Illicit is the 4th installment in the Sin City Outlaws MC series. I read the book before this but I have not read any of the other books in the series. So, let's start there. I do NOT recommend you read these books out of order or as standalones. I also suggest that you take my opinion of these books with a grain of salt for the reason that I did read them out of order and don't have the best context for understanding all the background information. When I write reviews like this I try to separate the things that are objective from the things that are just the result of my history with the series or other personal bias. I'll try to do that here. But don't read this review if you want to get into this series and you haven't read the books before this one, there will be spoilers of past books.
We met Raven in book 3 and Machete, a member of Sin City Outlaws in prior books. Raven is the "bad guy" from book 3 but it's kind of hard to say that because the lines between good and bad don't really exist between Raven and Machete. Raven is seriously out of her skull. She's a trained killer who was taken as a child and placed in a survival compound where it was hurt somebody else or starve. Raven learned from an early age to give pain, to take it and to push her emotions way down deep. In other words, she's crazy as all hell. If you read the last book (which I assume you did if you're reading this review) then you know that Raven held a grudge against Alessandra who was also at the kiddy killer compound. That didn't end well and as a result, Raven is now the prisoner of the Sin City MC club.
Machete is...a total psycho. He's sexy but in past books we learned that people are generally scared of him and those people are smart because he's scary. Machete is drawn to Raven because he sees the darkness inside of her and it's a total turn on for him. When I say a total turn on, I really mean that. The crazier Raven is and the more she is unaffected by the "torture" Machete is supposed to be doling out, the more he wants her.
Ok, so here are the issues. There was a lot of redundancy in the book, especially at the beginning. I felt like I was reading the same scene over and over again. Machete couldn't figure out how to get through to Raven by torture and then he would want her and there would be endless internal monologue about how drawn he was to her darkness. Another thing is that it seems like this book is going to be really hot and there are all these lusty morsels dangled but it takes a long time to get down to the actual business. I was also just mystified by the length of time it took for Raven to choose sides. I felt from the beginning of the book that she had absolutely no reason to be loyal to Cross. At one point pretty early in the story, Raven realized that she wasn't really on team Cross but she still refused to give in to Machete and tell him what he needed to know. My last thing is that there isn't the traditional amount of MC club stuff you might expect if you are a fan of MC romance.
In the end, I felt like the book was pretty good but I just needed to be much more invested in the series to really enjoy it.
**ARC provided by TRSoR Promotions**
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