“I hope you won’t ever stop fighting because I will enjoy breaking you bit by bit.”

Reparation of Sin by A Zavarelli and Natasha Knight is the second book in ‘The Society Trilogy’ and after the cliffy in Requiem of the Soul, we couldn’t wait to jump in and find out what would happen next for Santiago and Ivy. So, this will be a short and spoiler-free review as there’s no way we’d want to ruin this book nor the one that came before, for any of you readers.

‘Even if I hate him, it doesn’t mean I want him dead. And the hope I feel is only for my freedom. Hope that when the door opens, it will be him. The devil you know. That’s all this is. It’s not that I have feeling for him.’

Santiago is still a bit of an enigma, he hides a lot of himself, and whilst we’ve been given a nugget of information here or an intense emotion there -well- there really hasn’t been enough so far to fully figure him out. Mind you, we don’t think even the tortured Santiago has a clue where his head is at right now, which was evident in a couple of scenes that literally stole our breath. To be honest with you, we wanted to punch him in the throat several times! Infuriating and forceful yet completely magnetic, his character persona is intense and slightly overwhelming at times. Ivy, oh dear, she really goes through the wringer in this book. Our hearts hurt for her so much, and the times where the manifestations of her sanity and her heart were at odds, well we sympathised. Because…. Santiago, yes, we feel it too Ivy!

“Do you know what the difference is between me and you, Ivy?”
“What?” I spit.
“I know I am hated. I don’t care. I use it as a strength. You? You care. Hate steals your strength. My hate of you weakens you. Makes a pathetic victim out of you.”
“You think you will ever win against me?” He asks.
“No, Santiago, I don’t.”

We did think Ivy behaved quite naively at times in this instalment and a tad blasé on trying to improve her situation when faced with the opportunity to. Why did we feel like that? Because we didn’t feel she was originally written like that in Requiem of the Soul. Rather she seemed more clued up in the first instalment. But then again, the poor girl is going through a life-changing journey as a pawn in a violent game of retribution and revenge. She literally has no side to turn to so whilst we’d chose neither side –if we were in her head– she goes for what she believes is the lesser of two evils. However, will this prove to be a costly mistake?

‘We are bound to one another. There is something here. And he’s human no matter how much he tries to prove himself a demon.’

Talk about a hard-hitting beginning to Reparation of Sin, we jumped straight into a dark and sinister scene with no warning or let up. Just when we thought it surely couldn’t get any more dark or uncomfortable, this book proved otherwise! In fact, we found a couple of scenes quite difficult to read. The story development is fabulously paced, and we were once again completely compelled. Now, we feel desperate to get to the crux of who and the why of it all. It’s all still a guessing game, and we are incredibly intrigued by all the players!

“The choices are clear. But I think the question is, which can you live without? Your revenge…or your wife’s affection?”