Book Reviews/ November 16, 2023November 16, 2023

Virgin Sacrifice by L. M. Ramirez Book Review

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Blurb

For most, death is final.
For me, it was just the beginning…

My mother gave up everything to save me.
When she died last year, I thought my life was over, but Mami raised me to be a survivor. A fighter. And that’s just what I intend to do.

Tucked away in rural Connecticut, the elite Hollow Oak University is the perfect place for a new beginning. The plan is simple. Keep my head down, focus on my studies, get my degree, and disappear.

But the gothic campus is not the safe haven I had hoped for. Girls are vanishing without a trace. And, despite my efforts to remain unnoticed, trouble continues to stalk me.

Trouble like the Blackwells and their pet serial killer.

Alister, Nixon, Locke, and Everest are beautiful, brutal, and completely fixated on turning my fresh start into a nightmare. They already have blood on their hands—and now they’re out for mine.

Sensitive Content

Here is the potentially sensitive content I observed while reading this book:

Alcohol
Blood
Bullying
Child Abuse
Classism
Death of a Parent
Dubious Consent
Emotional Abuse
Gore
Injury
Murder
Profanity
Racism
Sexual content
Sexual violence
Stalking
Torture

Ratings

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There are possible **SPOILERS** beyond this point!

Overall Rating

3.25/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I was very excited to read Virgin Sacrifice from the tropes and the blurb, alone! The cover is so beautiful! I don’t know that I received the book that I was hoping to read though. Nothing about the cover is relevant to the book besides the fact that this is about the beautiful main character, Luz. This would be an interesting thriller but romance, I’m not sure. It’s very gore-y and the serial killer phenomenon was compelling along with the twists. The book was dark and I was intrigued enough to finish this tale. I can see the potential as the writing was sound, but I don’t know that I want to continue in the series to answer any of the questions I’m left with.

There was entirely too much time spent in the FMC’s narrative when other characters are introduced. She has some cool attributes, like being multilingual, and her backstory was interesting once parts of it are revealed, but again, that’s not the point of a romance. All the connections she had with the MMCs were told to us, not shown. We had very little time where the FMC spent time with any of the other male leads. She spent more time with her friends than the guys. I was confused about why she would say she was attracted to these men who were all mean and abusive to her when they were actually spending time together.

Though this was a why choose situation, she didn’t choose any of these characters. Luz was written to appear as if she’s afraid of or tolerated Locke, Nix, Alister and she doesn’t even talk to Everest. There was a lot of strange, combative flirting/touching but they could have all just been obsessed stalkers and I think that would have been a more appropriate descriptor than romantic partners. There are multiple POVs but I did not get enough time with any of these MMCs to like any of them besides maybe Everest, potentially Alister. I understand that it is supposed to be a trilogy and there is promised spice in the future books but I did not see a romantic connection that I would want more of in the future.

When a story is labeled as slow burn, it means that though it will take longer to get to some spice, there will be spice. There was no sex in this book. At all. Not even closed door. That’s very misleading and I would not have read it if I knew there was no sex present in combination with the lack of apparent romance. I couldn’t understand how multiple people were explicitly murdered, but the most we could get was some clothed grinding and finger-sucking? There is some obsession with virginity also and I don’t see how or why it’s important to the story. Maybe that will be addressed in future books but… I just did not understand.

I think that this one was just not for me. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe I assumed too much from the cover and blurb. I don’t know. If you’re interested in this book, I would say to take it for a spin and let me know how you like it. It was an interesting story if you like murder mystery/thrillers. I did receive this book as an ARC but I didn’t know it was part of an incomplete series following the same pairing. Likely, my fault but it wasn’t in the blurb that this was book one of three when I started it.