Thank you to Emma Scott and her team for the advance reader copy of The Sinner, this new paranormal romance releases on August 15th!

I am so excited for Emma’s first foray into a paranormal romance! This is such a unique contribution to the genre and I recommend it to any Emma fan or paranormal reader who wants something different!

I am a member of Emma Scott’s review team, but I stand by my reviews remaining honest and true.

Check out the Goodreads synopsis…

“Shy, introverted Lucy Dennings lives a quiet little life in New York City, working for a nonprofit and keeping to herself. Every afternoon, she goes home to her empty apartment and Edgar, her houseplant, and every night, she loses herself in the pages of her beloved romance novels. Her lonely heart seeks solace in tales of passionate, enduring, all-consuming love, but more and more, Lucy feels she’s not just reading for pleasure but searching for her a lost piece of herself in the pages. As if she once touched something beautiful but it’s been ripped away.

Until one day Lucy discovers a dead body in the alley behind her apartment. Even if it’s too late, her first instinct is to help.

Her second is to run.

Because the dead body isn’t so very dead, and suddenly, her little world isn’t so little but one in which dreams feel like memories, “inner demons” actually lurk in dark alleys, and a beautiful creature of darkness with amber eyes and wings like night might hold the key to what her heart has been aching for…if she doesn’t fall down the path of eternal damnation first.

From USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Emma Scott, comes an emotional paranormal love story of passion, sacrifice, and the soul-deep love of a lifetime…more than one.“

Check out my more detailed thoughts below…

Characters: Lucy is a twenty-three-year-old living alone in NYC. She lives such a solitary life and continually tells herself she is good with it. But really she is lonely. Lucy’s story begins with her finding a body in the alley behind her place. And that person was Casziel. Casziel is a demon who has crossed over to the other side, ie. our earth. Cas goes between the determination of a man on a mission and a man of mystery. I found them both interesting characters, and I loved that as the story progressed, we learned more about them. The characters learned more about themselves.
Setting: The story is set in New York City. But what really shone was the flashbacks to Sumer. Emma Scott decided to incorporate Mesopotamia mythology, culture, customs, and history into the book. Cas is ancient Sumerian and I loved how this aspect felt so unique. Often authors stick to Greek mythology so I was excited about something different.
Pacing: The mysteries and secrets of this story and the world came to light at the perfect pace.
Romance: Lucy loves romance novels. Which I always love in a romance protagonist! So this fuels her desire for an epic love story. She has this crush on her co-worker, Guy but he does not really know she exists. So Lucy concocts a plan to have Cas a date to work functions to get Guy to notice her. So this was a bit of a surprising fake relationship trope. I loved that Lucy even acknowledged that the way the trope works is that the couple gets together in the end. I loved it so much that as Cas got dedicated to this plan his jealousy grew. Lucy is a bright shining light in contrast to Cas’s darker side. This story was not as steamy, rather it is an epic romance.