Thank you to Sara Cate and the team at the Author Agency for the advance reader copy of The Anti-Hero, the first book in the Goode Brothers series.
I adore the Salacious Players Club, so when Sara began to tease a new series I couldn’t help but get excited for it. The Anti-Hero plays upon many religious themes, so it is definitely a recommended read for Sierra Simone’s Priest series fans. But don’t worry SPC fans, there is a sex club in this too and so many incredible signature Sara Cate kinky scenes.
I’ve been good long enough. As the eldest son of Austin’s most prominent preacher, I’ve lived my life on the virtuous side. No scandals. Flawless image. Clean reputation. That’s the way it must be if I’m going to take his place someday. But everything changes when I find out my father is a VIP member of a local kink club. A liar. A cheater. A hypocrite. Now, I’m done being righteous. And when the club owner’s jaded girlfriend comes to me with a proposal, I can’t resist. Sage is nothing like the women I’ve dated before. Pink hair, tattoos, piercings. I know it’ll burn my father’s reputation to the ground when she and I are seen together. But our fake dating scheme isn’t enough. We need videos— dirty videos. The more we film these scenes, the more I like it. She wants me to degrade her, hurt her, violate her. And God help me, I want it too. But it’s hardly fake anymore, and before long I don’t recognize the Goode man I used to be.
Check out my more detailed thoughts below…
- Characters: Our not-always-so-heroic hero is Adam Goode—the goody-two-shoes son of the most famous pastor in all of Texas. Adam followed his father and became a preacher, living his entire life in a way that pleased his father. All of that changes once he catches his father Truett Goode in the VIP section of Austin’s premier sex club. Sara built such an interesting character in Adam, he’s incredibly torn between what he has thought as righteous behaviour all his life and what was sinning. Damn does he sin well, especially with Sage involved. Sage is our heroine, she partially owns the sex club and is a spitfire with bright pink hair and a body covered in tattoos. Never the type of girl Adam would have gone for as he and the reader get to know her better we understand how loyal, caring, and supportive she is of not just Adam but her laundromat found family. Sara set up a crew of Goode brothers and planted seeds for future stories that I am pumped to read. I did find Adam toying between acting like a saint and acting like a sinner grew a bit tiring near the end, when I was just so invested in his relationship with Sage that I wanted them to figure things out so badly.
- Setting: This story is set in Austin, Texas which was the perfect setting for a story like this. Setting this in Texas worked for the fact that there would be a famous pastor on the level of Truett Goode. What Austin brought though was the ability to be weird and quirky, to have a popular sex club on the main street. A key set piece of the story is the laundromat that Sage lives above, and I loved so many scenes that went down in there, especially the book club scene.
- Pacing: I could not help but savour this story. It would be easy to fly through but I could only read it in chunks before I went to bed and I looked forward to returning to the story each night. The story never had a low point and really chugged along perfectly. I wished the cam work/sex tapes part of the story was more flushed out, rather than fodder for a few hot scenes.
- Romance: Adam and Sage were just sinfully sensual. This book features heavy use of degradation kink, just to warn you if that is not for you. I really enjoyed Sara’s depiction of Adam’s struggles with excepting that Sage wanted rough sex and that she craved feeling that pain. This man who grew up so worried about being gentle fell so deliciously into some rough play. Their relationship begins as a fake dating scheme, just something casual to piss off Truett. I loved how it flowed so naturally from allyship to friendship to a relationship. I got emotionally invested in them, while also still getting to enjoy so many hot scenes.
The Anti-Hero receives four out of five stars.
You can pick up the story here.
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Thank you again to Sara and her team at the Author Agency for the review opportunity. Thank you for reading and supporting my blog!
