Tbh I totally judged this book by its cover. It has kind of a cheesy title, the super overdone bad boy looking guy on the cover, but when I read it, it took my breath away. It’s a beautiful heartbreaking story. Very well written, one of my fav romances.

Just a warning (no spoilers don’t worry), about 20% into the book, I basically stopped and was unable to continue. I let the book sit for a few days before finally getting up the courage to read again. But I am so glad I persisted. Your heart will be broken over and over and over but it is so worth it. Please give this a read! I couldn’t recommend it enough!

Also another note: this book has sort of a similar feel to Ill Give You The Sun. Just a bit dirtier. Well written, poetic, and full of loss and heart break and romantic as well as non romantic relationships. ( )

"Our secrets are nothing but a string of memories we wish to forget."
I wasn't supposed to be on that roof on Valentine's Day. Neither was Kellan Marchetti, the school's designated freak. We met on the verge of ending our lives. Somehow, the tattered strings of our tragedies tangled and tightened into an unlikely bond. We decided not to take the plunge and agreed to check on each other every Valentine's Day until school ended. Same time. One roof. Two restless souls. We kept our promise for three years. On the fourth, Kellan made a decision, and I was left to deal with the consequences. Just when I thought our story ended, another one began. They say all love stories look the same and taste different. Mine was venomous, disgraceful, and written in scarlet scars. My name is Charlotte Richards, but you can call me Venom.
This book. It was a moving and tear inducing look at grief and trauma. At the ways that one act scars not only us, but those around us. How all our actions have an impact, even if we didn't intend that side effect. I honestly think I loved this the most about the book, like the romance was just second fiddle for me. It honestly didn't feel that much like a love story most of the time, but instead a group of individuals dealing with their individual and shared traumas in the only ways they knew how. Kellan was a character who, even though you knew the ending, broke your heart. I wish the book had given us more insight into his mind. He was a fantastically written character and probably my favorite of the cast of characters.
The book starts off with emotional damage and really just keeps adding to it. I have to admit that while I enjoyed the romance, well except for Chapter 34, it just felt very cliche and obvious. The characters and their actions were very predictable. Charlotte very much acts like a child still in many respects and Tate isn't really processing any emotions. I think the story is sweet and watching the two work through their trauma is good, but it just left me wanting something. I felt jaded by the epilogue and the route that took. It just didn't feel like it fit and was just another obvious trope wrapped into what could have been something more. Overall, though the book is beautifully written and gut-wrenching. I don't think I was prepared for the emotional damage my heart suffered. ( )

I loved this book.

This sentence sums up my feelings about it pretty well. But here is the detailed version:

I have to start by saying this book is not your typical romance. To be fair, there were moments in it in which I doubt that the book should've been classified under this genre.

It's dark, but not MafiaBoss-who-NonCons-the-heroine-kind of the dark. It's dark in a grey way. The book contains heavy topics and I would strongly recommend reading the TW and CWs first. But the way the author wrote about them... Holly shit, I've never loved something so broken so much.

I loved Kel, and I bailed my eyes out when he did what he did

The plot is breathtaking, the story - heartbreaking, and the writing world-shaking.

The characters:

Charlie was a lovely one, smart and determined. Cute little angel, whose heart has been broken one too many times. I loved the way she acted, stood for herself, and protected her loved ones.

And Tate, well, Tate is an entirely different story. He is definitely fighting with Miles for the last place on the podium in my "Best Book Boyfriends" list. (The other two there are Aaron Warner and Damon Torrance, so I bet, you see the pattern). Tate was broken. Broken and alone, and in desperate need of love and support. He resembled a lost puppy. But, Jesus, was he hot!

The love was heartwarming, and the chemistry was over the roof.

However, there were a few aspects that I quite didn't like, and ruined the end of the book for me.
The first one is the rushed sex scenes. I don't mind if they are short or fast-paced, but in this book, with all this chemistry between the characters, the bang was pretty quiet. I expected something more.

To be fair, the only spicy scene I enjoyed was the one in his office, when he made her come with his fingers.

The other thing that I had a problem with was the plot twist or the part in which the hero and the heroine broke up. I was disappointed, mainly because the reason was just dumb and meaningless. We have Charlie, who swore to protect Tate from himself, being mad at him for not asking her on a date or going out with her. Throughout the whole book, I thought it would be another reason for the splitting, but something so small and irrelevant, in a way, just ruined the mood. And I feel she overreacted.

And then we have the one thing mentioned through the whole book - the age gap of 12 years, which was never really addressed That would've been a better reason for a split up.

In the end, I recommend this book with my whole heart, because it opens the eyes and tells a good and a sad story. ( )

This book was almost sheer perfection.

I live for reading. All books are magic, some more magical than others, but this book? Yeah, this book, is one of those special books that is what draws me to the wonderment of living in a fictional world. I have loved everything that this author has written. In fact, Devious Lies is one of my all-time favorite books of the thousands of books that I have read. Yet, this book? this book ranked even higher.

I thought I had a good idea of what this book was going to be about just based on the blurb. In a way, the blurb was spot on. However, it doesn't even begin to cover what this book was about. I won't lie, I hurt reading about the connection that Kellan and Charlotte had, moreover, the reasons why they had it. It is not something that is easily comprehended. more often than naught, I struggle with it in fiction because it is deeply personal to me. Trying to navigate it into something that needs to be talked about without making it shameful is hard. Nor, should it ever be glorified or romanticized. And somehow, the author was able to depict that in this book. Like it or not, it is a part of our society, whether we agree with it or not. The fact that this author was able to humanize this in a way that I felt in a plethora of ways says something. I felt the emotions. I came to understand what was going on in their minds. When Charlie and Tate started talking about Kellan, my heart hurt all over again. At times, I was almost crippled with a deep pain in my chest at watching these two characters navigate so many emotions. At one time or another, I watched the anger, the betrayal, the sadness, the agonizing grief, the acceptance, and even the happiness or acceptance of something that was out of their control. I am not going to lie, I felt those same emotions at Kellan and he was fictional.

The author broke this book up into stages. I needed those stages as a way to get my emotions sorted out. Not only, in regards to the main story and connection between Tate and Charlie, but also to make sense of Kellan, Terry (Kellan and Tate's father), and also Charlie's relationship with her sister. This is a big book. According to Goodreads, this book says it is only 470 pages but Amazon says it is over 700 pages. I am going with Amazon on this one because there was A LOT of story to unpack here and it needed all of those pages. Even being long, the book never felt like it was dragging on in. In fact, it could have gone on for more, and I would have been happy. I liked what was discovered at the end of the book (it sure made me question if it wasn't a significant factor in what impacted Kellan) but I do wish that it had given more insight into what the fallout of that particular bombshell had after it came out. Yet, even with wondering the impact, I still have to say that watching Tate and Charlie navigate this maelstrom was beautiful.

I loved how the author incorporated Darling Venom into this love story and the significance of the title as a book but also in regards to the characters themselves. I loved reading the snippets of the story as it unveiled insight into all the characters. It made it more personable for me. This book is one of the best of 2021. I needed a reminder that beauty comes from ugliness. I think we all do. ( )