Ruins of Temptation

The Corium University Series, Book 4

By: J. L. Beck, C. Hallman

Narrated by: Marlaina Garrett, Liam DiCosimo

I’ve spent years trying to be someone I’m not. Controlled and humanized.

Still, the darkness lurks inside me, waiting for a chance to break free.

As the headmaster at Corium University, I must maintain professionalism and keep myself in check. I manage to do that until the day I discover I have a daughter and all the carefully constructed walls I’ve built around myself start to crumble.

I know I need an outlet, a way to shut it off, and then she lands in my lap.

Delilah.

I want to punish her, humiliate her, and hurt her in the best ways.

It’s nothing but a cat and mouse game till I discover the secrets she’s hiding …

©2022 by J. L. Beck and C. Hallman (P)2022 by Blackstone Publishing

Too much repetitive inner dialogue.

The author has a great storyline in most of these books. I can not help but feel there is far too much filler in all the books. Inner dialogue that is repeated over and over again. Like the length of the book is more important then just telling the story. I would rather buy a shorter book that doesn’t make me want to skip ahead. Longer in this case is not so good.

Dark and twisted

Loved the book. Great portrayal of a young naïve disillusioned and manipulated girl. Main female character Delilah written wonderfully to portray an annoying girl who kept making poor decisions and put their trust in the wrong person. It’s easy to imagine a girl her age behaving this way and being so susceptible to manipulation and gas lighting which is why she put her trust in Nash and misplaced hate of Aspen. She was slow to mature. Main character was cruel and insensitive many times because it was easy to dislike her because of her behavior. Great story. Did not think the male Narrator portrayed the male character Lucy’s well. His voice was boring. His voice did not portray the necessary anger or sexiness. Poor choice of Narrator. I do think the female narrator did an ok job of sounding young and a bit innocently naive. She does need more inflection in her voice so it doesn’t sound the same all the time. The Audible story would be enhanced bringing this book more to life with different narrators and preferably a duet version where the narrators work together in each chapters instead of the female trying to have a male voice and the male having a female voice.

Terrible narration

Tbh i couldnt get past chapter 12. The narration was awful. The part of the story i did hear sounded ok but i just couldnt listen any more

Better the second time!

This was pretty rough the first time around, I just wasn't feeling Lucas' brutality. Poor Delilah has been thouroly brainwashed. Like, irritatingly so. Everyone is so trigger happy and it makes things pretty frustrating. So many schemes and betrayals. No one can be trusted. This one is another more dark than romance. The plot was also much lighter.

I can’t help but compare! 😫😩

I almost wish I hadn’t read Quinton & Aspens story 1st!! I 💯could NOT get into these characters. I remember Lucas from his brother Nic’s book and this was nice to see him down the road but I just couldn’t connect.
I couldn’t root for the h as I just didn’t like her…(although at the end I TRULY felt for her!!!) Then the H was just a whole bag of peepees and never gave us a chance to feel where he was coming from. I just couldn’t relate. Still gave it 3 stars as the story from an abstract point of view without emotional investment was pretty garned good!
I read and listened and don’t plan on listening again. I didn’t like either narrator: Marlaina Garrett paused after almost every 1st syllable for HRS! I kept paying attention to the pause and almost missing what she was saying. Like, “My.👏🏽Hate👏🏽 knew no bounds. Then the rest of the sentence would be normal. Then there was Liam DiCosimo, also new to me and not very great at voice inflection. He sounded the same all the way through.
All in all I cringe at the thought of starting the next book. It took me days to finish this one although I DO want to know what happens next. I love these authors so much normally and I can almost BET I’d have liked this book a lot more if I didn’t have the back story which, let’s face it, would be super hard to top no matter what!