Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1) by Sylvain Reynard

Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I will remember your scent and your touch and how it felt to love you. But most of all, I will remember how it felt to gaze at true beauty, both inside and out. For you are fair, my beloved, in soul and in body, generous of spirit and generous of heart. And I will never see anything this side of heaven more beautiful than you."

This is the first time I can honestly say that I came to care about both the hero and heroine in a contemporary romance. Gabriel and Julia saw each other warts and all (even if it was with rose coloured glasses on) and it never made a lick of difference. The love between them was the truest kind... pure, fierce and unconditional.

Gabriel is a man with a dark past and tormented by his regrets while the much younger Julia has known only abuse and neglect in her life. She's quiet and demure but make no mistake... this girl has claws! Many female love interests are only there to serve the function while the hero of the story shines but for me, Julia was anything but forgettable. She demonstrated over and over again that she was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles.

I loved that Gabriel saw her virtue as something to be cherished and protected rather than a problem or as his to take. He was nurturing and protective of Julia and I've never 'met' another man so respectful of his lady. He was initially a... well, jerk (to put it tactfully) but once the story started to move along, I fell for him fairly quickly.

To the author's credit, each of the supporting characters have their own personalities and issues. Some of them you'll love and others you will absolutely loathe. Paul was handsome, kind, chivalrous and exactly the kind of man I'd go for myself. Some women prefer the alpha jerk but I'm a sucker for a sweet guy.

"Why not think that sometimes—just sometimes—you can overcome evil with silence? And let people hear their hatefulness in their own ears, without distraction. Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes. Rather than trying to stop evil with more evil."

This is everything Fifty Shades wasn't and definitely not your typical romance novel. It's poignant, smart, and laugh out loud funny in some places. It's mostly chaste but one of the most sensual romances I've ever read. Gabriel and Julia don't come together until the end so if you're holding out for that, you'll have to be patient and enjoy their journey to that point.

And it's a journey you won't want to miss.


View all my reviews