Tryst Six Venom

by Penelope Douglas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is filled with so much teen angst, romance, kink, and ridiculousness, and I honestly loved it.

I admit I’ve never really read a bully romance, but this was a perfect introduction. I loved the main characters and the secondary characters were all interesting and relevant to the story. There was non-stop drama, both typical high school drama and some less than typical. The tension between Olivia and Clay, the main characters, was written so well and it was easy to get hooked just to see where things were going and how it was going to end up between them. I genuinely wasn’t sure what the end result would be and that was exactly what I wanted.

All My Thoughts

May contain spoilers.

I picked this book up on a whim and I was not disappointed. You are immediately thrown into the kind of tension and drama that continues to build between main characters Olivia and Clay. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning there is a lot of hostility between the two of them, though it’s unclear exactly why for a large portion of the book. The vibe we get at first is that they are from opposite sides of town so the world works differently for them both. It’s clear too that they both have their own personal issues with their home lives that just help to fuel the aggression they need outlets for. That outlet just happens to be each other. The hatred between them though is overflowing with sexual tension.

Eventually, they do cross that line and the author does a really good job of making this feel very believable. The flow into a sexual relationship while still being mostly mean to each other works so well. I loved seeing this relationship from both perspectives, both Olivia and Clay having deeper feelings for one another but neither being willing to actually do anything about it. The drama between them kept me feeling tense throughout the entire book. Yes it gets very sexual between them and both have a somewhat violent possessiveness towards each other, and again, the author writes this so very well. Their emotions were so all over the place that I genuinely didn’t know how it was going to end up between them. Neither was willing to really put themselves out there due to social pressures and internal fears for most of the book, a fact was really driven home but constant sneaking around and keeping whatever was between them hidden.

This book had a really solid cast of secondary characters that fit well into the narrative. Everyone had purpose and I found myself really liking a lot of them. Even the antagonistic characters were done well, had a lot of personality, and developed as expected.

There’s was a lot going on with this plot. I will admit it was constantly one big dramatic event after another. Gang fights, divorce, massive storms. The entire book was a roller coaster that never stopped. It was a bit over the top, but I do think it worked for the book. Every one of these events pushed the relationship forward between Clay and Olivia in some way. None of it was meaningless. I really appreciated that it was Clay, the character that I feel needed the most development, that took the necessary steps to really turn the plot around and took it from a love/hate relationship to a real relationship.

Overall

This was a great book full of sexy times, aggression, romance, violence, and drama. I do think the 18+ needs to really be acknowledged, but if all of these things are a positive checkmark then I cannot recommend it enough.