Tempting Venom is the last in Rina Kent’s Vipers series, three interconnected standalone dark romances. This installment is an intense, MM, enemies-to-lovers romance with lots of drama and the spice that readers love from this author.
Marcus Osborn and Preston Armstrong, both scions of two of the wealthiest families in Graystone, have been rivals, on the ice and off of it, since they first played against each other.
They hate each other, getting in each other’s way whenever they can, never pulling their punches. Until one night, that hate turns into something else, a toxic attraction that will set their whole world on fire.
This is kind of like an unhinged, far more violent version of Heated Rivalry. Also, hockey truly barely factors into this story. It’s much more about sex, shitty parents, trauma, and a devious secret society. If you’re going into this expecting a hockey romance, this is that in name only.
Preston Armstrong is intensely traumatized, with severe coping mechanisms. For all his darkness, he’s hilarious and provides a certain comedic relief here. He’s fascinating in all his intensity, but in many ways he’s just an extreme version of several other characters in the Rinaverse.
Sometimes the dark feels like it wants to eat me alive. Other times—like today—it’s basically my emotional support void. The only place I can actually breathe.
Marcus, on the other hand, kind of bores me. As much as their relationship chemistry is enticing, he, on his own, brings nothing original to the table.
Their sex life is angsty and mean at the start, slowly transforming into something really heartwarming, although no less kinky for it. It’s the highlight of any novel in this universe, and Tempting Venom is no exception.
It’s possible that I’m just moving past my Rina Kent phase. All her books are blending together and feeling hollow. It’s starting to become very formulaic, which is fine, but there’s very little alteration to make each book feel at all different.
That said, the prose itself doesn’t suffer. The banter between Preston and Marcus is delightful, and the book is filled with compelling and descriptive language. The story as a whole is fleshed out and well-paced.
Every room smells like old money and newer guilt. The walls are beige because nothing says “emotional repression” quite like that color. The library’s full of books no one’s read, the piano hasn’t been touched since my stepmother’s last meltdown, and the dining table could seat up to fifty people we don’t even like.
The main issue here is that each book replays the same events as the last, just from different perspectives. As this is the third book in the series, readers knew exactly what was going to happen in the main beats of the story, and it gets old.
Tempting Venom is a good book. It’s exciting, dramatic, and well-written on its own. But for seasoned readers of this universe, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. I’ve loved many of Rina Kent’s books in the past, and if this were the first I’d read in this series, I think I would have loved it, but it’s all starting to feel a bit repetitive.
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