This review contains spoilers for The Sinner. A list of trigger warnings is available at the beginning of the book. You can read my review of The Ritual on my blog, here.
I won't even lie, reading the list of trigger warnings in the beginning of the book made me even more excited to read it -- I loved the ritual and when I found out The Sinner was set in the same world, I knew I had to read it. We get to see glimpses of Ryat mentioned throughout the book, since The Sinner takes place at the same time as The Ritual. You can read these as stand alones or consider them a series, whichever you prefer.
It always makes me laugh realizing that Sin -- and Ryat -- are literally seniors in college during their books -- imagine a twenty-one-year-old guy just casually being a part of a secret society where they murder people over twice their age because some rules were broken. Sin is definitely high up on the wild scale -- even before he gets to his senior year, he is doing unthinkable things to Elli while she has no idea who the man behind the mask is.
I used to think that Ryat was literally off the walls wild, but not even one third into The Sinner had showed me that Sin is on another level. He definitely crosses the very blurry line between what is okay and what is not way earlier with Elli compared to how Ryat was with Blakely, but Sin takes it to a whole new level. I really liked that this book took place at the same time as The Ritual, because if you read it already, it provided these extra little details from someone else's perspective without spoiling the book for you. And if you did not read The Ritual, then you get a little taste of Ryat before diving into his story with Blakely.
Sin is literally going feral over Elli at every chance he gets, and my god does this boy have some pent up rage that he needs to release. He is the moodiest twenty-something I have ever seen, and when it comes to Elli and her stubbornness, it really pushes him over the edge. For crying out loud, he threw the girl overboard and then told her there were sharks in the water, and she retaliated by fake drowning only to head butt him as soon as he got her out of the water. There is not enough holy water on this planet to cleanse my mind from what I have read in this book, and as an avid dark and taboo romance reader, that says a lot. If I even tried to step into a church now, I would burst into flames.
The way that Elli was so casual about realizing that Sin was the masked man and the one who killed her stepfather James actually had me laughing out loud because this girl really does not give anything a second thought. James was an awful person and the things that he did to Elli when she was so young made me wish that Sin did more to him than a single gun shot -- he definitely deserved a worse fate that what he was dealt.
Sin is so much worse that Ryat was -- and when I was reading The Ritual, I did not even think Ryat was that bad, definitely a little bit off his rocker, but really cared about Blakely from the beginning. Meanwhile, Sin is committing every crime under the sun and lying to Elli every chance he gets, while also doing and saying some pretty awful stuff to her in the process. Yes, he did a majority of it to protect her and try to keep her safe, but I would say that the tattoo on her back was something I did not love him doing to her.
The smut scenes were significantly crazier compared to The Ritual, and definitely rival scenes in Haunting Adeline. Not even a quarter of the way into the book, I thought I was going to have to wash my eyes out with holy water and by the time I was just over three fourths of the way through, I considered going back to church. Tessier knows her stuff and does not hold back when it comes to pushing the boundaries of dark romance.
You can really see Elli go through it during this book, especially with her dealing with her drug habits and coping with the grooming and years of abuse she went through with so many authority figures in her life. She does not know where else to turn to or understand why she feels and thinks the things that she does, which ultimately leads to her being put in the most insane situations I have ever read. She really cannot catch a break -- it felt like every fifty pages we were finding out that she was assaulted by yet another Lord, and for some reason Sin seemed to think this was somehow partially on her? His logic was all over the place and honestly made me so annoyed with after a couple hundred pages, I wanted him out of Elli's life.
However, the last one hundred and fifty pages or so definitely had my mind changed about him, especially seeing the lengths that he went to in order to try to keep Elli safe and well, alive. He was killing people left and right and striking up deals with anyone who had a pulse at one point, so props to him for the determination on his end. I do wish we got to see just a little bit more of Sin and Elli in the end actually talking about what they both had been through and get on the same page, because it always seemed that Elli was the one drawing the short end of the stick when trouble came about.
If you are looking for a lengthy taboo dark romance, The Sinner is for you -- filled with some of the wildest scenes I have come across, the reader does not know what is in store for them.
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