This article contains Amazon Affiliate Links. Thank you for supporting The Game of Nerds.

If you missed my last Kindle Unlimited review on Silent Vows, you can find it here.

Hello again everyone. I was on a reading frenzy for a week and a half and read six or so books I think, so I am trying to review them all for you. Now I am in a bit of a slump so I am re-reading one of my favorites, Detour by A. Marie. This week I have book one in the Green Hills Academy Trilogy, Savage Devil by Josie Max for you. This is a high school setting, senior year, but the content is most definitely not high school material. You know there are girls in high school reading spicy books though, so… It is a dual POV, so you are getting both sides. Let’s get into it.

We meet Violet Adler on the worst day of her life. Her mother’s body is being pulled from Happy Lake. I don’t know if this makes me a bad person but I love that this happened at Happy Lake. Anyway, Violet wasn’t in the greatest shape either, she had been drugged, it appears by her mother. A short jump in time brings us to Violet moving in with the mayor of their town. Admittedly, I was scratching my head at that one. She was living with her Aunt Dahlia after her mom died and is weeks away from turning eighteen. She had lived with her mother through her drug addiction and had been taking care of herself from a young age. How was this different just because Dahlia was going out of town for work rather than being there? Her mother was just a body but useless in any other meaningful way. Her father has never been in the picture so he isn’t an option. As she moves in there is a press conference in the pool house, mainly to inflate the mayor’s image and things go downhill as soon as the cameras are off. It is a big step up in luxury because Violet is from the poverty-stricken part of town but she is to stay in the pool house and not be allowed in the regular house, which is still worlds better than where she was. Unfortunately, with this move, she has to change schools, so she is going from a subpar school to one for the rich. It comes with negatives and positives.

We briefly meet Knight King, the MMC, when we meet Violet. He was the one to find the body and he stumbled on Violet when he found her mother. Later on, at school, he’s a prick. As you get to know him, you see why. He and his sister are orphans after their parents were killed in an airplane that also killed their business partner Jack. They have also been taken in by the mayor as they are his niece and nephew after all. Knight was born into a life of luxury and hasn’t had to skip meals or wear second or third-hand clothes. He hates Violet because he knows something around her is hinkey and his uncle has something to do with it. It isn’t just that she is poor. He torments Violet until he catches his uncle and some friends assaulting her.

At school, Knight makes a show of snubing her which translates to open season for everyone to ignore or torment Violet. Seraphina instantly hates Violet and leads the campaign to be horrible to Violet. Seraphina decided to hate Violet before she ever picked Violet up on the first day. Violet does make a friend in Arabella, though. Arabella is a gem and I would love to have a friend like her. Arabella’s father is the head of the school which is handy, but Arabella is a true ride-or-die to Violet. School is just as scary as home in this neck of the woods.

I am not a fan of Knight’s name. King as a surname I can see, but Knight as a given name, not my favorite. On the other hand, I love the Adler women’s names, all flowers. It’s a cool way to tie them together and make them a unit. Seraphina and Arabella’s names for them too. Both are catty in a way that only those with money know how to be, but Seraphina is every inch the bitch the name implies (sorry to anyone named Seraphina) and Arabella is a sweet tigress. Mayor King is sleazy and he gives me the ick.

I flew through these. The action goes across all three books so this book cuts off on a cliff-hanger. Lucky for all of us though, the trilogy is completed so you can fly through them too. I will cover book two, Twisted Knight, next week. I have started getting used to books leaving cliffhangers at the end so it didn’t bother me this time. It probably helped that I knew the next one was available.

Have you read Savage Devil or anything else by Josie Max? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle!