A Vow Of Hate: An Arranged Marriage Romance Paperback – January 28, 2021

I absolutely loved i highly recommend

There were a few spelling mistakes and some of the story was confusing at times while important parts felt skimmed over but if you can get past those this story was really good…. Frustrating at times. Im not a fan of miscommunication but it worked for the torture and pain the FMC was putting herself through out of guilt.I understood the MMC’s anger and also the FMC’s guilt and need for repentance. The twists i kinda did see coming but i enjoyed it. And it worked well imo

Feelings, so many feelings, but the good ones, the type of “OMG this book was so good” feelings.This was my first Lylah James book, and I can honestly say that I wasn’t disappointed, because she gave us such a good, well written book, with great characters.When I first saw the cover and read the blurb and the tropes, I made a few ideas in my mind and I kinda had a view of the story. But oh boy, how wrong was I.This book was nothing like I has imagined, IT WAS AMAZING!The entire book is an emotional rollercoster, so well written, the action was not rushed. Lylah gave us a great book, filled with angst, mystery, hidden secrets and in the end, love.I was such an emotional mess when I finished the book, part of me was so sad that I reached the end. I cried and laugh with the characters, and for more then half the book I was without breath and at the edge of my seat. And that plot twist that dropped halfway through the book had me screaming out loud at 2 am “No way”. I was not expecting that, and in that moment I loved the book ever harder then before.Julianna is not your normal heroine, and I think some of the readers might have a problem in connecting with her and understating why she acted the way she did.I admit, that in the beginning I didn’t empathize with her, but after the first chapters I understood her reasons.There were many moments, when all I wanted was to be able to crawl inside the book and hug her, wrap my arms around her and protect her at all costs. Because she is both strong and fragile, so courageous, brave and kind. She fights for those she loves and tries to protect them at all costs.She was grieving the loss of her sister in her own way, nobody does it the same, and in her mind and broken heart, she though that the best way to do this, was to become a martyr and sacrifice her happiness for someone else’s.Love makes us do so stupid things sometimes.Killian, oh dear Killian. How I wanted to smack some sense into him for most of the book, that my hand started to itch.He is cold, ruthless, heartless and also grieving. But unlike Julianna, he is not a martyr. He channels all his hurt into anger, and has an ultimate goal: revenge. He wants to hurt Julianna, to make her pay for the loss of his love, a love he so desperately wanted and searched for it, and will stop at nothing to achieve that. He does and also says some awful thing to Julianna, he hurts her, but in the end he regrets it.I, for one, wanted to hurt him and hate him, but in the end I couldn’t do it. Because I also understood him, his point of view. He’s been wronged. In the end, I empathized with him also and rooted for the best.The chemistry between these two is undeniable, their story full of angst, secrets, sacrifices, but also love. Both of them play with each others demons.They are the perfect duo, they complete each other.★ I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Julianna and her sister Gracelyn got into a car accident that changed the course of their lives. Gracelyn died, while Julianna was left scarred and traumatized by the event. She cannot remember most of the details of that fatal night, but recalls she was driving and felt intoxicated prior to the crash. Julianna wears a black veil over her face all the time, presumably to hide the scarring.Julianna is forced to honor the arranged marriage contract between Gracelyn and her besotted fiance, Killian. He hates Julianna for driving drunk and plans to make her life miserable. Killian was deeply in love with Gracelyn and spends the two years Julianna is given to re-learn to walk stewing in his grief.Killian and Julianna get married, and there’s a lot of generic bullying and high handed behavior on his part. Leaving her standing at the alter, leaving her behind at their honeymoon location, flirting with her just to point out her desperation for affection. Selling her damn horse. Julianna is stuck in an endless pity party and encourages him to do his worst over and over again. She self-harms and suffers from seizures in silence. She finds old letters from a woman in a similar situation who died without ever gaining the love of her husband. It’s all quite depressing.Unbeknownst to anyone but Julianna, Gracelyn felt trapped in her betrothal and was actually having an affair with her bodyguard the whole time. She was pregnant with the guard’s baby at time of death. Killian overhears the guard confronting Julianna and realizes his love was all a farce. Instead of coming to terms with the fact that he was delusional, he doubles down on hating Julianna for keeping the secret.During a later argument, Killian sees Julianna without her veil on and realizes she is actually the sister he’s has been falling in love with over the years. Julianna chose to wear the black veil because she didn’t want Killian to recognize her, not because of her scars. She died her hair and learned to speak in a different tone to throw him off.I find it hard to believe that Killian never knew the two sisters looked alike prior to the accident or interacted with both of them at the same time. He recognized Julianna immediately, but doesn’t make the assumption that they were twins. So did he actually never not once meet Gracelyn or see a picture of her? A bit confusing, but I’ll acknowledge there was an extended flashback of their love story following this revelation that I skimmed through. There was already a lot of timeline jumping go on, so seven straight chapters of digging into the past to establish all the times Julianna met with Killian while pretending to be Gracelyn was not of interest to me.Killian once again chooses violence and triggers a seizure in Julianna. He stays to care for her for several days and then starts avoiding her because the fact that she lied apparently outweighs the fact that the woman he was mutually in love with is alive. Julianna gets even more depressed about the situation until she discovers unopened letters that show her that random woman’s husband did in fact love her but was too little too late to express that before she died. This puts a battery in Julianna’s back, and she suddenly adopts a joking and coy persona in order to seduce her husband into forgiving her. They have weird BDSM sex centered on him punishing her for her actions and she falls pregnant.In the midst of all this, there’s an attempt made on Julianna’s life. She and Killian keep it secret from their fathers until a second attempt is made. We find out Julianna’s FATHER caused the initial accident and has been trying to kill her this whole time. Julianna is not his child because her mother had an affair with her bodyguard (second time that trope is used in the same story). He was upset the wrong sister died and has been happy to watch Killian mistreat her.So Julianna was innocent. She wasn’t driving drunk, she was drugged and trying to escape a scary situation with her too-injured-to drive sister. She didn’t deserve a lick of the poor treatment she’s gotten. Killian gives a cheap little apology for his behavior and that’s that on that. Maybe it would have sat better if she got upset at his ease of acceptance, left him, and had to be convinced to return. It felt like a slap in the face that Killian got this easy ride and never faced a single consequence other than his own fleeting internal guilt. I kept waiting for some groveling or get-back, but no. She takes a damn bullet for him while pregnant in the last few chapters, making him realize he can’t live without her and doesn’t want to fight anymore.Also, Julianna has already met her real father, who decided to start working at her marital home to get to know his secret love child under the nose of the powerful man claiming to be her father. He waits until after everything is over to speak up because it was apparently too dangerous before.Meh.