5 Smooches!

Synopsis

Dear Mr. Black,

I know you were hurting. I heard your cries. I wished over and over again that I could make it better, but as you stated I was too inexperienced; too good for someone as bad as you.
Perhaps you were right, but it didn’t matter because what I did know was that I loved the way you felt—loved the way you smelled. I loved how hard you got for me, and when you called me your Little Knight.
I can still remember that day in the park, when you held me close and kissed me deep. How you effortlessly made me cry your name on top of sweet smelling grass, making me feel like the only girl in the world. I loved how you looked at me, how you spoke to me.
I had been madly in love with you ever since I was twelve years old, but I shouldn’t have been.
Isabelle would have hated it—my best friend. I couldn’t afford to lose her. Besides, you two had already lost enough. Losing Mrs. Black was the epitome.

It’s Chloe Knight.
I wanted to be there for you no matter what, but Isabelle needed me too.
And she would have hated me if she ever found out I was sleeping with her father.

** Tainted Black is a forbidden love-story about a girl who helplessly falls for her best friend’s father. After a tragic accident ends the life of Theo Black’s wife, he turns to the one person he has always found interesting.
Chloe Knight, the girl from across the street, his daughter’s best friend, and a person that is considered completely off limits for him. **

— AUTHOR NOTE: Chloe IS NOT 12 when she sleeps with Mr. Black. When she says she’s been in love with him ever since she was 12 years old, it means she has loved him since then, way before he ever knew. When the tragedy happens, Chloe is 19 and Theo is 39. When she mentions the “sweet grass” part, she is 19 years old. Hope that clears things up! 🙂 —

Review

It’s been exactly eighteen hours since I sat dumbfounded, emotionally wrecked and in complete awe as I read those dreaded words ‘the end’. I can also tell you it has been a number of months since a book has touched me so uniquely, heart and soul but even longer since a book has become so imprinted on my memory and heart and soul and caused me to stare off into an abyss of contemplation and wonder.

Tainted Black is as dark and desolate as it is tragically beautiful and romantic. There is this sense of utter melancholy and little-boy-lost that clings to Theo Black, he’s suffered through devastation, death, guilt and regret and somehow the one person that shouldn’t be able to lure him out of his self-hatred and destruction is the very girl that knows him to his very core and is the one girl that keeps the momentum of guilt and regret on a constant cycle as they journey on one of the hottest most seductive love affairs I have ever experienced.

‘“God, you have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?” My heart pounded. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t need to.

“I know you like me, Chloe.”

“Mr. Black, I-”

“Theo…please,” he begged, eyes shutting briefly before opening again, “…just call me Theo. Call me by my first name. It sounds so good coming out of your mouth.”’

What begins as an illicit affair between nineteen year old Chloe and thirty-eight-year-old Theo- one brought about by tragedy and regret-soon transforms into something deeper and more profound than Theo ever wanted or could have hoped for and indeed more than Chloe had imagined in her youthful fantasies about her BFF’s gorgeous tattooed motorcycle riding dad. Theo is a phenomenal character.

Taking it from Chloe’s POV he is the perfect older man. He really listens and gives terrific advice. He is incredibly sexy and has a voice that could tempt a nun but above all else he truly loves his wife. Loyal and romantic and faithful until the very end, Theo is perfection personified. However as a reader we get the bonus of seeing inside Theo’s head to realise how deeply flawed and jagged he is-a beautiful disaster waiting to happen. We witness how messed up and confused he feels, how he simply wants to numb all of his hurt and longing and how he seemingly uses the vulnerable and naive Chloe to accomplish this, but through Shanora’s fantastic character development and wonderfully written dual points of view the reader gets a wider scope of what to an outsider seems like a one-sided seduction. I can’t begin to explain how terrific Tainted Black was. There was no huge dramatic storyline that took up the whole of the book, it was simply a steamy, scintillating and devastating romance that progressed through the years and managed to captivate my attention and my imagination in equal measures as various lives connected and intersected in unimaginable ways, with tragic consequences. The writing flows so easily, giving this remarkable and slightly taboo story of sex, guilt, redemption, absolution and love a chance to shine. It’s a fabulously unique love story with an ending that left me in serious thought after. It was a marvellous ending to a sterling piece of writing by an incredibly talented author, it just fit perfectly with the flow and maturity level of the whole book.

~Nicole

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