Vow of Deception (Deception Trilogy 1), by Rina Kent | Free Audiobook
Vow of Deception (Deception Trilogy 1)Audiobook
A dead wife's name, and no way out of the house
Adrian Volkov runs the city, and he runs it the way he runs everything else: without asking twice. So when he presents a woman he has never met with a proposition, it is not really a proposition. She can spend years behind bars for something she barely remembers doing, or she can move into his house, wear his wife's clothes and answer to his wife's name. Lia is dead, or missing, or something in between, and nobody in the household is eager to explain which.
What she is asked to do sounds simple for about a chapter. Then she learns how many people are watching, how much the staff know and do not say, and how quickly a borrowed life can feel like the only one you have. Adrian is not a man who explains himself, and the closer she gets to the truth of what happened to his wife, the less she is able to tell where the performance ends.
It runs 8 hrs and 4 mins, read by Jason Clarke and Desiree Ketchum, and it is the first of three books. The publisher says plainly that it does not stand alone, and that is accurate: this volume ends on a cliffhanger that resolves nothing, so budget for the whole trilogy rather than one credit.
This is the first BookTok dark romance where the audience is genuinely split down the middle, and both halves are loud. One side calls it the best thing Rina Kent has written; the other side finishes it angry. Since the trilogy only works if you commit to all three, it is worth knowing which side you are likely to land on before you start.
The case for it is easy to state, because the readers who love it are unusually articulate about why. A reviewer on The StoryGraph describes it as "a captivating, angst filled romance that kept me on the edge of my seat". Others put it in terms that sound like complaints and are meant as praise: "This book was so dark and twisted and entirely unhinged so naturally I devoured it." One five-star reader who has reread the trilogy repeatedly calls it her favourite Rina Kent, and notes the thing that keeps people coming back, which is that Adrian never once calls the heroine by her real name. The mystery of who she actually is, and why she is standing in a dead woman's shoes, is what the book runs on, and it is genuinely well hidden: readers who pride themselves on spotting twists routinely report that they guessed wrong twice.
Now the other half, and it is worth quoting precisely because it is so specific. A reviewer who gave it two and a half stars writes that "a lot of the narrative in this book was superfluous", argues that "this could've been a duet instead of a trilogy", and makes the sharpest point I have seen about the structure: although the heroine has most of the point of view, "the story was happening around her, rather than to her". That is a real criticism of the first act, and other readers echo it in language I will not repeat here. One reviewer's summary, "that is not how romance works", is the whole objection in five words.
Two things are worth knowing rather than arguing about. The first is that the trilogy is a single story cut into three: this volume ends on a cliffhanger and resolves almost nothing, and several readers who disliked it say the series does not find its footing until the second book. The second is the content. Worth knowing before you start, because reviewers of this trilogy always list it: there is a dub con dynamic throughout, a rape scene that turns out to be a nightmare rather than something that happened, and references to child loss, alcoholism and mental illness, on top of the usual violence of the genre.
If you want the author at her most controlled, her Royal Elite series is the safer entry point. If you want to know what the BookTok dark romance shelf looks like at full volume, start here and plan to buy all three.
Vow of Deception opens Rina Kent's Deception Trilogy, one of the dark romance series that made her a BookTok staple. A woman is offered a choice between prison and a job she cannot refuse: live in a stranger's house and pass herself off as his dead wife.
It is a mafia romance with a very dark edge, and the trilogy is one continuous story: this first book ends on a cliffhanger rather than a resolution, and readers agree the series builds as it goes.
It runs 8 hrs and 4 mins, read by Jason Clarke and Desiree Ketchum. Be aware of the content before you start: dub con dynamics, references to child loss and mental illness, and a scene that is later revealed to have been a nightmare rather than something that happened. With the free trial, you can pick any title you want, this one included, cancel whenever you like, and the audiobook stays in your library afterwards.
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