Saint (Boston Underworld, #4)

4.5 "Vigilante Justice Queen Meets Her Mafia Prince" Stars & 5 Stars for the narration!

Lovers of tough as nails heroines and mafia romances are in for a treat when listening to the Saint! Not only can you count on a fast-paced, action filled story with plenty of heat filled scenes, but the heroine, in particular, is one of my favorite kinds of heroines: feisty and truly able to defend herself. The fact that a hero comes along who wants to help her save the day, just makes the story that much sweeter. Moreover, the top-notch narration by Tracy Marks makes this a romance that is a great title to experience in audio format.

Scarlett's life drastically changed when the man she was supposed to marry, her then college boyfriend, took show more advantage of her and allowed her to be brutally violated as part of a fraternity hazing admission ritual. Unable to continue living her previously privileged and "perfect" life, Scarlett breaks all ties with her family and friends and leaves it all behind.

In her new life, vowing to help other victims, Scarlett poses as a call girl and teaches men who beat and violate women her own brand of justice.

Rory (aka "Saint") is a member of the Irish mob. Having had a rough life, he is happy to finally have a band of brothers that he would defend to the death. After Scarlett catches his eye, he hopes to expand his circle to include her in his band of protection. But Scarlett is a tough girl to attract, and she keeps resisting his advances. When it becomes clear, however, that the past has caught up with Scarlett and her life is in danger, Rory vows not to take "no" for an answer both as to her protection and his quest to seek her love. But can Rory keep Scarlett (his "Satan") safe and in his arms when she is determined to remain independent at all costs? Heaven and hell have never had so much fun mixing together!

Tracy Marks does a remarkable job narrating Saint. Having never listened to her before, I wasn't sure what to expect. However, Ms. Marks way exceeded my expectations! Moreover, this was not an easy audiobook to narrate. With numerous accents to play, including both Boston and Irish accents as well as Scarlett's tricky dialogues which required increasing and dialing back the intensity of her accent, Ms. Marks proved her great range and attention to detail. Ms. Marks also convincingly was able to create both female and male sounding characters and differentiated even characters of the same sex.

As Saint is an ACX produced title, I think it is also worth noting that the production quality of the audiobook was superb and on par with those produced by the large audiobook publishers.

All in all, I really enjoyed the character development in Saint as well as the action and romance. In particular I found the heroine memorable and the hero swoon worthy with his alpha nature and yet ability to bend to accommodate his heroine's needs. Now I can't wait to catch-up on listening to more of this series!

Source: Review copy provided for review purposes. show less

Rory’s got a thing for Scarlett but too bad she is a hair shy of being a total psycho. Scarlett is willing to use Rory to achieve the ultimate revenge against the men who wronged her. What I really liked was Zavarelli’s willingness to commit to Scarlett’s wrongness as a person. She’s maybe even more of an anti-hero that the badass Irish Mafia dude Rory.

Read: September 2017
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
The couple: Scarlett & Rory

Saint started off as my least of the series in terms of the romantic plot. I liked Scarlett as a character; she had a very troubled past and is incredibly psychologically damaged which makes for compelling reading as she uses her sexuality, combined with her sociopathic ruthlessness to exact revenge on men who abused her in the past. The trouble is, while this makes her an excellent character to read about, trying to match her up with a man felt a little forced. Rory was not as well written as Scarlett, and his motivation for being with her seemed limited to the fact that she was gorgeous and damaged. He enjoys the fact that she is psychologically scarred and he gets to show more be the patient, stabilising force in her life. I didn't like them as a couple for the first half of the novel. Towards the end, I began to see their romance differently as Scarlett made peace with her past and began to mellow and I still read this book in less than a day - as I have done with the previous books in this series. I hope there is not too much of a wait before we get another one. show less

4

Finished it before the new year. It was pretty good, I loved Scarlett and Rory's dynamics as well as the hot action and steamy romance to boot.

Petition to have one focus on Brooks and Storm.

4.5 Stars