She wished for death. A killer showed up at her door.EloiseLife left me when my family died.I thought I wanted to die, too, until death comes knocking on my door.Only, instead of killing me, he breathes new life into me.For the first time in my existence, I’m scared. Because when that life is taken from me, I’ll have nothing left.CrowI have one rule: leave no traces behind.She compromised my … left.
Crow
I have one rule: leave no traces behind.
She compromised my identity and needs to be eliminated.
So simple, right?
Not even close.
When she welcomes death with open arms, I can’t pull the trigger.
Breaking my one rule would not only put my life in danger, but it would completely destroy hers.
Crowed is a romantic suspense, and a killer romance with tones of darkness. Crowed is an enemies to lovers romance, has no cliffhanger and no cheating, and ends on a HEA. Due to language and sexual content, this is advised for mature audience only.
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Yess!! This books was AWESOME!!! Rina Kent is a new Author to me and let me just say she did not disappoint with this books she’s gained a fan!! Can’t wait for the next book in this suspenseful series
Update This story was amazing and started my love for all things Rina Kent writes ! I have read 7 books of this Team Zero Assassin world she has created and just when I think she can’t possibly get any better she blows me away with another terrific dark romance story. Having said that I think this book being the first one I read will always be my favorite and I don’t think my review I first wrote did it justice. So yes Crowed was amazing and if I had not picked this book up I would have passed up on a amazing book and discovering a amazing author! Wow! This was my first time reading a book by Rina Kent and I loved it! I couldn’t put down from beginning to end! Great characters great plot I loved this suspenseful romance story!I received an arc for my honest review through book sprout
Awesome!!!
I loved this book. I am completely obsessed with remorseless killers that fall in love when they think they just don’t have the ability to feel emotions like that. This is a great story and the rest of Team Zero and the Rhodes series look to be just as good. I can’t wait for more. I had already read the 3 chapter preview for Ruin, about Aaron which is also awesome, so I can’t wait for the rest of that.
This book is about Crow, a member of Team Zero, who are a team of assassins who were kidnapped as teens, have been continually drugged with a toxic drug to make them into enhanced killing machines. When Crow is double crossed and shot, he has to lay low in a small town in France where he meets Eloise and he begins to have feelings for her. But they are both in danger. Excellent story and nice romance also.
The background on Hades, Team Zero and the Rhodes is told bit by bit as the story plays out, I am sure more will be told as future books come out. As I was reading, I sort of wanted to get an entire history so I could understand all the connections better. Though I am not really sure now, because then it would probably all have to be repeated in each book, so maybe this is the best way to go.
What could possibly thaw the heart & feelings of an almost robotic assassin?
What could possibly bring feeling back to a woman devoid of any?
I loved this suspenseful & exciting romance, I loved how 2 people, utterly broken in such different ways stumbled across each other never realizing their chance for a real future was right before their eyes.
Crow: Gorgeous, huge, muscled, intelligent & a stone cold killer. Kidnapped as a youth & trained to be an assassin, as well as a guinea pig for an experimental addictive drug called Omega, created to enhance an assassin’s skills, he was stripped of emotions decades earlier & lives a controlled emotionless life. But he is trying to fight his addiction to attempt to see if there is any life outside his slavery to his master: Hades, who created The Pit for his cadre of trained, loyal & flawless assassins.
Eloise: A nurse working at a French hospital, mired in grief over the loss of her Maman & her last family member. Unable to move forward with her grief, she goes through her days almost catatonic, praying for the strength, or luck, to die in order to join her loved ones & end the gray agony her life has become. Only her dog & her beloved family estate have any hold on her sense of responsibility to continue to live.
What happens then, when an assassin trying to embrace a possible new free future meets a woman wanting to give up & die?
The author does wonderfully pulling the reader into both Crow & Eloise’s lives through alternating POV’s. Both Crow & Eloise are broken, desperate, alone in their individual hells. Crow doesn’t know who in his circle is trustworthy & Eloise has no one to whom she may turn.
The horrendous pressures each is under: Crow, fighting addiction as well as (an) unknown enemy(ies) & Eloise, fighting her ever deepening emotional apathy as well as crushing outside everyday stresses, causes the reader to be sucked into their struggles & heart wrenching attempts to survive.
The author makes both Crow & Eloise intensely sympathetic & likable characters, I for one, was deeply invested in their story, I came to care for them both & had my fingers crossed that somehow, someway they’d find a way to a happy & hopeful future together. The story is emotionally dark, both characters have grim &/or depressing back stories but that makes the plot intriguing & intense: will they be able to survive? Be happy?
Despite the darkness, I loved the cute & funny little bursts of humor: Crow’s English attitude about most things French, his love/hate relationship with Eloise’s fat little poodle Charlotte, as well as Crow’s nickname for Eloise that she loathes & abhors. Nice bright touches that made me smile & chuckle.
But to attempt to reach any type of future, Crow & Eloise must survive harrowing situations & enemies & the author does (IMO) an excellent job with suspense, danger, action & nail-biting tension.
A excellent as well as exciting romance that has the perfect balance of angst, sexual tension & attraction, danger, suspense & action. I highly recommend this one.
This was a good book. It has angst, love and conflict. Once I started reading this I couldn’t put it down. Crow is an assassin and he meets Eloise a nurse with no will to live after she has lost everyone she’s ever loved. When these two get stuck together it’s a hate/love relationship and the chemistry is off the charts. My favorite part is when she tells him she’s broken and he tells her so is he. (swoon). Loved the storyline and can’t wait to read more.
What a thrilling story! I really enjoyed this read. I liked the plot and characters. Crow and Eloise’s story was suspenseful with a little darkness, drama, romance, angst and steam. I look forward to reading the next story in this new series.
*An advanced copy of this book was provided for me to review.
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AND, WOW!!! I feel like it was my lucky day when I was chosen to receive a copy of this ARC from the wonderful Romance Retreat Holiday Giveaways in December.
Rina Kent is a new author to me and may be a new author, period. If that’s the case, she is already very talented and I’m now a fangirl. I joined her newsletter which is where I might have gotten the prequel novella to this book, Charmed (maybe on the GR giveaways??). I couldn’t find it anywhere else to review but I read it 1st and got the story behind the story about how Team Zero came to be. I’m going give a brief rundown on it here, so if you dont want to read it, skip down to *.
Camille, a young French law student takes a summer holiday in London to escape her overly protective parents and the secluded country life she lived there. She mets a man, Dominic, a doctor and a bit older who has all the makings of a manipulative sociopath and she couldn’t be more fascinated by him. He attracts admirers wherever he goes and can get them to do the craziest things with only a mere suggestion and Camille can’t stop watching him make his moves.
He turns his attention her way, of course she can’t resist what she assumes will be just another one nite stand in this schemers world, but as the summer progresses, so does their strange sexual attraction. I, myself couldn’t look away either as Dominic and Camille play their cat and mouse, will he or won’t she sexual game. It was mindblowing, dark and you wonder what his intentions are towards this curious young woman, will curiosity kill the cat, the mouse?
This story reveals some major angsty twists as bizarre revelations come to light. Dominic must decide if he wants to protect the woman he is coming to love or watch as she is used as a weapon against him as someone more powerful slips in to manipulate him. Ohhh, was this ever good..dark, suspenseful! What will Dominic’s next move be? I hope you can find Charmed to find out..it’s soooo good!
*Now, on to CROWED- Team Zero book 1, which will be here very soon and if you love dark, then you will absolutely be drawn into this wild, disturbing world where someone in the past has created a team of killers, kidnapped as young children or teens and controlled by a untraceable, lab created drug, Omega. Omega turns normal individuals into lethal killing machines with no feelings or remorse to get in the way of doing the bidding of Hades, a fitting name for the mastermind of this sick operation.
The intriguing Crow (I instantly want to know everything about this guy) is one of these programmed killers, goes off the grid to France to complete an off the books ‘assignment’ which goes terribly wrong and in a wild twist, the killer becomes the victim. When he wakes up in a strange hospital, he realizes he must run before whoever set him up comes to finish him. The fearless, young nurse he threatens let’s him escape and he runs for his life.
Crow finds himself wondering why Nurse Betty, as he called her seemed to not care at all whether he killed her or left her..what has made a young woman like her, beautiful and intelligent lose her zest for living and not care at all when her life was hanging in the balance?
Fate decides Crow should find out how that life altering blankness came to be the only thing Nurse Betty, aka, Eloise, has left in her life now since her Maman, Camille, passed away 6 months ago. Camille?? That’s right, Eloise is the daughter of that curious young women from Charmed.
What is the connection? Can you guess? I’m not telling you but I will say that both Eloise, her extreme sadness and despair and Crow, the sexy, damaged killer will have a bigtime collision of wills that you won’t be able to resist reading every juicy, dark, delicious detail about. Spinning in the background is always the fact that someone, whoever it may be is absolutely out to end Crow. Where is the threat coming from? Who can he really trust, if anyone? You might not see it coming but WOW, heart stopping is the word I’ll use!
Lovers of dark romance, this author is going to grab you and insist that you get on board with Crow and Team Zero here and now especially since this is only the beginning of her not to be missed ‘killer’ series. There are already a few of that team I want to know waaayyy more about! I love the dark and this one is a recommend for me.
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I almost gave up on this after a few chapters. It turns out that it was worth waiting for. In the beginning, I had trouble figuring out Crow’s backstory, and nothing made sense. Once I knew what was going on, it was an easy read. I love the happy ending, and received an extended epilogue from the author – will look for her books again.
One thing I loved in the book was Eloise’s jar. Her Maman told her to “write one thing that makes your day,” and that kept her going for so long.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Eloise and Crow meet by chance, they never should have met at all. Once they do, once they figure out their connection and find out what they mean to each other all bets are off. I loved the suspense, loved guessing who is going to be there for them and who isn’t. Loved watching their journey that is unlike most. Can’t wait for the next book in the series!
Whoa! What a crazy roller coaster ride Crowed will take you on. The story started a little slow for me at first. But I kept pushing forward and WOW! The plot thickened and you fall for our broken hero. Our heroine of the story is also equally broken. At the beginning you can feel the dark cloud hanging. I was not sure that Crow and Eloise would ever get a HEA period. I did not see these two becoming a couple.
There were a lot of surprises and aha moments. This is my first book by Rina Kent and believe me, she is amazing keeping you in suspense! There are a lot of “What Happens Next?” moments. Some things happen first and make sense later. Crowed kept me on my toes and the ending left me a little bit restless. What will happen with the rest of Team Zero? Until next book…..
An Amazing Read! It is well written, quite the page turner, full of drama, humour, intrigue, and suspense; with twists, danger, and hotness. Well-developed storyline with interesting strong characters you will love. The Chemistry between them is off the charts. This is an on the edge of your seat read from beginning to end, so hold on to your seats because you are in for quite a ride. I look forward to the next book in the series.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This book was intense! I could not put it down. It was excellently written. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book in exchange for a free copy.
Oh my goodness this book is so good. I had intended on reading it over a few days but once I started I couldn’t stop. I finished it in one sitting. It’s dangerous and romantic all wrapped up in one. It’s different from most books similar to this in how the heroine always begs for their life but Eloise practically begged for her death. She felt she didn’t have anything to live for and was a shell of the person she used to be. Crow is lethal and to the point but that all changes with the first glimpse of Eloise. I loved seeing their relationship unfold despite all the danger that came with it and the ending made my heart happy.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
It started a bit confusing and depressing but the two main characters got into each other’s lives to change them forever.
The style is a bit different and the story is not a sweet romance although it is well-thought and good.
There is a lot of pain, healing, hate and finally love and hope.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Crow is an assassin , kidnapped as a child and turned into a lethal killer and also got him hooked on Omega, when you meet Crow he is actually withdrawing from Omega as he is trying to get off the controlling drug. When on assignment he gets shot Crow is taken to the hospital where he meets Nurse Eloise, Eloise has no one is her life and no reason to be alive according to her. So when Crow wakes up and threatens her with her life Eloise doesn’t even flinch, Crow doesn’t understand how this woman can be so compliance about him threatening her with death this intrigues him. After Crow escapes the hospital he is left stranded with no place to go, then he finds a place where he can hide out only to find that the owner is none other than Eloise. The more time they spend together the more they crow to need each other they make each others life worth living. But when Eloise’s life is threatened by his so called family he must decide whether to follow his heart of follow what his known his whole life that his a monster. Will he protect her with all he has or will he be the one to take her out ? well you’ll really have to read it to find out. I look forward to reading all her books cant wait for Ghosts story. Very glad I gave this book a chance discovered a great story which I could not put down and also a brand new author. (less)
When I got the ARC for Crowed, I was in a book slump. I just couldn’t set into any of the books I started and then I read Crowed and I could not put it down! Eloise has lost all the people important to her so when an assassin comes to kill her, she welcomes him and death. When Crow sees how unafraid Eloise is of death, he can’t bring himself to kill her even though it goes against his rules. Crow is trying to get off the drug Omega that’s slowly killing him. I really felt what Eloise was going through, I went through similar loss and I could relate to what she was going through. I absolutely loved this book and Rina Kent is one of my new favorite authors. Cannot wait for more on Team Zero and the Rhodes
5 stars
Review by Leah
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog
How on earth is this your first published book lady!!?!?! Crowned by Rina Kent needs to be on your TBR list like now! Go ahead and just click that “Want to Read” button and then read once released. This whole book is so good! I felt like it was an extension to one of the Bourne Identity movies, which I am totally addicted to. This book has that adventure, suspense, crazy angst, and wonderful characters.
Eloise has just lost her mother and now is on her own, no one left. For the past six years, all she had done is take care of her mother. She is the nurturer, a giver, always giving 110% of herself to others. Now by herself, she is fighting a battle each day to keep one foot in front of the other. The way Rina Kent describes Eloise is spot on. Once that portion of your life is gone, you don’t know what to do with yourself. Hopefully, you will eventually find yourself or meet someone that shows you how to live again. Which is where Crow comes in.
Crow was kidnapped by Hades as a young child and molded into a contract killer for Hades’ Team Zero. Emotionally detached to the world due to the drug regimen Hades each member of Team Zero on, Crow lives one contract to the next. But once he finds out what the drug is doing to his body, he starts second guessing everything. He even goes to the extreme of trying detox by himself which lands him in a hospital room with “Nurse Betty”, Eloise (his nickname for her). Have I mentioned Eloise estranged father made the drug? No? Crow did not know that at first and neither did Eloise. That makes for some interesting scenes.
Their chemistry is crazy. It is not all sexual at first, but with the chemistry between these two, you know they need each other. Yes, the chemistry does become more sexual but it is not thrown in your face. Rina weaves the story so well. The entire book is perfectly balanced.
I cannot wait for book two with Ghost! The building of characters of Team Zero members (Crow’s assassination team) and them taking down Hades, I am excited about this series.
Gosh!! What an amazeballs this book is! I love Crow! Oh my gosh! This book contains all of our emotions, makes you sad, makes you scared and definitely makes you happy. I needed more of their story. I loooove it!! Never expected I’ve won an arc, thank you so much, Rina! I will wait for your other books!! I love this!!
Won an ARC of this on Facebook during a take over. So glad I entered on that post. Rina is a new writer to me but I am looking forward to the rest of this series. This book kept me on the edge, guessing and questioning what happens next. I was sucked into the story on the first page and didn’t want to put it down. Crow and Eloise we’re the perfect half to each other. Cannot wait for the next two novels to come out
I don’t know how I feel about this one. While I like the concept of this assassinator storyline I needed Crowe to be more of a badass. He just decided to go against the brainwashing he had for his whole life, you can’t stop taking a drug you took for decades and become this nice loving guy. This would be a time I’d expect the alpha to be a jerk. Plus, their was barely any buildup. I was expecting some kind of drama!!