Skin of a Sinner by Avina St. Graves
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ | Plot: 📕📕📕| Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Length: 📱421 pages | Genre: Dark Romance | POV: Dual First
Dates Read: 04.20.24 – 04.27.24


🕊️ ➞ Tropes:

🔪🖤👤 Stalker / Serial Killers 👤🖤🔪
👺 Masked Men 👺
⚔️💀 Touch Her, You Die 💀⚔️
☠️ Morally Grey MMC ☠️
❤️🚫 Forbidden Romance 🚫❤️
😍He Falls First 😍
😒👫Forced Proximity👫😒
🙄🙎🏼‍♀️Strong / Sassy FMC 🙎🏼‍♀️🙄
🥰😒 Grumpy / Sunshine 😒🥰
🖤Dark 🖤
👫👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻Friends to Lovers 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻👫
🛏️Only One Bed 🛏️



✴✴✴ TW: Graphic Depictions of Murder, S3xual Harassment, Predatory Behavior, Grooming, Stalker, Obsession, Con-Non-Con✴✴✴


🕊️ ➞ Progress Notes & Initial Thoughts:

12% // This is so violently adorable 🥰 😍

19% // Okay but why am I ✨️hungry✨️ for their backstory 😍🥰 this is why my therapist has job security 🤣

44% // How can this man be this violently romantic??? I don’t know if it’s a relationship goal or a deterrent…

65% // Roman is an absolute psychopath but this childhood friends arc has me in a ✨️chokehold✨️ gonna end up speed finishing this tonight. Ugh so good.



🕊️ ➞ Plot Breakdown & Commentary:

Isabella Garcia was twenty years old when she woke up to her former best friend and childhood love slaughtering her abusive foster family. From there, we’re dropped into a whirlwind of blood, gore, sex, and toxic love. I enjoyed every second of it.



In flashback chapters, we learned that Isabella and Roman were in the foster system together; he was two years older. They met at school fourteen years prior when she was six and Roman was eight. She found solace in his company and he became her protector. As teens, they got separated for one year before Roman was able to track her down, then after her seventeenth birthday, Roman disappeared for three years.

The following three years consisted of s3xual harassment and abuse for Isabella while she heard nothing from Roman. Heartbroken, Isabella turned from docile and shy to snarky and quick-witted. When Roman returned and slaughtered her foster brother and father, it was revealed that Roman was shot and arrested the night of her seventeenth birthday after attempting to beat up the boys who were harassing her. He wrote her letters she never received because her foster family hid them from her.

From there, most of the plot was Isabella fighting her feelings for Roman because of her pain from the last three years and because he has become more violent than she remembered. While waiting for their fake IDs to come through, Roman picked up a match at the local underground ring as a way to make some extra cash. Some men were attending that were from a cartel that Roman had pissed off, which resulted in Isabella almost getting kidnapped.

After attempting to run away, Isabella eventually forgave Roman for putting her endanger and the couple proceeded to buy a van and started living the van life. Under their new false identities of course. There was still a possibility that they were wanted for murder.



🕊️ ➞ Closing Thoughts:

I enjoyed Skin of a Sinner, it was the perfect dark romance to cleanse my palette in between reads. The conflict of wanting and not wanting a Roman Riviera in my life is intensely real. 🤣

If you’ve read Skin of a Sinner, leave a comment with your thoughts! 🖤


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