The first reader review of The Evil And The Pure has come in, via Amazon, and it's a good one -- phew!! It's by Katrina E Martin, and here it is in its 5 star entirety:
In the shadowy underground of the world, there's darkness in the sweetest people and gentleness in the roughest. They go together like this, hand in hand, the shadow and the light, the bad and the good, the evil and the pure. Sometimes, you'll be surprised which side takes precedence. This is something that winds its way throughout in THE EVIL AND THE PURE.
From the onset, the use of voice in this novel is spectacular. It grabbed me from the start and didn't let me go until long after the final page where my head remained reeling. It uses a colloquial, well-crafted narration that provides insight beyond the limited scope. It lets the readers develop an intimate relationship with the main characters, letting the reader see their lives come together and intertwine, then individually fall apart. The pacing is smooth and carries you right through, where personal promises of "just one more page" are hard to keep. It was an engaging read, but by no means does that mean it's light, playful reading. It had moments of pure darkness with some of the most vile monsters because of how plausible and REAL they are--because they're HUMAN, in all of their darkness and perversion, greed and guile.
Personally, I absolutely adored this. This book was gangsters and grit. It brought forth some characters I positively love and others that make me feel ill. It had me cringing and on the edge of my seat in rotating intervals. Definitely not a book for the under aged or overly squeamish, but so, so potent and powerful. If you like gangster stories and are willing to venture down the crooked path of sex, money, drugs, and mobsters, this fantastic, gritty, gripping work has your number.