Between stalking her, breaking into her house, making her stitch him up when he’s been low-key (I say low-key because it wasn’t fully intentional) stabbed, drawing the wrath of all the mean girls to her, and a million other things that are absolutely insane they keep getting drawn together by a sort of unhealthy possessiveness & obsession.

Lenora swears she won’t let Vaughn rattle her even as he makes it his mission to make her life a living hell. Neither of them are the same, both darker and damaged by their teenage years. A 13-year-old Vaughn breaks into Lenora’s room, darkly threatening her if she breathes a word of what she saw.įive years later, they haven’t seen each other since that night, Lenora’s mom has died, her father and sister have moved to the US to they very place where Vaughn attends high school, and prior to her senior year they convince her to join them. It then continued to them both attending a summer art program at Lenora’s father’s academy in London when they were preteens and Lenora witnesses Vaughn in a compromising position. The book starts with the history of Vaughn and Lenora’s relationship which began on a family trip where he killed jellyfish and they bonded over a brownie. I knew from Pretty Reckless and Broken Knight that Vaughn had issues that were borderline sociopathic (all of the main characters in the previous books comment on his weird habits and lack of emotions) but nothing prepared me for his almost psychotic behavior. Man this book was a wild ride from start to finish.

Lenora astalis