. But by additionally using the mind of someone like Kallum as a prism through which we decipher philosophical principles alongside the characters.
It is one of these books that were picked up blindly and ended up being exactly what I didn’t know I needed. It is also one I, personally, will talk about for a long time and I cannot wait to read the second book.