Angry God by L.J. Shen Blog Tour

From #1 Amazon Bestseller L.J. Shen comes a new, emotional standalone about first love, second chances, and overcoming breathtaking losses at a young age.

Vaughn Spencer.
They call him an angry god.
To me, he is nothing but a heartless prince.
His parents rule this town, its police, every citizen and boutique on Main Street.
All I own is a nice, juicy grudge against him for that time he almost killed me.
Between hooking up with a different girl every weekend, breaking hearts, noses and rules, Vaughn also finds the time to bully little ole’ me.
I fight back, tooth and nail, never expecting him to chase me across the ocean after we graduate high school.
But here he is, living with me in a dark, looming castle on the outskirts of London.
A fellow intern. A prodigal sculptor. A bloody genius.
They say this place is haunted, and it is.
Carlisle Castle hides two of our most awful secrets.
Vaughn thinks he can kill the ghosts of his past, but what he doesn’t know? It’s my heart he’s slaying.

Angry God is a stand-alone, DARK High School Romance. It deals with sensitive subjects some may find triggering.

Book 3
Buy Links

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon Au  ~  Amazon Ca
~  Also Available with KindleUnlimited  ~

“How good are you at keeping secrets, Lenora Astalis?” His voice wrapped around my neck like a noose.

I wanted to cough. I needed to cough. He terrified me. I hated him with the heat and passion of a thousand blazing suns. He made me feel like a scaredy cat and a snitch.

“Oh, yes. If you’re coward enough to pretend you’re asleep, you’re good enough to keep a secret. That’s the thing about you, Astalis. I can smash you into dust and watch your grains dance at my feet. My little circus monkey.”

I might’ve hated Vaughn, but I hated myself more for not standing up to him. For not opening my eyes and spitting in his face. Clawing his unnaturally blue eyes out. Taunting him back for all the times he’d taunted all of us at Carlisle Prep.

“By the way, your eyelids are moving,” he said drily, chuckling.

He straightened up, his finger making a brief stop at the base of my spine. He snapped his fingers, making a breaking sound, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, letting out a gasp. I squeezed my eyes tighter, still pretending to sleep.

He laughed.

The bastard laughed.

Was he sparing me for the time being? Was he going to check in on me from now on? Retaliate if I opened my mouth? He was so unpredictable. I wasn’t sure what my life would look like in the morning.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆
3 Frustrating Stars

Kinda Spoiler-Free Review (I'll try anyway, because I am frustrated)

Angry God is the third installment of the All Saints High series, which is the spin-off of Sinners of Saint series. Can it be read as a standalone with little to no confusion? Sure. Should you read it as a standalone? No. Should you read the Sinners of Saint series first? Yes.

Now, since those who haven't read the series first have now departed to go read it, that leaves everyone else who is up-to-date. So that helps eliminate spoilers, for the most part.

I was frustrated in a way that differed from the frustration I felt during Broken Knight. I five-starred every book in the Sinners of Saint series. I absolutely went crazy for Daria in Pretty Reckless (that was actually the first book I read by Shen, then read Sinners of Saint) but between Broken Knight and Angry God, I'm frustrated.

I can just excuse the irrational behaviors of the characters when they're 5, 12, 17, and 19. I can excuse how they don't make rational decisions, where it's all based on emotions, yet the author over and over tells me they are unemotional. Tells, but shows the opposite. I can excuse their criminal/abusive behavior when they're wrecked, so to speak. I can ignore the fact that there's always girls (all but the current and past narrator females) who are all mean girls, psychotic, yet no one ever stops them. They just run herd on everyone to a criminal degree, and not a single person stops them, not even the adults. What I could not accept is a 60 year-old father being used as the ultimate plot hole filler.

I was reading along, finding most of the novel completely irrational, without any true emotions dictated by the human condition, where if a person did X, usually Y is the reaction, sometimes Z, but these characters managed to do LMNOP. I accepted this because it's the genre, Shen's writing style, and I was addicted to the story spun. It frustrated me to no end, but it's the nature of the bully genre, so I rolled with it. Shock-value at its best, until it felt like it was at its worst.

Angry God begins with a 12 and 13 year-old Lenny and Vaughn, where I struggled to read but tossed it off to the fact that the narrator was 12. Then we're thrust into high school, where I didn't struggle to read. But it felt forced, rushed, where the characters weren't propelled by their traits but by the need to move the plot somewhere. Then it shifts again, to a college setting.

As I said above, I find Shen's novels addictive, but I won't just hand out a favorable review because of it. When I hit the 70% mark, where Lenny's dad was used as the ultimate plot hole filler again and again, a character just added to literally fill holes, because he was nowhere in the novel until he was needed, I actually shut my tablet down and just shook my head for a good few minutes out of pure frustration. The excuses made ZERO sense. What. So. Ever.

(Click here to view potential spoiler on Goodreads – it’s hidden behind a Goodreads Spoiler link)

The only parts I enjoyed yet found sickeningly fascinating were some of the darker times shared between Lenny and Vaughn, and that's because I could rationalize them being young and stupid and bent, yet found it interesting how virgins were so sexually evolved in the darker kinks. I was titillated. I was entertained. I read with fiendish delight.

Vaughn's past torment that shaped him into who he became was flawlessly executed, realistic, as was the predator's characterization. The rest was just all over the place. I will say, what happened to Vaughn was yet another instance of characters acting out of character. Baron and Em not noticing for a decade? Baron and Em, the ones who are fiercely intelligent and protective, completely ignorant and blind to their small child changing overnight? Baron and Em, not once thinking it bizarre that their son was so miserable, and didn't think they should I don't know... help him? Yes, Baron was a miserable SOB too, but yet again, that was situational, where something happened to him. So I find it out of the realm of possibility that neither of his parents figured out something happened to Vaughn. Yet they became super sleuths after seeing one article, where it all falls into place. That was also incredibly hard to swallow.

I want more. I need more. Bully, love-hate, crazy unpredictable is my guilty pleasure. There's a fine line. But if this trend of characters getting lobotomies continues, where irrational things happen out of character, simply to push a plot forward, I'm going to have to take a break.

Also Available in the All Saints High Series

Book 1
Buy Links

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon Au  ~  Amazon Ca
~  Also Available with KindleUnlimited  ~

For reviews & more info, check out our stop on the Pretty Reckless Blog Tour.

Book 2
Buy Links

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon Au  ~  Amazon Ca
~  Also Available with KindleUnlimited  ~

For reviews & more info, check out our stop on the Broken Knight Blog Tour.

L.J. Shen is a USA Today, Washington Post and Amazon #1 Best-selling author of contemporary, New Adult and YA romance. Her books have been sold in nineteen different countries.

She lives in California with her husband, son, cat and eccentric fashion choices, and enjoys good wine, bad reality TV shows and catching sun rays with her lazy cat.

Connect with L.J.

Facebook  ~  Twitter  ~  Instagram  ~  Website  ~  Goodreads
LJ’s Sassy Sparrows Facebook Group

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Angry God (All Saints High #3) by L.J. Shen to read and review for this tour.