Tragic Beauty: A Dark Romance (Beauty & The Darkness Book 1) Kindle Edition

READER ADVISORY this book is not for the faint of heart, it is part of an in progress series delving into the darkest corners of the human psyche. If you are looking for a romantic tale, or standalone novel, or even just a little dark kink before you get your HEA move along this book is not for you.This is Iris Ann Hunters first full length novel and she pulls it off spectacularly. Set in the fictional small ranching town of Los Ramos, CA, Iris has built a beautiful backdrop to her dark tale. Front and center in Los Ramos is Shayne MacAllister, owner of MacAllister Ranch and a goodly portion of the town. He comes into the novel as the classic a¥¥hole but as it progresses, as you stare into the abyss of his darkness. Because no doubt about it Shayne is an abyss, you begin to see what made him that way, you begin to want reach out try help pull toward the light even knowing his darkness will just consume you too.That’s what it does to Ava. She’s lived in Los Ramos all her life. She’s lived a hard life made harder with her father putting them in debt, and when she needs help to pay for her fathers medical bills there’s only one place she can turn, Shayne, a man whose been obsessed with her since childhood. A deal is struck. He pays for everything, and in exchange she gives home everything.Now you’re thinking you know how this story goes, you’ve read it a dozen times. But you don’t and you haven’t Iris throws a wrench in the usual plot line. Ava knows Shayne is a not a good a man, a beast, as she calls him. She doesn’t want him to be her first, so when her father finally dies and her debt comes due, she makes a life altering decision and goes to find a one night stand. Instead she ends up being rescued by Gavin, he is the dark brooding dangerous stranger, but they have an instant connection. They end up sharing a night of intimacy, dark passion, and secrets.But Ava has to return to Shayne and the deal, no matter the connection she feels to Gavin. But Gavin isn’t willing to let her go, he tracks her down just as Shayne shows up to claim what’s his. Shayne learning that Ava broke the terms of their deal, that he wasn’t her first goes into a rage and whatever might have been, the story we’ve read before, ended. Instead Shayne takes everything from Ava, brands her, locks her in a cell and begins her systematic torture. As the story continues we follow Ava as she slowly breaks, physically, mentally, and emotionally. As she goes from doing what Shayne wants because it keeps those loves safe to doing partly just to survive, and also in part to make him happy. We connect to Shayne just Ava does, in a terrible way that you just know is wrong but can’t stop.Then there’s Gavin, Gavin, who is broken and beautiful and terrible in his own ways. Who has also developed his own obsession with Ava, but made the worst mistake of his life by letting her go. There is darkness in Gavin that has yet to see the light of day, I think we’ll be seeing more of it in the next book but makes me wonder is Ava really safer with him?This book is very dark, and I say this having grown bored with most of what people call dark romance . One interesting point is that while this book does have sexually gratifying scenes, in many ways the greater depth of this novel is not in those scenes but in the psychological depth to which MsHunter takes us.

Holy hell in a hand-basket Batman! Iris was not effing around when she warned this was a dark read. This story seriously messed with my head, and when I came out the other side, I had mixed feelings about every character in the story. That is a positive, btw. The characters were so rich and complex that none of them had that villain vs. hero vibe, they were all their own shade of messed up. Ultimately, Shayne broke my freaking heart. The things he went through obviously changed him as a person and how he thought about the world. I don’t generally like blaming mommy and daddy for your adult issues, but in these types of scenarios it’s hard not to. You just know that Shayne would’ve been a completely different person without the skeezy parents he had. I just feel so bad for him. On top of all his “cruelty”, he truly loves Ava and just wants to make her happy. The fact that she so fully rejects him as a person, slowly takes away the last vestige of humanity he has left. I liked Gavin, and I liked how he was as an alpha, but he was the most unbelievable character out of all of them. Mostly about how he reacts to Ava when she won’t leave Shayne. Seriously Gavin, take your head out of you’re a$$, it really isn’t that hard to see what’s going on. He did get major brownie points from me though when he did finally have is ah-ha moment and immediately went into action for Ava’s sake. I also can’t leave out Red, poor freaking red. He gets all the brownie points, poor guy.I’ll definitely be interested to continue with this series to find out what happens next.Thank you Iris for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review

This book left me physically and emotionally sick for the entire night after I read it. It is a gift to be able to write soul shattering books and Iris Ann Hunter undoubtedly has the gift but what a gift it is...Somewhere around the middle of the book, she had instilled a deep fear in me- and I am not of the faint heart. An all consuming protest kept gathering in my soul, leaving me hanging over the darkness, my entire being refusing to read even one more word- and yet, I kept reading and my insides kept getting sicker. My ovaries were hurting, if you can believe it. From the stress Ava's torture caused me. I dragged myself towards the end, literally holding myself tight while I was getting sucked into the black vortex of all the things that are wrong in this world, having manifested in that grey room, in Shayne's face. When I finished the book (unable to put it down until the last word bled into my soul), I was angry. Hurting. The last "session" with Shayne left me so furious with Iris Ann Hunter, that I was ready to get online and write the worst review ever. The negativity her words awoke inside me, the anger, the instinctive resistance towards evil incorporated, was blinding me for hours. I couldn't sleep all night. "Torture should not be justified!" I was thinking. "Such books should never be allowed to be published! Such words, such ideas, such nightmares should never be tolerated or justified in the pretence of dark romance. This is not dark romance. This is pure torture of the worst kind!".YES. IT WAS. Because as Frantz Kafka puts it "We ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. Books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us". Iris's Tragic beauty was such an axe, for me. And it is very difficult to shock me, believe me. .. I admire Iris for having achieved that, because most books are only caressing the darkness. Hers dragged me in it, screaming and fighting, all the way to the bottom.Will I read the next book about Ava, Shayne and Gavin when it comes out? Yes, I will. I will read it feeling exactly the way Ava felt, waiting on all fours for Shayne's next terror: hurting all inside, screaming all inside, detesting the pain, the absolute sickness of it all, knowing it is coming my way nevertheless and I have to be strong. To never give up, even though the nightmare will always stay emblazoned inside me.Bravo, Iris Ann Hunter. Bravo!