Author: Skye Warren
Series: Masterpiece Duet #1
Release Date: June 27, 2017
My Rating: 4.5 STARS
The highest stakes...
My father gambles every night, falling deeper and deeper into debt. And when he's lost everything, he places a new bet--his daughter. I'm his entry bet to the biggest underground poker game.
The players are politicians and mafia men, every kind of danger around a velvet-covered table. But it's only one man who makes me shake.
The man I once thought I loved.
The man who betrayed me.
His eyes meet mine with dark promise. And when he puts down his money, I know I'm going to lose more than my body. I'm going to lose everything.
Dark. Gritty. Raw. That is this book. Damon Scott is the bad man. Not to be confused with bad boy. He's bad, but his father is worse. A monster. And the only light that Damon ever had in his life was Penny. She was a glimmer of hope in a bleak, abusive world. A world that has the potential to ruin, just like Damon could ruin Penny, but only after she's already suffered a fate that could be categorized as worse than death, and come back from it.
THE KING is a push and pull of ruin. One minute I was aching for Penny, the next Damon, and back and forth, and back and forth like a ping pong match with no favorable odds of anyone winning. I'm left flummoxed. I don't know if these two shattered souls can fix each other, or if they can fix themselves, but one thing Skye Warren is incredibly gifted at is showing the reader the hope in a truly irreparably broken person. And she's most certainly laid the ground work for Damon and Penny to come out on the other side of this with their sanity somewhat intact, and their hearts full of the only kind of love they can give. It won't be perfect, it won't be pretty, but it will be hauntingly beautiful and very much them.
This book is one of those books that left me feeling off-kilter. Not in a bad way, just in a, I need Penny and Damon to find some independent and coupled closure, and just be at peace. A peace neither of them have ever quite felt, but I think they're finding it in one another. And I hope they take it full force and build an impenetrable castle so the ugly can no longer get in. THE KING consumed my thoughts, pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I call that a marker of a well-written and well-orchestrated book. So I can confidently say I absolutely suggest this book, though I do suggest reading the ENDGAME series first, even though it's not required as this is the beginning of Penny and Damon's story.
Happy Reading!
*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review*
(click the cover for buy links)
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