Review: The Love of Wicked Men by Brandon Shire

Author: Brandon Shire

Publisher: TPG Books

Pages/Word Count: 428 Pages

At a Glance: Season one of The Love of Wicked Men is undeniably one of the best novels I have ever read. I highly recommend it to you.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Power, lust, legal intrigue. This is where sex and injustice meet.

Sid Rivers and Jack Brown are two sides of the same coin. One is a lawyer with his own firm and dreams of money and power; the other is a criminal with a lengthy record and a quest for vengeance. When they meet, sparks fly. But was their meeting an accident? Or, was it planned by the billionaires who want to control their destiny?

The Love of Wicked Men is an erotic journey into the underbelly of the legal profession, the corporate culture of profit-at-any-cost, and the secret world of industrial espionage.

Review: Begun as serial installments, where fans help shape the trajectory of each part, The Love Of Wicked Men is now published as Season One: Parts 1-6, in a gloriously long novel guaranteed to make your head spin at the sheer volume of players and the multi-layered plot. However, at the heart of this tour de force are two men, both superior at dispensing their own brand of justice, rather cavalierly cutthroat in their business dealings, and yet deeply loyal to somehow rectifying what they see as the greatest failure in their pasts. Both, you see, lost someone dear to them and are determined to either bring the culprit to justice or eradicate the memory altogether.

Sid Rivers has been reinventing himself for so long even he is unsure how to reach the real Self inside. A hungry lawyer bent on making money and forgetting his rather tawdry past, he will stop at nothing to feed his immense ego and bury the pain he carries inside. Jack Brown wants nothing more than to see his sister’s death avenged, and if that means risking the team who has been by his side for years, helping him fleece corporate America, then so be it. Somehow, whoever has contacted Sid with the latest way to rape another law firm, and make big money in the process, holds the key to unraveling the mystery Jack has been trying to crack for years.

No one and nothing is at it seems, and trust is nowhere to be found when these two men meet, but there is something there—something indefinable sparks between them, and a hunger neither has ever known before rears its head and locks Sid and Jack together. This goes deeper than simple lust. The feelings that develop as these two men play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with unseen enemies run much deeper than easing a sexual itch. Espionage, abductions, near death experiences all combine to create a ticking clock that pushes Sid and Jack further down a rabbit hole, where the only escape may be someone’s death.

My brain is buzzing. There was so much to this novel, and it was all written with rapier-sharp clarity, intriguing drama, and the hottest coupling of two admitted foes ever seen. I have enjoyed many pieces of work by author Brandon Shire, but this boxed set of six episodic stories was beyond anything he has ever written. The vast array of characters, the interweaving of two strangers, whose lives have such similar back stories, and the twisted and cleverly drawn plotlines makes this massive novel an absolute masterpiece.

There appears to be so little redeemable about Sid; from his over inflated ego to his nasty way of dismissing those he deems beneath him, I truly wondered how I could ever bring myself to care about whether this guy lived or died—in fact, I was rooting for the latter. Then Jack came on the scene and he knew—he saw all the vulnerability, the stains from a past that brought Sid to be who he was, and Jack felt something for the man despite his smarmy exterior. And, slowly but surely, we did too. To say these two had chemistry is to compare a nuclear reactor to a third grade science kit. Explosive does not begin to describe these men and every encounter they have.

I cannot pinpoint one thing that should make you read this book. I can only tell you that this novel is so compelling that I devoured it in record time, and may have whimpered at the end when I read that a second season may be planned. Season one of The Love of Wicked Men is undeniably one of the best novels I have ever read. I highly recommend it to you.