Lethal is another book in the shared world of Wellard Asylum. This one follows Psychiatrist Caterina Vaughn and the Carnevil twins, Bash & Wren Norwood.
The Norwood twins are serial killers who lured their victims in through charm and manipulation, only to spend days torturing them and consuming their flesh. Dr Caterina Vaughan thinks that she can get inside their minds and understand them, but then they become obsessed with her, and she starts to become obsessed with them. She is meant to cure them, but they have found the darkness that lives inside her and are pulling it to the surface.
Ring around the silence, tied up nice and neat. A pocket full of fingers, snipped and cooked to eat. Ashes…ashes…we laugh as you go down
⚫️Twin psychotic serial killers ⚫️Enemies to lovers ⚫️Throat necklace ⚫️Power imbalance ⚫️Forced Proximity ⚫️Asylum ⚫️Nurse/Patient ⚫️Dub Con ⚫️Mind Games ⚫️Erotic Horror ⚫️Primal ⚫️Obsession ⚫️Killer Clown ⚫️Touch her and die ⚫️HEA⚫️MFM
🔴Clowns 🔴Murder 🔴Kidnapping 🔴Captivity 🔴Non Con 🔴Dub Con 🔴Barebacking 🔴Bondage 🔴Drugging 🔴DVP 🔴Torture 🔴Rape 🔴Physical abuse 🔴Mental abuse 🔴Emotional abuse 🔴Sexual Assault 🔴Brothers sharing holes 🔴Childhood emotional abuse 🔴Childhood sexual abuse (memories/mention) 🔴Childhood physical abuse (mentioned) 🔴Unethical medical testing 🔴Cannibalism 🔴Necrophilia 🔴Somnophilia 🔴Voyeurism 🔴Spanking 🔴Forced Orgasms 🔴Oral 🔴Swords Crossing 🔴Orgasm Denial 🔴Use of chainsaws to inflict harm 🔴Decapitation 🔴Humiliation 🔴Drugging 🔴Suicide 🔴Branding 🔴Bullying 🔴Degradation 🔴Submission 🔴Depression 🔴Serial Killers 🔴Shared Delusional Disorder 🔴Antisocial Personality Disorder 🔴Sadistic Personality Disorder 🔴Schizophrenia 🔴Neuroticism 🔴Borderline Personality Disorder 🔴PTSD 🔴Manipulation by someone in power 🔴Narcissistic behaviour 🔴Physiological torture 🔴Gaslighting 🔴Insects consumption 🔴Spitting 🔴Choking 🔴Doctor/Patient power imbalance 🔴Misogyny 🔴Watersports 🔴Electrocution 🔴Medical experimentation 🔴Rats
Ring around your heartbeat, thump, thump, thump, it beats too loud. Dark voices spin, round and round. A pocket full of blood and memories, buried where you sleep. Ashes…ashes…you’ll beg and scream without a sound for me
Let’s talk about the characters, the twins first. Bash is the more composed of the twins; he seems mentally stable when you look at him. He is smart and charming and knows how to manipulate people. He is the brains and also the protector. Wren has schizophrenia and hears voices in his head; he is unpredictable, and the only person who can keep him calm and under control is Bash. Wren likes to speak in riddles, which I really enjoyed. Sometimes the voices take over, and Wren acts like a young child or the killer clown. We know a little bit about the twins, in the sense that we know they had a bad childhood, their parents sucked, and they disposed of them when they got old enough. We know that they were part of a circus, but otherwise not much else is known of their backstory other than that they were killer twins, who tortured, raped and ate their victims. I’d actually love another book by this author with the twins’ backstory in.
The Norwood twins are two of the most dangerous and notorious individuals to ever enter this building
Caterina Vaughan is a complex character; she appears to be professional and prim and proper on the outside. On the inside, however, she has a darkness that she contains, but she is trying to find out what happened to her cousin in Wellard Asylum, and she will unleash the darkness if she needs to. I liked Caterina; she was manipulated by the twins, but she still had a backbone.
Ring around your silence…A pocket full of screams…we’re coming for you, dolly…you’re already ours to eat
Wellard Asylum is like something out of a horror film, and A.L. Maruga really brought it to life in this book. I felt like I was there, walking the halls of the asylum. This is the first book I have read by this author, and I definitely want to look at their other books. The writing was easy to follow, but descriptive and immersive. My husband had the TV on when I was reading, and usually this would distract me and I would take my book upstairs, but I was so immersed in this book that nothing was distracting me. I also did not anticipate the ending of this book, and I love to be taken by surprise like that. This is the 3rd book I have read in this series so far, and I think it might be my favourite one.
One of the things I love about authors coming together and creating a shared world is that you find authors you hadn’t heard of before, and you get a taste of their writing. This is definitely an author I will be following now.
I wish I could slice her open, to allow the real woman to escape the confines shes places around herself.
I had read Atrocity by Nova Kane and Lonely by Harleigh Beck and was already loving this shared world when I got an email from Booksirens with available ARCs, and I saw Lethal. Instantly, I jumped on BookSirens to request a copy, and I am so glad I did. Lethal is technically the 3rd book in the series, but they are all standalones and you don’t need to read them in order. I 100% recommend this book; it is spicy, gory, dark and mysterious.
Thank you, Booksirens and A.L. Maruga, for the ARC of this book.
Lethal is on Kindle Unlimited. If you want to read a copy, you can also order the paperback, and it is available now. If you click Lethal at the top of this page, it will take you to the UK Amazon page.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
🌶️🌶️/5
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