.png)
The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby | Tropes, Summary, Review and Quotes
Let me just start off by saying this -
Lana Myers is a goddess at whose altar I would happily worship.
The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby is, without a single doubt, the purest and most cathartic portrayal of feminine rage ever committed to paper.
This 5-book series (The Risk, Sidetracked, Scarlet Angel, All the Lies and Paint It All Red) is a masterpiece in vengeance, trauma and love. Once I picked up the first book, I could not stop reading. It combined all my favourite tropes into one series - a serial killer, FBI profiling (Criminal Minds fangirl baby) and feminine rage. It was intense, gory, bloody and completely psychotic in some places - AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT!
Book Overview
Title: The Mindf*ck Series (The Risk, Sidetracked, Scarlet Angel, All the Lies and Paint It All Red)
Author: S.T. Abby
Genre: Dark Romance, Romantic Thriller & Suspense
Rating: 5/5
Tropes of The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
Serial Killer x FBI Agent
Forbidden love
Female vengeance
Dual POV
Tragical backstory
Hidden identity
Slow-burn spicy romance
Blurb of The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
They took too much. Left too little. I had nothing to lose...until him. - Lana
I didn't expect him. I didn't want to fall in love. But I can't let him go. Logan Bennett makes the world a safer place. He's brilliant. He's a hero. He locks away the sick and depraved.
But while he's saving lives, I'm taking them. Collecting the debts that are owed to me. Ten years ago, they took from me. They left me for dead. They should have made sure I stayed dead. Now I'm taking from them. One name at a time. I've trained for too long. I've been patient. I can't stop now. Revenge is best served cold...They never see me coming, until I paint their walls red. Logan doesn't know how they hurt me. He doesn't know about the screams they ignored. He doesn't know how twisted that town really is. He just knows people are dying. He doesn't know he's in love with their killer.
No one suspects a dead girl. And Logan doesn't suspect the girl in his bed. They're looking for a monster. Not a girl who loves red.Not a girl in love. I'm a faceless nightmare. At least until I tell them the story they've pretended never happened.
But in the end, will Logan choose them? Or will we watch them burn together?
Summary of The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
Years ago, Victoria (now living as Lana Myers) suffered an unspeakable, sickening tragedy at the hands of a group of powerful, untouchable men and a corrupt system that protected them. The crimes were so heinous that I wanted to physically throw up.
Instead of staying broken, Lana spent years becoming a brilliant and ruthless serial killer. She returns to systematically execute every single person who ruined her life with chilling, poetic justice.
She plans, she skills, she takes her revenge.
The twist comes when something she never expected to happen happens. And with the least expected person she imagined happening it with. She falls in love with Logan Bennett, the lead FBI profiler who is tasked with hunting down the very "monster" leaving a trail of bodies across the country. Logan has no idea that the soft, loving woman waiting for him at home is the deadly vigilante his team is desperately trying to catch.
As shared earlier, the book has 5 novellas combined into a single book:
The series opens and we meet Lana Myers as she returns to town to launch her meticulously planned, long-awaited scheme of retribution against the men who destroyed her life years ago. While quietly stalking her first targets, she crosses paths with Logan Bennett, a brilliant, lead FBI profiler brought in to investigate a series of gruesome vigilante killings. Sparks fly instantly, setting off a risky cat-and-mouse game where Lana must keep her bloody extracurricular activities hidden while getting closer to the very man tasked with putting her behind bars.
Lana and Logan continue to fall in love. Despite their conflicting schedules of one committing murders and the other investigating them. All this while, Lana knows that she shouldn't be doing this, that she should distance herself from Logan. But she cannot. The only man is who is making her feel loved and seen again is the same man hunting her down. Logan, while hunting for the mysterious serial killer is also working on another high-profile case dubbed the 'boogeyman'.
This books officially ends the chapter of the 'boogeyman' case. While the second book ended on a cliffhanger with the boogeyman cornering Lana in her home to take revenge on Logan, this one starts off by her beating his ass, not knowing that Hadley was in her closet the entire time. Hadley is 100% convinced who Lana is now. In the afterman, the team, including Lana, end back up in Delaney Grove, the town that took everything away from Lana and where she has returned for retribution.
The team continues their investigation into Delaney Grove, where they find out the real truth about what happened with Victoria Evans, her brother and her father. This books reveals the true horrors of what happened with Lana that night all those years ago. And it is very hard to read. Truly brutal. The more the team find out, the more they relate to the Scarlet Slayer aka Lana and understand her side. But politics and corrupts agents plaay a great role here too. It is in the end of this book, that Logan finds out about Lana's idenity.
The explosive conclusion brings the entire bloody saga to its stunning finale as Lana reaches the absolute top of her hit list. Lana brings her retribution full scale. The town of Delaney Grove has feared the sheriff for years, and she just gave them someone even more terrifying.
My Review of The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
Let’s be entirely honest: every woman who has ever survived this kind of trauma, betrayal, or systemic injustice has felt a flicker of that visceral, burning desire for revenge and retribution.
Lana Myers is the ultimate fulfillment of that shadow self. She doesn't wait for karma, and she certainly doesn't wait for a broken justice system to do the right thing. She becomes the justice.
What makes her even more iconic for me is her lack of apology and compassion. A lot of female characters I've read about, who are taking revenge, often forgive their villains in an ultimate show of feminine compassion.
Ms. Myers said 'f*ck that' and did what we all know is right. People who commit such crimes really deserve the worst.
I went into this book because I thought it would be yet another dark romance where two people very much forbidden to be together would fall in love.
I mean, Logan Bennett is hot as hell. Their chemistry turned out very smoothly with no forced measures of putting the two of them together. Plus, because Logan is genuinely a good man with one of those steady moral compasses, I spent the entire series biting my nails, terrified of what would happen when the truth came out.
But it wasn't just romance. It was her revenge. It was calculated. It was dramatic. It was bloody as hell. And well-deserved all around.
Though I would say the writing or dialogue in some places felt cliched, but hey, I am not judging. You know very well by now that if a book made me feel remotely any visceral emotion, it is a 5-star immediately.
If you're planning on reading it, I would suggest you go through the trigger warnings once, because there are many. It is pretty gory and goes into great depth in terms of killing.
For the rest, I would just like to say -
All glory to Lana Myers.
Comments