Dark Little Game (Crimson College #1)

Continuing on a TBR/Beat-The-Backlog kick (and ignoring my ARCs kick). Here's "Dark Little Game" by Raleigh Reubins. It's the first novel in the Crimson College series. 

["I’m pulled too deep into a monster’s web.

Hunter Knox shouldn’t be at my college.

My best friend’s brother is unhinged. Dark. Violent.

And now he’s in our secret society frat, forced to share my room.

I only kiss him on the first night to get revenge, because Hunter doesn’t usually kiss men, and I don’t usually kiss psychopaths.

But the spark that flares between us becomes a forbidden game we play.

Hunter starts to follow me around like a stalker.

Becoming a little too obsessed with me.

We share an all-consuming secret that his brother can’t find out. And when I’m attacked, Hunter snaps into chaos, hell-bent on protecting me like I’m his possession.

Onyx Society is a fraternity that shouldn’t have to play by college rules, but someone from the outside is targeting us.

Targeting me.

Now nothing is safe. My best friendship, my sanity, and my heart.

Lines blur between desire and control… and I start to think I might want him to win this brutal game."]

To be honest, after I started this book, I wasn't so sure. It seemed perfectly cliched based on the blurb; it was much less cliched in the actual book. It threw me, only because I went in with a certain mindset. But the fact that it wasn't cliched was refreshing. 

They were both hit-first-ask-questions-later, they were both slightly (or not so slightly) broken, they were both jealous of the other, they both hated each other, they were both pining, they were both in utter denial. It was frustrating that they didn't communicate, but their subtle (or not so subtle) dedication to each other was, quite frankly, adorable. 

Trigger Warnings: protection in the form of stalking, violence, sadism, sedation of a main character, past abuse, references to past trauma involving parental abuse, references to past death of a family member, and more.

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