ARC REVIEW OF Smoke and Sin (The Perfect Gentlemen Book 4) by Shayla Black &, Lexi Blake

I have been counting down  Roman Calder & Augustine Spencer ‘s book for quite some time. I knew it would be a doozy of a story and whoa howdy, was this. I couldn’t put this book down, for the heat and the angst, the passion and the pain drew me in. It was quite possibly the best 2^nd chance romance story I have read in some time. Not to mention the murder mystery on who killed their best friend  Maddox Crawford, which is definitely heating up along with the mystery surrounding Sergei .

What made this one my favorite Perfect Gentlemen book was Augustine and Roman were lovers back in law school.  She is also the sister of another group member, Dax. Back then she thought they could be together when Roman decided it was time to end things and how he did it was by breaking her heart. It was brutal.From then on, Augustine never let him back into her life and they were apart for over 10 years. She ends up working for the president and keeping her distance from Roman. It is during this trip for the President they end up in close quarters. There is a lot of angst and a lot of pain related to their past that keeps popping up-- Things that cause them both emotional harm/pain because they haven’t confronted the events of the past and until they do together, it will cause them both emotional harm and the contentious feelings will continued to be stirred up between them. Then Augustine has stepped into what perilous mystery that Zack and Roman are secretly into and finds herself in danger all due to what she uncovered not known to the others . What does Roman want to do? Protect her from all danger and at the same time, make sure they make it out alive. As they are trying to figure out what is going on between them and uncover this mystery, a secret from the past is finally revealed. Roman and Augustine have a complex and brilliant love story that spans over a decade. There is a lot of things that made it so complicated and emotional, tissues will be needed. I can say at times I wanted to throw my kindle when Roman acted like a jerk and there were times when I wanted to shake Augustine, to get her to just open up more with Roman. But that is how it is when the love is deep, and the past is riddled with so many misunderstandings and misapprehensions and just straight up pride. I loved reading how these lovers finally get together.

As always, the writing team of Lexi Blake and Shayla Black hit it out of the park with a complete home run with this book and in fact, with this series. Lots of answers provided but in the final pages of the book, a super surprise ending that involves Zack which leads us to his book. I can’t say more but I can say this blew me out of the water and took my breath away. I am psyched for Zack’s story next.

 My Rating:  4.9 stars *****

"I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***