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Review

6 stars!

GAH! THIS BOOK IS PURE AND ABSOLUTE, DEX FORAY PERFECTION!!!

Is there anything better than a book written in the long-awaited POV of one of your favourite characters?… probably… but probably not much! Being inside of Dex’s head is a dark, dirty, nasty, smutty place to be. And I loved every minute of it!! And with a start like this – “Hey Dex. Way to fuck my girlfriend, you dick!” – I knew I was on to a winner!

Dex Foray is a complex, fucked up, arrogant yet vulnerable guy. He knows it, and he makes no apologies for it.

“With one hand she popped the button on my pants. She dropped to her knees. I got hard instantly, knowing what was coming next.
Me.”

I have loved Dex from the very beginning of the Experiment in Terror series, and as frustrated as I have sometimes been with him while reading, I’ve been tempted sooooo many times to sneak a peak at this book to see WTF is going through his head, but I’m so, so glad that I waited and read it in the order that Karina Halle intended. It all ties together beautifully, and would have ruined earlier books in the series if I had Dex’s POV before now. So heed my warning if you’re intended to cheat and peek ahead!!!

And with this novella it’s like Karina took almost every scene that I have loved and hated the most, the ones where I needed to know what was going through Dex’s mind, and given them to me, from his POV, all wrapped up in his snarky, sarcastic vulnerability, in one little book of absolute perfection. And with the inclusion of a bit of his backstory before he even met Perry, I feel like I ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND HIM NOW!! All of it! All of the questions that I had, the times I hated the things he said and did… I understand his motivations, why he behaved like he did, and I have a whole new level of love and admiration for him now – even though my heart absolutely broke for him.

While I thought I knew his feelings towards Perry, finding out the depth of his emotion, and when it all started to happen for him really surprised me. I’m not going to give spoilers, but let me just tell you this book rocked my understanding of what I thought was going on. Some of my expectations and interpretations have been turned on their head a bit, but I love it! And I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him, but OMG, so much SWOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!

“She was mine. For the sake of appearances, she was my wife, but she was mine anyway. She didn’t know it yet, but I did. It was wrong and it made no sense, but she belonged with me. No one else, not anyone else.”

But Dex is still very much Dex, and he’s freaking hilarious! I was in hysterics so many times reading this book with so many classic Dex lines (see my quotes below). And even with everything he goes through, he still maintains this smooth, pervy, asshole-ish nature, yet he also has a beautifully caring and protective side to him, and it’s a winning combination.

But this book is quite dark in places and is not always an easy read. Dex’s background is truly tragic, and how this translates into his life as an adult is heartbreaking. The way he thinks about himself and why he acts as he does, all ties in to everything he has been through. And when you put this together with the things that he and Perry have been exposed to so far in the series, the way they have come to feel about each other, and how everything has played out up until this point… it’s freaking BRUTAL! I honestly felt like I was the one going through it all while I read. And even knowing what was coming, it still tore my heart out.

But after the last book – On Demon Wings – and now the little glimpse beyond that ending that we were given at the end of this book, I feel like the series is taking a shift with Dex and Perry emerging from their individual dark times tougher and stronger, and both are destined for better things (I hope!). With a few additional clues dropped into this book about bigger storylines in the series, I can’t wait to see what is in store for them as their stories continue.

It made me laugh, it made me cry, there were moments of hotness and heaps of swoon… and of course it was all Dex. No way is 5 stars enough for all of the awesome that is this book, 6 stars all the way!

And just on a side note – my status as a Quote Whore has been well established amongst my friends and I know I’m probably going to be teased mercilessly for this lot, but I figured you can never have enough Dex quotes, so I totally don’t care! I think I may have highlighted half of the book on my kindle, so consider yourselves lucky I reined it in 😉