Book Review: Wretched

I read Wretched by Emily Mcintire over the past few days. It is the third book in the Never After series, which are all standalone fractured fairytales. Hooked is a fractured reimagining of Peter Pan, Scarred is a fractured reimagining of The Lion King, and Wretched is a fractured reimagining of The Wizard of Oz. I’ve loved all of them so far, but loved Scarred more than Hooked and now I might like Wretched most of all!

The novel is a dual POV and follows Evelina Westerly and Nick Woodsworth. Evelina is the youngest daughter of a crime boss in the Irish mob. They have their fingers in everything, but are most successful in a drug they’ve been selling, Flying Monkey. Nick is a DEA agent who is going undercover as a jewel thief and gets in with the Westerly family to try to find out who the supplier is. But when Nick arrives he and Evelina are in for a shock when they recognize each other from a very hot one-night stand at a club in Chicago. He introduced himself as Nick (his undercover name is Brayden) and she never gave her name and was wearing a blonde wig the night they met.

Nick has a job to do, but he can’t stop thinking about Evelina. Evelina has not had an easy life with her family – she does everything for her father with little appreciation and her older sister Dorothy is cruel. But, her eldest sister always told her family is everything before she died. Will she choose Nick or her family when she finds out the truth?

I absolutely loved this book! This is the first book, that I can think of at least, that the fmc is the villain and I loved it. Evelina was ruthless and we’re not talking about just some morally questionable things – she really got her hands dirty – but I loved her. The chemistry between her and Nick was super sizzling and spicy. I thought the story was so good and I could not put it down. My only critique would be that I felt like the end came about pretty abruptly. The epilogue made it better, but I definitely would’ve loved a more drawn out ending. Maybe I just didn’t want to let go of the characters! I still gave it 5 stars on GoodReads because of the vibes.