Three AM. The unit was dead quiet - the kind of quiet we don't talk about because we're superstitious like that - and I had fourteen charts to update. So I popped in my earbuds and started this one, figuring a dark romance would keep me alert. By 4 AM I had six charts done and was genuinely concerned about my own pulse rate. Not because of a patient. Because of a fictional criminal law professor.
Let me be clear about what this is: Kiss the Villain is a professor-student dark MM romance with a full cast of seven narrators, and it is absolutely unhinged in the best and worst ways simultaneously.
When the Golden Boy Cracks and You Can Hear It
Gareth Carson is Rina Kent doing what she does best - building a protagonist who looks like a magazine cover and thinks like an arsonist. The dual narration between Stephen Dexter and Grayson Owens carries this whole thing. Dexter gives Gareth this controlled, almost clinical precision that cracks open during the darker scenes - you can hear the mask slipping in his delivery, the way his voice tightens before he says something threatening. Owens as Kayden does this cold-to-vulnerable shift that genuinely caught me off guard around the midpoint. One scene he's ice, the next there's this raw edge in his voice that made me stop mid-chart and just... sit there.
The full cast earns their keep during the multi-character dialogue sequences. There's a Reddit thread scene (yes, literally characters posting on Reddit within the story) where the different narrators trade off, and it's genuinely immersive in a way I wasn't expecting from what's essentially an internet comments section. The side characters don't blur together. You know who's talking without the "he said, she said" tags.
The Moaning Problem (Yes, We Need to Talk About It)
Okay. So. The sex scenes have added sound effects. Moaning, breathing, the works. And look - I work in a trauma center, I've heard every sound the human body can make, very little phases me. But the "mmm" and "aaah" layered into the intimate scenes are... a lot. It's not subtle. It pulled me out of what were otherwise well-performed scenes. If you're listening in any semi-public space - and I was literally at a nurses' station - you will want to have that volume on LOW or switch to reading for those chapters.
The other thing that wore on me: the conflict-resolution-through-sex cycle. Gareth and Kayden have this intense psychological push-pull that's genuinely compelling when it's verbal sparring and power games. But by hour ten, the pattern of "fight, escalate, have sex, reset" started feeling predictable. The story's strongest when it leans into the obsession and mutual stalking dynamic - when these two are circling each other like predators who can't decide whether to attack or submit. The physical scenes are fine. There are just too many of them serving as emotional band-aids.
14 Hours of Psychological Chess With a Body Count
What Kent does well here is the darkness. This isn't dark romance where "dark" means the love interest is rude. Gareth has genuine impulses toward destruction that he's suppressing under a perfect-son exterior, and the book actually explores what happens when someone like Kayden gives him permission to stop pretending. The psychological depth is real. There's a scene where Gareth threatens Kayden with this terrifyingly calm delivery from Dexter that made my skin crawl in the good way - the kind of scene where you realize the "golden boy" might be the more dangerous one. I got that same crawling dread from Girl, Forgotten, where the menace lives entirely in what isn't said.
At 14 and a half hours, this is a commitment. The pacing holds through about the first two-thirds, then wobbles in the final act where I felt like we were retreading emotional ground. But the twists - and there are genuine ones - land hard enough that I stayed locked in.
Production quality is solid. Clean audio, good levels between narrators, no jarring transitions when the POV switches. Minus the moaning sound effects (which feel like a production-level choice, not a narrator issue), this is a well-made audiobook.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
If you're already in the Rina Kent universe - Legacy of Gods specifically - this slots in with a lot of connective tissue to other books that'll reward you. If this is your entry point, you can follow it, but you'll miss context on side characters who clearly have their own stories. Skip this if added sound effects in intimate scenes are a dealbreaker for you, or if repetitive conflict-then-sex cycles frustrate you more than the psychological tension rewards you.
Carlos would never understand this book and I'm never telling him about it. But I drove past my exit twice during the Kayden vulnerability scenes, so take from that what you will.
Shift Change
This is a 4-star listen with a few frustrations that keep it from the top shelf. The narration - particularly Dexter and Owens - elevates material that could've been just another dark romance into something that actually gets under your skin. The moaning effects are a genuine annoyance. The repetitive conflict cycles are a structural weakness. But when this book hits its stride in the psychological warfare between two people who are too smart and too damaged for their own good? Night shift approved. I yelled at my dashboard zero times about medical accuracy because there's basically no medicine in this one, and honestly, that was kind of a relief.
