Sins and Needles by Karina Halle

Sins and NeedlesNarrated by Veronica Den

Last night I dreamt of car chases, sexy tattooed men, and hot passionate kisses. You know you’ve found a special audiobook when it steals its way into the dark recesses of your sleeping subconscious!  Sins and Needles is that kind of masterpiece!  The first book in The Artists Trilogy, a series which also has a novella prequel (On Every Street), it could easily be listened to before or after the prequel. Be forewarned though, if you want to learn the end of this tale, you will need to listen to all of The Artists Trilogy, as this book and Book 2 (Shooting Scars), contain cliffhangers.  Sins and Needles, in particular, ends in such an incredible, unexpected plot twist, that you will be left on the edge of your seat pining to know what will happen next.

Ellie Watt was born and raised to be a con artist. Used by her gypsy parents to perpetuate scams as early as she can remember, she is forever scarred – both physically and emotionally – by the tragic consequences of one of her parents’ cons gone bad. For a while, during her high school years, Ellie tried to lead a normal life after she went to live with her uncle in Palm Valley, California. During those years, she mostly existed as an outcast, picked on by the school kids due to her limp and scars, and had no real friends except for Camden McQueen.

Camden, an awkward teenager himself, was instantly taken with Ellie. Finally having found a kindred soul and reveling in their close friendship, he fell in love with her. Then one day, succumbing to peer pressure, Ellie betrayed him, tragically wounding Camden. They never spoke again and, shortly after high school graduation, Ellie left the only town she had ever considered her home to seek revenge and supported herself by embarking on her own grifting career.  

Six years later, finding herself on the run from yet another con gone bad and nearly out of money, Ellie comes back to Palm Valley seeking her uncle’s help. To her vast surprise, Camden McQueen is now all grown-up. A buff tattooed heartthrob and owner of Sins and Needles, a seemingly successful tattoo shop, as well as a member of a rock band, Camden has become the object of women’s dreams. Ellie is instantly attracted to Camden, all the while desperately trying to find her next successful scam to finance her life on the run.

Soon Ellie and Camden are exploring their passionate feelings for each other, and Ellie discovers that she too is developing feelings for Camden. When Ellie’s need to turn Camden into her next mark wins out in the battle over making him her lover, however, and Camden catches her red handed, she gets to see a dark, dangerous side of Camden – an evil spawned by his obsessive need to have her and her unexplained betrayals – that she never envisioned possible.
  
Camden now “owns” Ellie and she has no choice but to do his bidding – an advantage he chooses to exploit in an effort to force her to devise and carry through a plot that will allow him to escape his own dark past. But when Javier, a former lover and evil drug lord that Ellie double-crossed, turns up looking for her, Camden is forced to make a life altering decision. Torn between an all-consuming love and a dark need to hurt and shame Ellie for her past maltreatment, which will win out? Moreover, even if Ellie and Camden can find a way to fall in love in this crazy, twisted world of strong mixed emotions, will the dangerous circumstances they find themselves in allow for a HEA?

The Artists Trilogy appears to be Veronica Den’s first narration. An encouraging start, I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Den’s dramatization of the characters’ emotions and found her pacing of the story to add to the suspense, a key element of Sins and Needles. Ms. Den also impressed me with her ability to create distinguishable male and female tones, including clear differentiations for those of the same gender. Additionally, for the most part, her accents appeared true to the story. She is particularly skilled at delivering Southern/Western sounding accents that I assume flow naturally from her own voice.  

Ms. Den’s characterization of Camden, however, didn’t resonate with my mental picture. While deeper and definitely distinguishable from Ellie’s speech, Camden’s bore a similar twang. This would have been fine, if it weren’t for the fact that Ellie was originally from the South and spent a long time traveling those parts as part of her parents’ grifter operation, whereas Camden, appears to have been born and raised in California. Given this disparity, I imagined a more differentiated intonation for Camden. Additionally, with respect to the twang in particular, it seemed as though Ms. Den’s speech naturally waned from a heavier twang to a lighter one. This effect was the most apparent in Ellie’s passages contributing to an occasional slight inconsistency. In fact, in a few places (especially at the beginning of passages), it almost sounded as if in editing, a small piece had been layered in that sounded slightly different from the rest. However, these small variations and disparities in no way detracted from my immense enjoyment of the above average performance of this deeply engrossing book.         

In sum, I loved Sins and Needles. Karina Halle’s way with words, thought provoking writing, and unique plot combined with Veronica Den’s relatively promising debut performance, combined to make this adventure and suspense-filled character study and promising romance an explosive, addictive listen for me. I was so taken with this story that I immediately listened to On Every Street, the prequel (just needing to understand the past that had so deeply scarred Ellie and trying to understand how she could have ever been in love with Javier). Devouring that book in a day, I am now determined to listen to Book 2, Shooting Scars

BJ


Narration:  B-

Book Content:  A-

Steam Factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Fighting

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Hachette Audio

 

Sins and Needles was provided to AudioGals for review by Hachette Audio.

4 thoughts on “Sins and Needles by Karina Halle

    1. Hi Jenese, this was my first Karina Halle book, and in addition to finishing this series, I too plan on seeking out more of her works. There is one other series available on Audible right now (The Devil’s Series), but the description didn’t grab me. I hope more of her books are recorded on audio soon!

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