Blog Tour - Review + Excerpt: Bane, L. J. Shen
Bane, the highly-anticipated next standalone in the Sinners of Saint Series by L.J. Shen is LIVE
Bane
Naked surfer. Habitual pothead. A con, a liar, a thief and a fraud.
Last I heard, he was extorting the rich and screwing their wives for a living.
Which is why I’m more than a little surprised to find him at my threshold, looking for my friendship, my services, and most puzzling of all—looking humbled.
Thing is, I’m on a boycott. Literally—I cut boys from my life. Permanently.
Problem is, Bane is not a boy, he is all man, and I’m falling, crashing, drowning in his sweet, perfect lies.
Jesse Carter
Hot as hell, cold as ice.
I wasn’t aware of her existence until a fat, juicy deal landed in my lap.
She’s a part of it, a little plaything to kill some time.
She is collateral, a means to an end, and a side-bonus for striking a deal with her oil tycoon stepdad.
More than anything, Jesse Carter is a tough nut to crack.
Little does she know, I have the f****** teeth for it.
Review
I'm learning that no one can write an antihero quite like L. J. Shen does. And boy Bane was a pretty freaking special kind of man! There is so much shadiness and bad stuff in his life, past, present, future?? He had been dealt a shitty hand while growing up and he made the most of himself with what he could, no matter how wrong it was. He made a name for himself doing every shady business there is, his reputation preceded him... Everyone in town knew who he was and what he did. And some knew just what cards to play to get what they wanted...
Bane has a new plan in motion, but in order to achieve that plan, he needs financial help. He gets it, but he also gets more than he bargained for. The deal is $6mil for 6 months to get the girl out of her shell.
The girl, you may ask? Jesse Carter. The girl with the Pushkin tattoo he had seen a couple years earlier and wanted for himself, except then she had been someone else's.
Now, she is a shell of the girl she had been then. Now, she was the Untouchable. All due to the incident, a horrendous night at the hand of her boyfriend and a couple of friends. Since then, Jesse would barely leave the house, the only friends she had were her dog and her elderly neighbor who suffered Alzheimer's. Jesse was alone in the world. Her mother, if you could call her that, had made that night worse and was hiding more secrets than a vault.
My first thought seeing her was that she was nowhere near Quasimodo-ugly. She was beautiful, and that was the understatement of the fucking century. The second thought was that I’d already seen her. I didn’t need her to gather those inky strands of hair up to see the Pushkin tattoo. A girl like that, you don’t forget. It was years ago, on the beach, but I remember how carnal the need to conquer her had been.
Come in Bane... and in just a few encounters, the old Jesse starts coming back. She had only been waiting for someone who would make her see the good of the world again, for someone to show her they truly cared.
Everything is going as planned except the fact that they both fall in love and for Bane, loving and having Jesse in that sense is breaking the contract. When he makes the right decision and calls off the contract, he sees just how he has been played and in how much sh*t he is. And even though, he's willing to lose everything he has to have Jesse, he had no idea how this one thing would snowball into so many more and all the hidden secrets would come out. Which is just blow after blow after blow for Jesse...when all the hidden memories and secrets resurface...and while now she knows all the truth involving Bane, the princess saves herself in this one and that will only happen with time. Time Bane needs to give her.
Want to know how Roman and Jesse's story ends? Go 1-click this book and read, read, read.
It's a pretty epic story with so many twists and turns that will have you reeling, and secrets coming out of the wood works left and right that will leave you breathless and the best part of it all? Watching Bane fall in love and be in love. I loved watching Jesse change him, even if it were small changes here and there. These two are so worth a read. Two outcasts who have been dealt very sh*tty hands and thrown together under false pretenses but turn it all around and make it all bearable it in each other's arms.
“Does she need you?” The third question left me unprepared. Did Snowflake need me? Was it fucked-up to think that she did? Because she definitely needed someone. I didn’t think I was the best choice she had, but I sure as hell was the only thing available currently. “She needs me.” I didn’t just say the words. I felt them. They crushed into my chest. Because I needed her, too.
Note: This book is a standalone. You do not have to read the other books in the series to read this one. There are a couple mentions to characters in previous books but no mention of anything important you needed to know from the other books. I have only read the first book in the series before I read this one and it was completely fine. Of course,I'm dying to read the rest of the series even more now but I was already planning to anyway eheh. I'm so curious to read Trent's book though, ah!
Rate: 4,7 / 5 stars
EXCERPT
BaneThen.
A liar.
A con.
A godless thief.
My reputation was a big wave that I rode, one that swallowed everyone around me, drowning every attempt to fuck with what’s mine.
I’d been known as a stoner, but power was my real drug of choice. Money meant nothing. It was tangible, and therefore easy to lose. See, to me, people were a game. One I’d always known how to win.
Move the rooks around.
Change the queen when necessary.
Guard the king at all fucking times.
I was never distracted, never deterred, and never jealous.
So, imagine my surprise when I found myself being all three at once.
It was a siren with coal black hair who robbed me of riding the biggest wave I’d seen that summer. Of my precious attention. Of my goddamn breath.
She glided from the ocean to the beach like nightfall.
I crouched down, straddling my surfboard, gawking.
Edie and Beck stopped beside me, floating on their boards in my periphery.
“This one’s taken by Emery Wallace,” Edie had warned. Thief.
“This one’s the hottest masterpiece in town.” Beck had chuckled. Con.
“More importantly, she only dates rich bastards.” Liar.
I had all the ingredients to pull her in.
Her body was a patch of fresh snow. White, fair, like the sun shone through her, never quite soaking in. Her skin defied nature, her ass defied my sanity, but it was the words on her back that made my logic rebel.
It wasn’t her curves or the way she swayed her hips like a dangling, poisonous apple that warranted my reaction to her.
It was that tattoo I had noticed when she swam close to me earlier, the words trickling down the nape of her neck and back in a straight arrow.
My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You
Pushkin.
I only knew one person who went gaga over the Russian poet, and, like the famous Alexander, he was currently six feet under.
My friends began to paddle back to shore. I couldn’t move. It felt like my balls were ten tons heavy. I didn’t believe in love at first sight. Lust, maybe, but even that wasn’t the word I was looking for. No. This girl fucking intrigued me.
“What’s her name?” I snatched Beck’s ankle, yanking him back to me. Edie stopped pedaling and looked back, her gaze ping-ponging between us.
“Doesn’t matter, bro.”
“What’s. Her. Name?” I repeated through a locked jaw.
“Dude, she’s, like, way young.”
“I will not repeat myself a third time.”
Beck’s throat bobbed with a swallow. He knew damn well that I didn’t mess around. If she was legal—it was on.
“Jesse Carter.”
Jesse Carter was going to be mine before she even knew me.
Before I even knew her.
Before her life turned upside down and her fate rewrote itself with her blood.
So here was the truth that even my lying ass wouldn’t admit later on in our story—I wanted her before.
Before she became business.
Before the truth caged her in.
Before the secrets gushed out.
I never did get to surf that day.
My surfboard broke.
Should have known it was an omen.
My heart was going to be next in line.
And for a small chick, she did one hell of a fucking job obliterating it.
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About LJ Shen
L.J. Shen is an International #1 best-selling author of Contemporary Romance and New Adult novels. She lives in Northern California with her husband, young son and chubby cat.Before she’d settled down, L.J. (who thinks referring to herself in the third person is really silly, by the way) traveled the world, and collected friends from all across the globe. Friends who’d be happy to report that she is a rubbish companion, always forgets peoples’ birthdays and never sends Christmas cards.
She enjoys the simple things in life, like spending time with her family and friends, reading, HBO, Netflix and internet-stalking Stephen James. She reads between three to five books a week and firmly believes Crocs shoes and mullets should be outlawed.
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