RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'Psychopaths & Sinners' by Jack L. Pyke
Title: Psychopaths & Sinners
Author: Jack L. Pyke
Published: May 22, 2018
Cover Artist: Siol na Tine
Genre: Dark Erotic Romance; Dark Contemporary Romance; Mystery/Thriller; Suspense
Length: 557 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Bisexual; May/December; Angst; Cliffhanger; Disorder: Dissociative Identity Disorder; CW: Abduction, Rape, Sexual Abuse, Torture - Physical & Mental, Murder, Necrophilia, Off-Page Child Abuse
About Psychopaths & Sinners
“Because us? Psychopaths and sinners… we don’t need fixing, Gray.”
Three bodies, three mutilations, each one with something… unusual inserted into the wounds. The deaths are enough to leave Ash Thomas scrambling around to find someone to trust as the murders hit so close to home and heart.
For Gray Raoul, MI5 director of G-Branch, the deaths offer something else, a fall back into a familiar life where culling serial killers cater to his own darker mindset. But the farther Gray moves away from home, the more he realises serial killer games in the field are nothing compared to who he has locked up back at home. Sometimes walking the fine line between psychopaths and live-in lovers is a far darker game.
For Ash, that might just mean he’s on his own now, facing a killer who has a deadly fascination for pretty young men and dancing Holly Blue butterflies over their skin.
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
If you think you’ve had a terrible week, I guarantee you it is nothing like the one presented in Jack L. Pyke’s fifth installment of her Don’t… series. In true Pyke fashion, she opens up Psychopaths & Sinners by kicking you in the gut, leaving you floundering and making you want to weep in more ways than one - for more souls than one.
Don’t… think you can enter into this series without having read them all, and in order, because the story line is precise, detailed, and planned out. Pyke has a beautiful way of blending past memories, individual habits, even specific moments in time, to present thoughts and events, while using them to propel a narrative forward.
There’s pain… lots of pain. Jack is hiding in Martin. Martin is determined to win. Gray is drowning in his own personal hell, trying not to succumb. And Jan? Jan is still grappling, struggling, mourning… needing! We see all his hurt manifested, bubbling up and spilling over.
“Jan offered a small smile back. He’d had enough of walking in the shadow of a psychopath,” Pyke conveys.
Jack L. Pyke doesn’t let your mind wander, constantly feeding you with imagery to satisfy your imaginations hunger - creating a mystery that forces your heart to beat faster and makes your ears crane at every tiny noise you hear, wondering if someone is lurking.
“Flutter by those fucking butterflies.”
With every objects placement, person’s stance, simple touch, purposeful stare - I’m drawn in - as if I’m experiencing every hurt and angst filled scene, as well as the all-consuming passionate moments, with each and every character.
As a visual reader, Pyke never fails to satisfy me. With every objects placement, person’s stance, simple touch, purposeful stare - I’m drawn in - as if I’m experiencing every hurt and angst filled scene, as well as the all-consuming passionate moments, with each and every character. Their bleeding hurt is emblazoned into my heart and I can feel their lust and desire in my groin.
Using new characters, and old ones alike, this storyteller pulls you in. If you’ve read Pyke’s books before, you know there is no chance meeting, no happenstance, everything and everyone who touches her character’s lives are there for a reason. She weaves a tale of deception, heartbreak, and yet at the same time, reflects the measures one will take to save the person, or persons, they love the most.
Psychopaths & Sinners takes off where Ash left off and the build-up is intense. Ash and Raif have full reign here and their true dynamic is on brilliant display. Russel Dickerson’s lyrics from “Yours” couldn’t describe them any better.
I was one in one-hundred billion
A burned out star in a galaxy
Just lost in the sky wondering why
Everyone else shines out but me
But
I came to life when I first kissed you
This installment is the perfect backdrop of murder, mystery and intrigue as Pyke sashays between scenes of the aftermath of a crime and what’s unfolding with Jack, Jan, Gray… and Martin. All the while you’re wondering, frustratingly so, what connects the new players to these three men. Yes, three. She places seeds here and there, plants questions, only to make you wait out an explanation at just the precise moment. And like any good thrill-master, has you believing you know who it is, only to shoot you down until the next flashing moment. But alas, as in Antidote, the reveal is hidden until just the perfect moment and is not only shocking, but sad.
She weaves a tale of deception, heartbreak, and yet at the same time, reflects the measures one will take to save the person, or persons, they love the most.
Right up to the very end Psychopaths & Sinners has you feeling as if there will be no resolution, it creates a sense of foreboding and sets your adrenaline pumping watching a big house of cards tumble and stack itself back up. There’s hurt, betrayal, remorse, maybe even forgiveness? And perhaps the start of something new? Some help? As one door closes a new one opens: With a whole new set of questions, some new personalities, a hell of a lot of sinners and maybe one more psychopath.
Jack L. Pyke is setting her readers up for an explosive Don’t… series finale like only she can, and I’m misty eyed just thinking that these men will soon be leaving us behind! Dare I say she is one author who is destined for the New York Times and USA Today best sellers lists? That’s one time I’m not going to be shy about gloating and saying, “I told you so!”
A copy of Psychopaths & Sinners was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Jack L. Pyke, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
Meet the Author
Jack L. Pyke blames her dark writing influences on living close to one of England’s finest forests. Having grown up hearing a history of kidnappings, murders, strange sightings, and sexual exploits her neck of the woods is renowned for, Jack takes that into her writing, having also learned that human coping strategies for intense situations can sometimes make the best of people have disastrously bad moments. Redeeming those flaws is Jack’s drive, and if that drive just happens to lead to sexual tension between two or more guys, Jack’s the first to let nature take its course.
For more from Jack be sure to visit her website.
