He collected beautiful things. Rare things. Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor. The problem was I wasn’t beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being. He came to kill me. That was his business. Death. He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I’d created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things. I hated him. I still hate him.
But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I’d stay dead. In all of my hideous splendor. Because my murderer can only possess dead things. And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.
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*May Contain Triggers Book Reviews
What have I just read? First of all with the hype surrounding this all over Facebook and beyond and with the Blurb and cover, I truly opened this book expecting another dark romanc, except that’s not what’s happened instead my heart is torn up, my insides feel like Jelly and I am sitting in total silence with my soul tossing around around inside me. Birds of Paradise isn’t my first book by any stretch of the imagination of Anne Malcom my first been Making the Cut (THE SONS OF TEMPLAR SERIES) which is bloody fantastic, and it won’t be my last..I will keep going back to this book again and again. After seeing the everyone and his mother coming on Facebook or here at Goodreads saying what a great read it was I just knew I was in for a belter of a story,—I’ve now read this book twice, first time I always skim, but this was so good I went straight back to the start again but also because after the first time I was a bit like scratching my head and rubbing my eyes, thinking this is a complete mind F%%k, And I don’t mean MIND F&&K in the usual sense of the word, there is definitely some of that going on, but what I mean is that there was a lot to take in and a lot of heavy topics. I am quite an emotionally person,I feel things deeply so certain books I need to read in daylight never at night time because my mind won’t shut down, and hand on heart I was on the brink of going insane with this one. I don’t say that lightly…there is nothing remotely light about this story and I actually struggled with the content because of how on edge and uncomfortable it made me feel in my own skin. I mean that in a good way because Anne Malcolm writes books that are terrifyingly real and her style of writing is nothing short brilliant. Phenomenal. That on its own deserves more than the 5 measley stars I am allowed to give. I’ve never experienced a story that is so emotionally detached or even devoid of emotion that reels me in like this story did. I know that some people will struggle with it because it is one of those where you need to read between the lines and some will find it not easy to do, but if you are like me and you embroil yourself in,so you become buried deep within each line and word, this is for you…if you can handle a lot of very sensitive and very harrowing topics. I will not go into it too much because this is a story that you need to go in blind into and completely submerge yourself in its deep, dark waters. My advice is not to read any reviews until after you have read it yourself, I tend to avoid the reviews, even though I am a blogger, I find that it enriches my reviews more and makes the story so much more engaging. Even after reading this a second time I am still struggling. It was just as brutal on the second round as the first if not more so because I knew what was coming and the twists being just as shattering. I truly believe Anne Malcom has such a clever and conniving way of keeping us the readers at arms length from the characters so that you can see the bigger picture, but at the same time it allows you to see every single string that winds around them throughout the story. The characters themselves are not easy to gel with but I found that I actually loved it that way because it really reflected to me any way how truly broken and scarred they were, and allowed you to see just how damaged and how deep they were hurting. The deeper into the story you go the more you get to understand how their cogs work. I slowly fell in love with two people that as you are reading you don’t think they thought love was possible. Birds of Paradise is by definition a dark romance. does it need warnings ? YES !!, it needs warnings…well, not that any kind of warning will ever prepare you for it, but WARNINGS ALL THE SAME. I personally love the element of surprise, but others are not hence the warnings I love that adrenaline rush and that emotional choking sensation you get from it. But this story is deep and it’s reckless…brutish. It takes no prisoners when it comes to how it obliterates you mind, heart and soul. Everything around me ceased to exist and I just could not put it down.TWICE the tension is overwhelming and I can guarantee that if you are a lover of dark romance this is the book to read this year. It’s raw, gritty and dark. It’s crazed and it has bite. It’ll grab you and never let you go.
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