L.J. Shen

Scandalous

Levi-Mae 

“Well, Mrs. Soon-to-Be Rexroth, if you want to be strong—be.”

Instead, she arches one eyebrow, opens her lips, and lets the words fall out, awarding her father with the best present he could ever have. “Say yes.”

“I love you,” he said, cupping my neck from both sides and shaking his head in exasperation, like this was a mistake. Like he shouldn’t be loving me, but had no other choice. My heart swelled. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Edie Van Der Zee, I don’t know where I end and where you begin anymore. I love you despite knowing that it is crazy. That our situations are disastrous. I love you knowing that you should have at least a few more experiences before you find the love. I love you even though we’re not at the same place in life, have nothing in common, and started off so fucking bad. And still, I love you.”

“How could I?” I moaned into his lips. “How could I when you’re my ocean.”

‘I wanted to scream, and shout, and curse, and fuck her despite all of this shit. To make her see how not over we were, how we were only just beginning, how I was losing my mind over her. I wanted to show her how I loved the fuck out of her body and hated that we were wrong. Deeply, crazily, absurdly wrong for each other.’

 “How do you know?” I hated myself for asking. It shouldn’t have mattered to me. He needed to focus on his family. Sonya looked up at me. 

“Because, Edie, he is in love with you.”

‘Like they could touch what Edie had managed to somehow clutch and squeeze and fuck so raw I no longer felt like any of my inner organs were mine anymore.’

‘Even if I never looked at her when she was noticing, I did look. She was my fuel for the rest of the day. She was what kept me going.‘

‘That night, I watched Edie for far too long. That night, I’d changed. That night, I didn’t take anything from Edie Van Der Zee. For the first time in years—I gave something of myself. Worst part? I’d never be able to retrieve it. It was hers. Forever.’

“I’m staying.” I brushed off her nervousness. Not because it was the humane thing to do—because fuck humane —but because she was there alone, and I selfishly wanted her with me. No matter how. Even like this.

“You really shouldn’t.” She let go of the damp collar of her shirt, biting her lip now. 

‘I wanted to suck her pain away and make it my own.‘

‘God, she was perfect, even in her vintage baby blue Alice in Wonderland dress and yellow cardigan. No wonder Vicious was so infatuated with her.‘

“No. You’re my Delilah, Edie, and I’m your Samson. You want to ruin me, destroy me, strip me of my power, and betray me. I should stay away from you, but I want you too fucking much. And when it’s all over, when all that’s left of us is sweaty flesh and shattered minds and torn hearts, you will remember me as the man who made you cry, and I’ll remember you as the girl I had to break to stay afloat.”

‘Edie stood up, and Luna was wrapped around her like she was her child. And it broke me. And made me happy. And sad. And so, so fucked.‘

‘Edie Van Der Zee was starting to look a lot like the death of me, and yet here I was, coming back for more and more of her poison. Addicted like a crackhead.’

‘I gravitated toward him like he was the sun. A beautiful pleasure conceived by nature that could very well kill you if you got too close. He looked at me like I was the moon. Pale and lonely and so far away.‘

“And please, before you say anything, never underestimate a broken person. We’re unpredictable, because once you’re broken—what’s one more crack?”

“You’re mine, and you hate it. You’re mine, and I’m not a wave you can ride. I’m the fucking ocean. And every single day when you pull shit like stealing my iPad or my old phone or the fucking trash I keep in my glove compartment, you’re falling deeper. Tell me, Van Der Zee, do I make it hard for you to breathe?”

‘I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to stay away from the sun. I simply wanted to...be.‘

 “Are you complaining, Miss Van Der Zee?”

Nah. This book deserves to be erased from everyone’s mind. They’re great parents in Luna’s book. But their book is shit ty. 

Keira 💫

Le tome 3 de la série SINNERS. L’interdit n’a jamais été aussi irrésistible. Trent Rexroth. Insensible, froid et calculateur. Et c’est l’homme qui va me briser le cœur. Il a trente-trois ans. Moi, dix-huit. Autant dire qu’à ses yeux je ne suis qu’une gamine. Pire, l’enfant gâtée de son ennemi juré, celui qu’il rêve de faire tomber. Je ne me fais donc aucune illusion : si aujourd’hui Trent s’intéresse à moi, c’est uniquement pour parvenir à ses fins. Alors oui, si j’étais raisonnable, si je voulais éviter un scandale à ma famille, je garderais mes distances. Mais ce n’est pas le cas. Malheureusement pour moi, l’interdit ne m’a jamais semblé aussi irrésistible. A propos de l'auteur L.J. Shen s’est imposée dès son tout premier roman comme une voix incontournable de la romance New Adult – un succès confirmé dès la parution de Vicious qui s’est immédiatement hissé en tête de tous les palmarès de vente. Quand elle n’écrit pas, L.J. Shen est une véritable badass (comprendre qu’elle aime passer du temps avec sa famille et ses amis dans sa Californie d’adoption, regarder ses séries préférées ou lire un bon livre).

après Vicious et Devious, découvrez la suite de LA série New Adult 2018

Sven Test

3.5. I lowered half a star during this re-read. I enjoyed it a lot, but realized I didn't care as much.

Aditi

I liked the parts with Luna. She might be my favorite kid in this series.

This is my least favorite of the series because I just didn't like their story as much but I did love luna and I sooo wanted to hear her talk. I'll read her book when I think I'm ready to start to next series because I'm not ready yet I know a lot goes down in that book.

allie

5/5★
↓
Pues me ha gustado mucho la historia de Edie y Trent.
Esta novela es el tercer libro de la serie 'Sinners of Saint'. 

Los protagonistas me han gustado mucho. Mucho más Edie que Trent. Edie me ha parecido un personaje increíble. Tiene una historia dura, muy dura y difícil que a día de hoy le sigue afectando. Se me ha roto el corazón leyendo todo lo que ha sufrido y sigue sufriendo. Me ha gustado mucho su personalidad. Es una chica fuerte, amable, divertida y que lucha con todas sus fuerzas por la gente que quiere. Eso me ha encantado. Su personaje me ha conquistado.
Por otra parte, quizá Trent me ha gustado menos, pero no quiere decir que no me haya gustado. Creo que también ha sido un personaje interesante. También ha tenido un pasado difícil y a día de hoy lidia con algunos problemas.

Edie y Trent no tienen nada en común. Son dos personas súper diferentes, pero se complementan muy bien. Tienen una relación diferente, complicada pero que a ellos les hace felices. Les da igual lo que opine la gente. Ellos saben lo que tienen, lo que verdaderamente importante y ha sido genial.

Me ha encantado que aparecieran los protagonistas de los anteriores libros. También disfruté mucho con esos libros y reencontrarse con ellos ha sido estupendo. 

'Scandalous' es una historia increíblemente adicto, que engancha desde el primer momento y no puedes parar de leer. Es una historia divertida, entretenida y muy sexy. Una historia que va más allá de una historia de amor. Es una historia de superación y valentía y ha sido muy muy guay. He disfrutado mucho con esta lectura.

Nedu

2 stars mainly for the take down of Jordan (still meh but I will take what I can get)

Mikayla

Let me start by saying this book was not great. 

There were some comments made by Trent that made me uncomfortable. 
“She looked so much like a kid I wanted to punch myself in the balls for imagining her,” and again at
“Edie’s legs were still curve-less, two straight toothpicks. Not very different from Luna’s.” 

Now, who would imagine or compare a woman you’re interested in to your daughter like that. This book didn’t do the age gap trope justice unlike, ‘Birthday Girl,’ which I enjoyed and rated 5 stars. This on the other hand, is getting two stars with uncomfortable comments and that the romance was extremely boring in my opinion. Yes, there were some genuine moments and there was somewhat of a good connection but I didn’t feel the chemistry. 

Usually I don’t do long reviews unless I have lots of thoughts or if I hate / love it but this one needed some type of a review with how bad it was.

Kendra Negron

She's done it again *slow clap*. I think we can all agree that the love angst and overcoming a villainous foe usually make up a decent L.J Shen book. It was good. Not amazing but a good read.

Also can everyone try to remember that books are just that, books. They do not always, especially in fiction, portray the authors ideologies or morals. If the subject matter is triggering to you seek out those trigger warning before reading rather than trashing the book for not meeting your moral compass.

Nia Kharebashvili 

”...And it was funny, how people viewed Edie as the kid because of her age, when she’d been nothing but a lioness throughout her short life.”


So yeah, a big hug to Edie and Luna. A big punch and a ‘fuck you’ to Trent. 

I don’t know what is it with LJ Shen going on extreme lengths and dropping unsettling scenes in every book I’ve read by her(It wasn’t even about the huge age gap. Edie was a grown up in many ways and that mostly prevented me from dwelling on the fact that she was actually 15 years younger). I brushed it off in ‘Vicious’ because Vicious was a psychotic egomaniac and that kind of behavior wasn’t out of his character. I brushed it off in ‘Ruckus’ because Dean warned Rosie to back off unless she was 100% certain and she still gave him the green light. But I can’t, for the love of me, brush off the scene in this book with Edie finding Trent and Sonya in Trent’s office! 
Was that supposed to be hot?! Was that supposed to be arousing?! I don’t know about you but it was outright disgusting and creepy. Not to mention manipulative. Based solely on Trent’s selfish and absurd deal that made no sense at all!!!! 

I loved Edie! She may be the best SOS female protagonist. Nothing about her said ‘teenager’ because she was—unsolicitedly of course—way too mature for her age and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. I loved her devotion to Theo, her relationship with Luna and her friendship with Bane which really was goalz.
Trent, on the other hand, was just a pissed of, bitter and possessive asshole who didn’t really put any proper effort in bonding with her daughter and was sort of competing with Edie for no reason at all. What really surprised me was that I thought he was worse than Vicious. 

The best thing in this book was the relationships but not the one between Trent and Edie. 

I’m getting tired of the unchanging dynamic that keeps coming back again and again in this series. And I feel like—depending on what I’ve heard—it’ll happen again in ‘Angry God.’
I will read All Saints High, though. Only because I wanna know Luna and Knight’s story. I’ll decide about Vaughn after I’ll have finished the book. But I don’t really give a damn about Daria.

celeste

3.5 stars. i have mixed feelings because this was my favorite l.j. shen book i've read so far and i'd been highly anticipating this one ever since trent's introduction in defy, but still i had a lot of problems with it.

i don't know how to explain it but i just couldn't feel the love the characters supposedly had for each other. i felt like the relationship was mostly physical and sexual than emotional. that doesn't mean that their relationship did not develop, because it did, they ended up leaning on each other more and depend on each other more especially with their family issues, but i never felt like that emotional connection was conveyed very well in the book. only in the end did they even acknowledge that they 'love each other' and i just couldn't believe it because throughout the book all they did was get physical with each other and never once did they discuss their feelings whatsoever. personally, i did not buy into the whole 'she's in my blood, he's my ocean' thing, i just couldn't help but cringe and just go like 'sure, jan' on them. 

i also thought we were gonna get more of trent dealing with his own daughter and the focus would be on those two characters but instead i feel like edie interacted more with luna than trent himself -her own father- which was kinda disappointing since i was really looking forward to seeing more of that father/daughter relationship, and even more of a development when it came to that topic. 

i really liked edie and i think she's my favorite heroine out of all of shen's books i've read since she was the one that actually had somewhat of a personality and wasn't just a carbon copy of emilia leblanc, so that's a positive i guess. and when it comes to trent....oof do i have some mixed feelings. he was always the most intriguing to me out of the four hotholes, but i couldn't connect at all with his character when all he did was put up this impersonal and cold persona. when he was with edie i just couldn't feel anything at all because all their scenes, regardless of how close and physical they were, they felt cold and detached, because trent acted that way. he didn't even kiss her throughout the damn book!!! how am i supposed to root for them when i can't help but feel sorry for edie for the way she was treated, like some detached, random hookup. i don't know, again this is how i personally felt about trent's behavior towards edie. maybe it's just me that felt uncomfortable for edie but i just couldn't get on board with that.

They call him The Mute for a reason. Hard, cold and calculated, he rarely speaks. When he does, it's with disdain. When he does, his words aren't meant for me. When he does, my stomach flips and my world tilts on its axis. He is thirty-three. I am eighteen. He's a single dad and my father's business partner. I'm just a kid to him and his enemy's daughter. He's emotionally unavailable. And I am...feeling. Feeling things I shouldn't feel for him. Trent Rexroth is going to break my heart. The writing isn't just on the wall, it's inked on my soul. And yet, I can't stay away. A scandal is the last thing my family needs. But a scandal is what we're going to give them. And oh, what beautiful chaos it will be.

Danielle

Guys, when I tell you L.J Shen has worked her magic once again!!

Lani 

5 Stars!!!! 
I fell in love with this book ... definitely my favourte out of the series so far

Scandalous

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