Dark.Devious.And Deliciously Dirty.Vicente Bernal is not your typical hero.
From New York Times bestselling author Karina Halle comes a BRAND NEW standalone duet that will get your pulse racing and your thighs clenching.For Vicente Bernal, truth is all he’s known. The son of an infamous drug lord, Vicente was born to help run the family business, which means he’s been raised on a throne of … and your thighs clenching.
For Vicente Bernal, truth is all he’s known. The son of an infamous drug lord, Vicente was born to help run the family business, which means he’s been raised on a throne of sordid pasts and dirty laundry, violence and pride. But when Vicente stumbles across someone he’s not supposed to know about – a woman from his father’s checkered past – he sets out to California to find her behind his father’s back.
What Vicente doesn’t expect to find in San Francisco is Violet McQueen, the woman’s twenty-year old daughter. Beautiful and edgy with a vulnerability he can’t resist, Violet tempts Vicente from afar and though he promised himself he’d stay away from her, curiosity and lust are powerful forces. Besides, Vicente has always gotten everything he wants – why shouldn’t he have Violet too?
Soon his wants turn into an obsession, one that sweeps Violet into his games as they fall madly, deeply in love with each other, the type of first love that can drive a person mad.
But it’s a love with tragic consequences.
Both the truth – and the lies – not only threaten to tear them apart, but threaten their very lives.
Someone has to pay for the sins of the fathers.
And they’ll be paying the price with their souls.
NOTE: BLACK HEARTS is BOOK ONE of the SINS DUET, with the sequel & conclusion, DIRTY SOULS, releasing on March 17, 2017.
Black Hearts is the first installment in Karina Halle’s dark romance duology: Sins Duet. This duology is the second spin-off of Ms. Halle’s The Artists Trilogy, and the romance features the children of The Artists Trilogy main characters.
I was first introduced to the amazing Karina Halle when I read The Artists Trilogy in 2013. Spin-offs are sometimes eyeroll-worthy but not these ones. Reading a romance between these amazing characters’ college-aged children in Black Hearts felt like a completely different experience and it worked. Ellie, Camden, and Javier all have significant roles in this book but it is clear that this duet does not belong to them…it belongs to the next generation of McQueens and Bernals and they can hold their own. Black Hearts is nostalgic, complex, mysterious, both innocent and ruthless, and sexy as hell with romance that pushes the envelope. It is not an open-and-closed story though. It ends on a “to be continued” and I am so excited to finish the story when the second part releases!
In my opinion, this duology can be read apart from the other related series as Ms. Halle provides enough pertinent information to allow everything to make sense. But…if you haven’t read Ms. Halle’s other stuff, I strongly encourage you to fit them all in to your already overflowing TBR list. The Artists Trilogy prompted me to put Karina Halle on my automatic one-click list and Black Hearts just confirms she should stay there. Check it out!
***4 ‘I’m becoming the charade’ Stars
I’m going to start off by stating that I did not read The Artists trilogy nor The Dirty Angels trilogy, I have them, but we all know how real the whole “So many books, so little time” thing is, but I will admit that I really want to now and will hopefully get there one day, but until then…
Holy. Hell. Black Hearts is all kinds of dark smexy romance mixed with a good dose of mystery and suspense. So many secrets, so many lies and so many little games in play that I the anticipation of what would come next and by whose wickedly devious mind, kept me turning the pages.
Keeping this unspoilery as possible is gonna be damn hard, but here goes nothing. Vicente is smoking hot and devious, which comes as no surprise to anyone considering who his papa is. He sees himself as a cut above and in many ways he is and yet despite all he thinks he knows, he doesn’t know it all. I do love me a devious and morally sideways mind and Vicente fits the bill and yet there is a bit of gooey goodness in him, but only a bit.
Violet is an enigma in the sense that she doesn’t even really know who she is. She’s set herself apart from everyone for various reasons and yet has a backbone of steel, if she should ever need it. I liked Violet, I did. She has a lot of layers, many of which she has never explored, but I loved the way she looked at the world. It wasn’t with rose colored glasses, she saw the light and dark and loved them both.
Vicente and Violet’s romance gets hot and heavy quickly, though there is no insta-love, but as things progress and despite the uneven terrain it’s being built on, they both find that the other has that something that they both never knew they needed. So seeing their relationship develop and the shifts in perception they have based on their time together had me cringing because I knew the devastation that would come once the truth was revealed and yet that dark, twisted part of me couldn’t wait to see it and see what they would do.
This my first time reading a Karina Halle dark romance and dear lord did I love it! The characters are well written and intriguing and holy hell are the sex scenes all kinds are dark, smexy goodness. But it was all the little intrigues that were woven into the fabric of this story that kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next. I had my suspicions on a couple of things and I couldn’t help but do a whole “Ha! I knew it!” punch in the air thing when one thing I guessed at was revealed. As I said in the beginning I haven’t read either trilogies that this one is a spinoff of but I wasn’t lost, I simply want to read them even more now. Ms. Halle does a great job at giving you the important pieces without interrupting the flow of Vicente and Violet’s story. There is a cliffy of a sort, it is a duet so it’s to be expected, and it was done perfectly and makes me wish I had Dirty Souls sitting on my Kindle to read right now! But, alas, that isn’t the case so I will be practicing patience as I wait for it to eventually appear.
~ Copy provided by the author ~
Holy crap! What in the french toast is going on?! There’s secrets, lies and deceit happening all over the place. Who in the hell can anyone trust? I don’t know but I can’t wait to find out. The book was a little slow for me in the beginning, but the last half has been really good. It’s moving along and I’m so glad I can jump right into the next book. Eek! Stuff is going down!! I’m moving on to the next one!
“You’re everything I’ve ever needed, I was famished, starved, for you. For this.”
I love Karina Halle’s books. The Dirty Angels Trilogy is one of my favorite dark romance series, so I was SUPER excited to get my hands on Black Hearts, which is focusing on Javier & Luisa’s son Vicente. I was excited because I also wanted to see what my favorite villain Javier was up to. From the moment I saw the cover, I was in lust with Vicente. People who know me know that I love mafia/cartel romances. Even though the cartel didn’t play that major role in this book (it was more in the background), Vicente showed a lot of ruthless characteristics. It was obvious he is like his dad, but in comparison to Javier he isn’t completely heartless.
“Violet… your heart is safe with me. You know this now, your heart is safe, as is your mind and your soul and your body. I won’t hurt you. I won’t let anyone else, either.”
There was an immediate attraction the moment Violet and Vicente met. Vicente has this whole smooth bad boy personality going on, which was very attractive. It is almost impossible to resist him. However I did like how Violet handled him. It wasn’t insta-love and she didn’t play hard to get. Even though there are secrets between them, they stay pretty really with each other, which I really appreciated. Their relationship grew organically and it felt real. I loved getting reunited with previous characters and seeing how they were living their lives. Especially Javier and Luisa, who I obsess about. Javier has turned even more ruthless than he already was. I still love him though.
Violet was shy and nervous, she was definitely unique. There were moments she acted like a teenager which I didn’t like, but she did some growing up in this book. I do wish the characters were a bit older, because it sometimes felt as a New Adult book. I do want to mention that Violet was more than capable of handling difficult situations. Both Vicente and Violet’s family have a mutual past, and there is bad blood between them. I loved the twist towards the end, I can’t wait to see how everything will turn out.
“You’re mine, Violet. I don’t care how that sounds, but it’s all truth. You belong to me.”
Karina Halle is one of my favorite authors. Like I mentioned in previous reviews, she can write in every genre she sets her mind to. I have read her Paranormal, Horror, Contemporary, Dark romance novels and loved them all. She did a phenomenal job with this book and she created very intriguing characters with an original plot. Her writing is beautiful and hooks a reader to the story. Also the sex scenes were scorching HOT! Vicente set my Kindle on fire. You definitely want to get to know this dark and sensual man.
OMG!! This book was exactly what I needed. Let me first say that it can be read as a standalone. However, some of the characters are from her Artist Trilogy and Dirty Angels Series. Normally my OCD would make me tell you to read those first before you start this. However, I honestly think that if I read this without the others, it would have still made the same impact than if I had read them. With that said, you MUST read the others after this. Only because you do not want to miss out on my two favorite loves of all time. Camden McQueen and Javier Bernal.
“I would do anything to fan those flames, give her strength to burn the world to the ground and rise from it.”
Black Hearts completely sucked me in. I started reading it in the morning and had to pause to drive for two hours. I actually pulled out my phone while I was pumping gas so I could keep reading. I seriously couldn’t get enough of it.
Vicente Bernal is the son of one of the most powerful drug lords. His life has always been about drugs and violence. His first kill was when he was only fourteen years old. He knew that this was going to be his life growing up but he wanted to do it differently than his father. When he discovers a hidden past that his father has kept locked up, Vicente embarks on a journey to California to seek answers and ultimately find the one thing he thinks he can use to leverage against his father.
He has a very calculated plan but one look at Violet McQueen and that plan starts to change. She might actually be the new pawn in his plan. The set up is perfect. Use the girl and get her back to Mexico and hand her over to his father. A piece of that past that seems to haunt him. What he didn’t expect was to fall in love with Violet. He sees her for exactly who she is. While some think she is shy and sensitive, he sees just how strong and brilliant she is. He wants to set her free and he wants to show the world her strength. How will their love change the course of his plans? Will he continue to seek some hold over his father or will Violet become his new world?
This book has duel POV from Vicente and Violet but it also has third person POV from Javier (Vicente’s father) and Ellie (Violet’s mother.) For me, I needed those third person POVs because of my love of the past books but really, they help to set the scene. Even if I wasn’t just being greedy and dying for more Javier, I would think that they were needed in the story. It’s set in the future and actually has some slight political jabs that I appreciated.
One of my favorite things in this book is watching Vicente help Violet grow into the woman that she is destined to be. While others have held her back in her life, he try to nourish her and then there’s that one moment where she just might be darker than anyone expected. Maybe this innocent girl perfectly belongs in a much darker world.
Let’s not forget about the sexy times. Holy hell, Vicente doesn’t hold back. He’s deliciously scandalous and I couldn’t get enough it. From the beginning, Violet gives in to him. At least with her body. But he teaches her to let her overactive mind go when they are together and he has a fun time doing it.
Overall, I loved this book. As I said before, it was everything I needed and I didn’t even know I needed it. It’s dirty, raw and smoking hot. Just when you think you have everything figured out, BAM, Karina throws a twist at you. The story isn’t over and you are left with dying for the next part. I can’t wait to see what happens next in Dirty Souls. I seriously can’t say enough about this book. Trust me, you do not want to miss out on this.