Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I feel that I need to preface my review by saying that I LOVED LJ Shen's previous two books SPARROW and BLOOD TO DUST, with the latter being one of my top reads of 2016. So you can imagine my surprise when I started VICIOUS - I was absolutely disappointed and had to keep checking that this was indeed the same author of the previous stellar books. This story was snooze worthy and bored me to tears!!! - Boredom crept in at the 30% mark where I started to skim the book; by the 68% mark (to which I skimmed to), I gave up as I didn't want to waste any more time reading this book. Sorry, but there are WAY better books than this out there that I can easily lose myself in. Vicious was an absolute douche, and that is putting it nicely!!! He was immature, a bully, nasty, and evil with a heart of stone, and try as I might, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be near him especially the heroine Emilia, who had been in love with him since high school. And the way he treated Emilia and his condescending "term of endearment" for her made me sick to my stomach. He claimed to be "in love" with her ever since he saw her but I didn't find that believable with the way he treated her. There was NOTHING hero worthy about Vicious. NOTHING. ZERO. ZILCH.! And Emilia was a spineless and weak heroine! I wanted to slap some sense into her. After the way Vicious had treated her, both in the past and in the present, she still happily agreed to be used by him in his revenge plan against this stepmum. I just couldn't comprehend her fascination for this excuse of a man. I have never hated a hero and heroine as much as I have with these two! There was zero chemistry and even the sexy times between them left a sour taste in my mouth. I am hesitant as to whether I want to read the future books in this series. I am not willing to lose time and money on another letdown of a book. 1.5 "I want a refund" stars!!!!!!!