ARC Review: The Sinner by Emma Scott (+ Aesthetics and Teasers)

I’m back with a review for yet another wonderful Emma Scott book. Since the day I first saw promo about The Sinner on Emma’s instagram, I was dying to read it and when I got an email saying I was going to get the ARC, I was over the moon and I almost instantly started reading it. You guys- i don’t know how she does it. I don’t understand how she manages to write every single book so good and somehow better than the previous one. Despite loving all her books, The Girl in the Love Song had always held a special place in my heart, as you all might know considering I publicize it all the time. I didn’t think that would ever change but this book proved me way wrong. Okay, I can’t say it all here, there’ll be nothing left for the review if I continue so let’s get on with it.

Shy, introverted Lucy Dennings lives a quiet little life in New York City, working for a nonprofit and keeping to herself. Every afternoon, she goes home to her empty apartment and Edgar, her houseplant, and every night, she loses herself in the pages of her beloved romance novels. Her lonely heart seeks solace in tales of passionate, enduring, all-consuming love, but more and more, Lucy feels she’s not just reading for pleasure but searching for a lost piece of herself in the pages. As if she once touched something beautiful but it’s been ripped away. 

Until one day Lucy discovers a dead body in the alley behind her apartment. Even if it’s too late, her first instinct is to help. 

Her second is to run. 

Because the dead body isn’t so very dead, and suddenly, her little world isn’t so little but one in which dreams feel like memories, “inner demons” actually lurk in dark alleys, and a beautiful creature of darkness with amber eyes and wings like night might hold the key to what her heart has been aching for…if she doesn’t fall down the path of eternal damnation first. 

From USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Emma Scott, comes an emotional paranormal love story of passion, sacrifice, and the soul-deep love of a lifetime…more than one.

TROPES:

• Forbidden Love 
• Fake Relationship…with a twist
• Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy Romance
• Beauty and the Beast
• Sunshine Heroine/Grumpy Hero

“But she was beautiful, and my heart was filled with so much love, I could hardly contain it. And it came with a certainty that I felt in my bones. In my soul. We’d live again and again, sometimes pulled apart, maybe losing each other for a while. But we’d always find our way back to each other in the end.”

When I first finished this book a day ago, I sat there speechless and a blubbering mess with tears falling down my face. The more I read, the more I fell in love with this book and Cas and Lucy together.

Lucy is the definition of an introvert. She lives a simple and boring life; she goes to her office in the morning, which is an NGO of sorts, comes back home and settles with a book from her huge shelf of romance books and gets lost into stories with mobsters, billionaires, and more, all who have only one thing in common: they would all die for their women, until she falls asleep and then her day repeats. Until it doesn’t. She finds a body (with wings, might I add) behind her building and faints. When she wakes up, he doesn’t have wings anymore and looks different. She’s always done everything to help others in her life, no matter what, and her first instinct is to help Casziel Abisare. He tells her he’s a demon looking for redemption and the only way he can get it is with her help. Little does she know, they have a history only he knows about.

Where do I even begin to explain how much I loved this book? Lucy had always been “the quiet shy girl in the corner” and has her own demons who always put her down, “silly little Lucy with her silly ideas“. I loved watching her blossom from the shy girl that she was to being confident in her decisions and the things she does by the end of the book. I related with Lucy so much. Especially because of her explanation for loving all those romance novels. About how we don’t need anything dramatic like the love of our life to die for us, but it’s the intensity of that love that we all crave. To have someone that would be willing to die for you if it ever came down to it, someone who can’t live a day without you and would do anything for you. I don’t know about every one else but it’s partially the reason I read romance for sure. I can’t/don’t have that in real life so we substitute it by reading about it.

And Casziel. I have no words. I loved him from the very first second. The second Lucy opens her eyes and he’s right there, I loved him. His story, why he is the way he is and what made him that way, is so tragic. No one deserves to go through what he went through, especially not someone like Casziel who, in another life, was loyal and beautiful and determined and loved with every thing that he had in him. I loved seeing Cas wanting to make sure Lucy lived a happy and love filled life but also being slightly jealous over Guy. (That is a ridiculous name, I hated the dude, what’s wrong with Lucy??) His will to sacrifice everything just for Lucy to be happy made me cry so much.

Cas and Lucy are the definition of soulmates. Like I told Emma once I’d finished reading this book, I have always loved books about soulmates (I don’t mean the werewolf mate type of books), there’s just something about loving someone so much and being destined to fall in love again and again because of that intensity, that I love so much. The idea that some people are made for each other and others who have loved each other time and time again and will always continue to do so. I have some favorites even though there are very few and far books like that out there but The Sinner has become an instant favorite not only in that list but in my every list. I’ve always wanted that kind of love so bad, after reading their story, i fell a little more and i feel like if i don’t have it, i’ll never truly be happy.

I love Emma Scott’s books (I’ve said this like a million times, i apologize for repeating but I can’t help it.) and I’ve read every single one, including anthologies. It was always hard to pick one over the other because she writes such meaningful romances with actual depth and characters it’s hard not to love. However, I can easily say The Sinner has become my favorite with The Girl in the Love Song being bumped to a close second. Everything about this book is perfection and it’s something I didn’t know I was missing in life but now I finally have it.

The only negative of reading this book is that it makes you feel so many emotions and feel so much and makes you wish you had a soulmate type of love that Cas and Lucy have. I honestly wish I had a soulmate right now and the kind of love Lucy and Cas have, more than I’ve ever wished for it before. But then again, it’s not a negative because a lot of books make us feel that way, this one just more than others. (I swear if anyone says anything negative about this book, we’re going to have words. And by that I mean, I’m going to somehow convince you about how perfect this book is.)

Overall, this book is everything you never knew you needed in life and everyone needs to read it like right now. I’m a sobbing blubbering mess.

Emma Scott is a USA Today and Wall St. Journal bestselling author whose books have been translated in five languages and featured in Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, New York Daily News and USA Today’s Happy Ever After. Her first MM romance, Someday, Someday won the Utopia Con Award for LGBTQ Book of the Year. Emma writes emotional, character-driven romances in which art and love intertwine to heal, and in which love always wins. If you enjoy emotionally-charged stories that rip your heart out and put it back together again, with diverse characters and heroes who treat their heroines like gold, you will enjoy her novels. 

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Have I convinced you to read this wonderful book?? Do you like Paranormal Romances? What’s your favorite one?