Reading Nightfall is like a trip to crazytown. The "hero" is an extremely dysfunctional, manipulative jerk. He plays mind games with the heroine and never tells the truth or gives a straight answer until the book is almost over. (I enjoyed that last 1/16th of the book.) The heroine's father is also a piece of work and hands her over to a man he thinks killed his wife in cold blood, and possibly his children. Who does that? The heroine seems like a good person, but supposedly 'falls in love' with the man who constantly lies to her, threatens her (even to kill her) and later even punches her in the face! But they have great smex -that makes it all-right! Eventually the heroine gets the truth out of the "hero" and he acts somewhat normally (except for the punch) in the homestretch of the book.
I don't know why I wasted my time reading this book. 2/5 stars ( )

"I don't mean a goddamn thing to your father except as the means to an end. You know why he won't let you see the manuscript? He doesn't want you to know the truth. That he's writing my story. How I spent my adult life killing women who were foolish enough to fall in love with me."

Read for my "Fall" into a good book Halloween bingo square.
Its way past my bedtime but I wanted to write this up before I crashed so that I can move on from this eerie and disturbing story. You know those experiences you occasionally have with people and there's an almost unspoken "let us never speak of this again"? Yeah, this story is one of those.

Our hero:
"It's easy to kill," he murmured, and the pads of his thumbs stroked the fragile hollow of her neck. "Did you know that, Cassidy? Just a certain amount of pressure, and it would crush your throat. You'd suffocate, fairly quickly. It wouldn't be very messy, at least at first. But then, when someone dies a sudden, violent death, their bladder and bowels empty. Diana stank when I found her."

No one does anti-heroes quite like Anne Stuart do they? I don't want to give anything away (the truth isn't revealed to the reader until around the 86% mark, with another big revelation coming even later) but Richard is out on bail provided by Cassidy's father in exchange for Richard telling his story to him. Richard has been convicted of killing his wife and even though they can't find the bodies, they think he also killed his children. Cassidy's father is a narcissistic a-hole who is basically offering up his daughter to a murderer so that he can write the book of a lifetime. The story presented to the reader is that Richard asked for Cassidy after seeing her picture on the dad's desk and father of the year thinks Richard wants her for sex. It's a distasteful introduction to the characters, to say the least.

Throughout the story, Richard is a creepy threatening dude who loves to play with words about his guilt and innocence. I have no earthly idea why Cassidy was drawn to him but somehow it worked, I kept reading. I mentioned in a reading update that this had a bit of a Gone Girl feel to it, which with Richard's description and the whole is his guilty, not guilty question, it definitely did in the beginning. The middle and ending were different enough to lessen it but I could see those that enjoyed that book liking this one, too.

Those looking for a strict genre romance probably will want to look elsewhere, unless quotes like this make your heart flutter,
He stared at her. At her pale, defiant mouth, her sorrowful eyes. "I'll dream about you in hell," he murmured.
"See that you do."

This was dark, eerie, and disturbing (definitely has some trigger warnings involving
rape and child molestation) I need to go watch some Winnie the Pooh or something. ( )

This book was unlike anything I've read before. It was dark, wrong at times and a crazy thrill ride and I loved every second of it. From the moment I started It, it pulled me in. The premise of this book was so interesting and compelling to me. I mean how do you fall in love with someone convicted of killing his wife and children? I thought there must be more to this story and I must find out why. And that’s what kept me turning page after page. I definitely enjoyed this one and I think Ill check out more of this authors books. As she touches very interesting topics and delivers them in an interesting way.

The characters were very well done, especially Richard Tiernan. The darkness in him, the reason behind his actions, his charm. Everything about him was compelling. Even I found myself attracted to his character, which made me understand the main character in a way. Even if at times I was a little annoyed by her, she was still a pretty good character. ( )

I didn't enjoy this book so much as I was captivated by it. With Nightfall Stuart writes a very dark, angsty story -- like a train wreck you can't look away from. Richard Tiernan is a complex and interesting character who provides the majority of substance for this novel. Cassidy Roarke, not so much. Her role in the plot is mostly reactionary, as she is manipulated and led around by everyone around her. She runs on shear nerves most of the novel, and I do appreciate the dramatic quality of that, but she was like a tennis ball getting smacked around by various people and, at times, all I wanted was for it to end. Which, I'm sure, was largely the author's intent. I think the plan backfired, though, making Cassie a less-appealing heroine and imbedding a sort of redundancy into the story. So, although I couldn't put this book down, I was relieved when it was done. ( )

http://jacescribbles.blogspot.com/2008/04/nightfall-by-anne-stuart.html ( )