Review: Worked for me despite the insta-love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 3, 2014
There seems to be a lot of mixed reviews for Love The Sinner and while it's not without its faults it worked for me so Yay. The story immediately piqued my interest with its premise; that of a notorious gang leader and a NYPD detective getting together. Talk about your forbidden love, how the hell is this relationship ever going to get a HEA? I'm also a bit of a sucker when it comes to the gay-for-you romances and `Gabe' as our cop hero has never even looked at another man "like that" let alone one of his collars. Their first meeting in the interrogation room is all kinds of hot, these polar opposites have sparks and chemistry literally jumping off the pages and I was excited to see where this attraction would go.Unfortunately that's where Ashton missed the mark a fantastic opportunity because instead of drawing out this delicious spark our boys get very familiar very fast. Too fast. She pulls the insta-love card, so that by chapter 2 our straight cop and his Latin lover have not only got it on but are falling in love too. What?!As well as being a wasted opportunity I had a tough time believing that a man who has never even thought about gay sex would suddenly be up for... anything. Wouldn't he be weirded out a bit at first and need to take things slowly? I mean his world has just imploded. Yeah their first rough kiss is smoking hot but some pages of foreplay before they humped each other would have been a good idea too. On that note the sex scenes are steamy and plentiful.There were also moments when both men got a little too bitchy for the tough guys they were meant too be, a few too many tears, emotion and waxing poetic while they were establishing their relationship I sometimes felt like I was reading about girls not cops and gang leaders but whatever.I did like this book though, the writing is good (there was editing) and I enjoyed the plot even if it wasn't that deep. There are some decent action scenes and the ever present forbidden love aspect carried through. I wasn't sure how our couple was going to be able to have a future together and enjoyed how Ashton pulled that together even if the last pages were a little sweet for my taste, it still made me smile.Detective Gabriel Ashby is straight. But his whole world is about to get rocked when he steps into the interrogation room and locks eyes on Angelo Pagen, one of NYPD's most wanted and leader of the infamous Los Pescadores gang. There is no explanation for the sudden intense attraction he feels for this criminal staring back at him, taunting him and ultimately haunting his dreams. Living on two different sides of the law this attraction spells suicide for both men. When they meet again it's during a police raid, Gabe is going to take down his target and send him to jail for a long time and that's when Angelo locks eyes with the Cop from across the warehouse and shoots him. Which I suppose is one way to start up an illicit affair.