Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard

Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1)

by Sylvain Reynard

Gabriel's Inferno is the first in this intoxicating trilogy featuring Gabriel and Julia, following their sensual journey of forbidden love - with all the obsessive yearning of Twilight with the intensity of Fifty Shades of Grey.

One man's salvation, one woman's sensual awakening . . .

Gabriel Emerson is a man tortured by his dark past. A highly respected university professor, Gabriel uses his notorious good looks and charm to lead a secret life of pleasure where nothing is out of bounds.

Sweet and innocent, Julia Mitchell enrols as Gabriel's graduate student and his immediate attraction to her, and their powerful and strange connection, threatens to derail his career. Wildly passionate and sinful, Gabriel's Inferno is an exploration of the intense power of forbidden love.

Sylvain Reynard is a Canadian writer with an interest in Renaissance art and culture and an inordinate attachment to the city of Florence.

Reviewed by nitzan_schwarz on

2 of 5 stars

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This book is wildly popular, having near 80,000** rating on Goodreads and an average score of 4.07. And so, I expected to like it. I expected it to be a good read. Sadly for me, neither happened.
I barely tolerated the first half of this book, and even after that it was merely "okay", resulting in the low rating of 2 stars.

I'm trying to put my thoughts in order, but I find it difficult to put my feelings for this book in writing. I'll start with some of the more dry stuff, and then get to the content. Hopefully this review won't be too over the place. If it will, though, it'll fit the book quite nicely, because the plot for Gabriel's Inferno was truly all over the place....

The Writing
The writing annoyed me, for the most part.

First of all, there were the rapid changes in Point of View, sometimes in the middle of paragraphs. They confused me, especially at first when I needed some time to discern who was speaking.

There was excessive use of the word "For". Using the word "For" (Such as: "For she knew that…") gives a story either an old fashioned or a fairytale like feeling. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but here I felt like it didn't fit. Especially when in other places the writing reverted into modern, and sometimes crude.

There were...

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 8 October, 2012: Finished reading
  • 8 October, 2012: Reviewed