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Review

“I wanted vengeance. To hurt those bastards for the sheer thrill of it. To laugh in their faces as they bled from their wounds.
Death. Punishment. Bloodshed.
It was all that’d kept me going to eleven months in hell, all I’d cared about.
Until Lucy.”

4.5 dark and brutally intense  stars

Last year, Keri Lake completely blew me away with her dark and dirty novel, Ricochet. Now, she takes us back to that same world in a completely separate, standalone story with Backfire, and she’s managed to take us even deeper into the horrifically violent world that she has created.

Detroit had three layers.
Below the crime-lord, and all the shit people hear on TV, was a world that existed only in nightmares. A place where rules didn’t exist and the people who thrived there were faceless name who ruled themselves in anarchy.
There, the most horrific crimes were bartered for and traded like a Sunday afternoon at Eastern Market.

Jase Hawkins is a product of this world. Raised in brutally horrific circumstances, he and his younger brother survived hell and entered a life of crime in order to make a life for themselves. But when their crimes catch up to them, Jase loses everything in one brutal night and is taken prisoner by Jozef Tesarik, leader of the Slovakian mafia and the most revered crime lord in the city. For 11 long months he languishes in captivity before being freed by a mysterious and wealthy man who commissions him to find and kill the ringleader of an underground torture porn ring – a man who Jase believes is involved with the slaying of his family.

Lucy Novakova lives a quiet life. She is a college student and web designer whose passion is photography – in particular, photographing the decaying urban landscape that is her city. When exploring a run down factory, she inadvertently witnesses men dumping a dismembered body, and when the killers realise that she holds evidence, she becomes a target and her life is turned upside down.

Lucy and Jase cross paths on the periphery of the dark and dirty underworld as his investigation begins. He believes she has knowledge of the world he needs to infiltrate and, desperate for vengeance, he kidnaps her to try and get more information.

Lucy is terrified of the man who has taken her. She wrongly believes that he is part of the torture porn ring that she has recently learned about, and fears for her life. But when he doesn’t touch her or make any moves to hurt her, she starts to wonder who he is and what his real motives are. Add to that the fact that he is darkly sexy and all kinds of intense, and the combination of fear and flat-out attraction appeals to her secret dark side and turns her on like nothing ever has before.

He was dark, threatening, and sexually magnetic, all rolled into one three-dimensional package of fuck me.

Of course Jase is attracted to Lucy, but he’s not the type of man to hurt a woman so he keeps his distance. But as the dynamic between them starts to shift he recognises that not only is she starting to trust him, but that she actually wants him, and that changes everything.

I was addicted to his danger, and holy shit, I had it bad for the ultimate bad boy. More alpha than I probably knew what to do with.

“You like it dirty?” My head jerked back, a sharp sting zapping my scalp where he tugged at my hair. “Because I fuck dirty, Lucy, and I’ll fuck you in every sense of the word.”

I LOVE the interactions between these two! The shifting dynamic is written brilliantly, and you can understand and feel everything that they are feeling. Their unexpected ties to each other add a wonderful intensity to what is happening between them, and it’s a slow and realistic burn as real feelings develop. The sexual tension builds brilliantly, and the fact that they both like things a little darker adds to the overall mood of the story and it’s hot as hell!

Sliding my hand across her throat, I cupped her face, my mouth to her ear. “I need you to know that I don’t hate you, Lucy, but I’m about to fuck you like I do.”

Jase is a destroyed man. Having to survive all that he has has left him cold and closed off. And then he lost everything and become a man driven by his need for vengeance. He doesn’t know what to do with a woman like Lucy or the feelings he is having for her, and his self-hatred and confusion is beautifully explored as he slowly starts to open up to what she is making him feel.

“I’ll be the bastard you need me to be, Lucy. Whatever darkness you crave, I’ll give that to you. But no matter what, you’re still my light.”

I loved the slow build of things between Jase and Lucy. It’s not just about sex, it’s about so much more, and this was surprisingly a beautiful, heart-felt romance.

He turned and stroked his hand down my face. The furrow in his brow deepened as his gaze fell to my lips. “I’ve been trapped in a dark place for so long, but when I’m with you, I feel different. Every day is like fucking chaos inside my head. Constantly pushing me. Driving me to this invisible edge where I’m always wired, ready to jump if I have to. But when I’m with you, it’s quiet. It’s like that edge disappears and I can just enjoy the view for a little while. I can deal with the world again, without all that anger and violence in my head. You’re like a beam of light breaking through, and for the first time, I’m opening my eyes to it.”

But Jase is still a killer, and he never loses sight of his mission, or his need for vengeance. And his investigations take him to some very dark places. I said before that this book is dark, it’s actually almost beyond that. Graphic violence and death, torture, animal cruelty, sexual assault, rape and torture porn all feature heavily in the story, and Lake holds nothing back in getting you right into the feel of her story. It’s like you’re there experiencing it, and it’s brutal and uncomfortable as hell. But it’s so damn addictive, and even at the most gut-wrenching moments, I could not put my kindle down.

The mystery, suspense, action and romance aspects of the story all blend together perfectly, and build to an epic climax which is intense and full of emotion. And seeing it all from the dual perspectives of Jase and Lucy, as well as a few other surprise POVs, gives us a great feel for everything that is going on in the story. I loved the involvement of Jase’s best friend, Dax, and there’s a great lead up to his book up next, which will follow on from this one and promises to be wild and intense and I can’t wait to read it.

Once again Keri Lake has given us a wonderfully engaging story which sucks you into a whole other world, making you feel everything and revel in the brutal underworld that she has created. It’s a book you experience, not just read, and if you’re in the mood for this sort of story, it’s going to blow you away with its dark intensity.

I loved it – 4.5 stars.

Advanced Review Copy generously provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Extras:
Backfire Playlist
Book Trailer

 

The Vigilantes series

 

 

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Giveaways

Prize #1: A $50 Amazon gift card AND a tote filled with Backfire swag!

ENTER HERE

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Prize #2: Leave an honest review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble and enter the form below for a chance to win a SIGNED PAPERBACK COPY OF BACKFIRE (signed by author and cover model, Johnny Kane) to 5 readers who submit a review*

*You must submit review link in the Google doc. Winners will be randomly drawn from the Google doc list.

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About the Author

Keri Lake is a married mother of two living in Michigan. By day, she tries to make use of the degrees she’s earned in science. By night, she writes dark contemporary and paranormal romance. Though novels tend to be her focus, she also writes short stories and flash fiction on the many occasions when distraction sucks her in to the Land of Shiny Things.

She loves hearing from readers.

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