Book Title: Flawed
Author: Francette Phal
Series: Butcher #1
Genres: Dark, Erotica, Contemporary, Romance, BDSM
My Rating: ★★★★★ 5 Stars!
"You are this beautiful thing I want to destroy."
Blood. That's the only memory he carries from a childhood he does not remember. And now it is all he knows. Blood is his life.
Knox Bishop has done a lot of horrible things, all at the command of the man who holds his leash. It's a matter of loyalty for him. Allegiance to the man who saved his life when he was a child. So he goes where he is needed and does what he is told. He tortures. He kills. He kills. He tortures. It is an unrelenting cycle that he constantly craves and can never quite satisfy.
Until her.
Eighteen year old Lacey Barnes distributes her assets to fund her dreams. Medical school is the end game and she is determined to get there by any means necessary. But a family member's careless mistake derails her plans and now she must pay a price in order to save him.
She goes to Knox willingly offering him the only valuable thing she has. Herself. In doing so he allows her into his world, a world she quickly realizes is void of any light and hope for escape is utterly elusive. But escape is something she finds that she no longer wants.
"He lays a path of pleasure laced agony for me to follow and I do. Stupidly I follow him down the blinding darkness of his euphoric hell."
MY THOUGHTS:
One thing I learned from Flawed: Never read a book this fucking awesome if the second book isn't out yet! But, hell,
I was so engaged in reading this that I couldn't even blink much less breathe for a second. It's raw and gritty and dark throughout the book! The hero and heroine are so messed up and flawed and I was invested in them!
Lacey isn't your average heroine. At eighteen years old, she's already been through hell. Having a mother who's addicted to drugs and a brother who does nothing but fuck up, her life is pretty much messed up. She sells herself no matter how much she abhors it, but sex is her job, the only way she knows how to live and achieve her goals. And her family and her dreams are at the top of her priorities. At some point, things in her life seem to turn much worse when she learns that her brother owes a huge debt to those who work for the Khitrova family, in which she then meets the dark and brooding Knox Bishop, where she offers herself to pay off her brother's debt.
He's immense, intense, and lethal. His eyes... God, his eyes are the most frightening and beautiful thing I've ever seen. There is no escaping them. No escaping him.
Knox is someone you would dare not cross path with. Working for the Khitrova family, he kills for a living without remorse and tortures the victims he prey on. He is every bit fucked up, a psychopath who craves putting his knife on someone else's body and ripping their organs out until there's nothing left. The constant hunger to kill someone has consumed his entire being, until he meets Lacey Barnes, sister of the man who owes a huge debt to the Khitrova family. One look at her and he decides that he wants her, and plans to have her no matter the consequences.
It would be smart of me to live her alone. Her brother will live to see another day. But her...
I release a sharp breath and jam my fingers through my damp hair. And then I smirk. Her fate has been decided. She will not be so lucky. Not this time.
To be honest, it was kind of scary to be in Knox's head. You will see in his perspectives just how fucked up of a man he was. He's definitely an anti hero, but there is something in him that just basically draws me in, and I hate to love this man despite his flaws. When Lacey comes to him to offer herself to pay off her brother's debt, I was screaming at her and telling her to run and never look back! But another part of my messed up mind wants her to go to him.
These two are so complex and flawed that you will deeply feel the depths their characters. I love Lacey's strength. She may not have the easiest life, but she's a survivor and I adore her for it. It surprised me to know at first that she's only eighteen. I mean, aren't eighteen-year-olds supposed to have sleepovers and pajama parties at night? Not have a guy on top of you grunting his own pleasure in a cheap motel? But, as I said, Lacey isn't your average heroine. And that makes me love her even more.
Knox, as Lacey has described, is dark, lethal and intense. He's thirty-two or thirty-three years old, years older than our heroine. He stalks and follows Lacey, desperate to know everything about her as if she was his next target. I just love his stalkerish behavior. Sometimes, it bordered on obsession. He was very possessive too, seeing red when a guy friend touches Lacey in school, or threatening a maniac teacher who harassed her. No matter how scary it was to be in his head, I love it just as equally. The things Knox did in this book were beyond horrifying. It was gut-wrenching that I'm surprised I did not puke my guts out. If you do not know what Sadomasochism is, I think Knox and Lacey's relationship is one to describe it. Knox is a sadist, and Lacey was his equal: the lightness to his dark, this beautiful willing thing he wanted to destroy.
She's a part of me now, her touch, her smell, every single beat of her heart, and all that she is has been permanently etched within the dark recess of my soul. Everything I do now is for her, to protect her.
She is the only one that sustains me. The only person in this world I cannot do without. She is the one person I will not share. She is mine.
One of the things I loved about this book was that the author did not hold back anything. The scenes were dark and intense all the way, which ends in a major cliff hanger, leaving us in a state of desperation thinking what's about to happen next. I hope the next book will be due soon. I don't think I will be sleeping soundly tonight, or the many days that will follow, for that matter. *sighs* Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. But beware: some scenes contain explicit descriptions of non-consensual sex, S&M, degradation, human-trafficking and graphic violence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Francette lives in Massachusetts with her amazingly supportive husband of ten years and her darling two year old son. Reading amazing books has led her to writing and she's dabbled in fan-fiction before self-publishing her own works. She's constantly thinking up new stories to write and does her best work when music is playing in the background. Romance is where she's most comfortable but she hopes to one day venture in mystery novels. She has a weakness for coffee ice cream, tropical fruits and a good glass of wine.
STALK FRANCETTE PHAL:
