Wicked Games (Hidden Valley Elite Book 7) by Isla Vaughn – Review by Ayla Phipps

Wicked Games by Isla Vaughn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nightmares, memories, truth revealed. Oh lordy, the past month has gone so fast yet so slow as I eagerly awaited book one of the final duology in this series. Since the very beginning, Savage Start, back in February. Something about Shane was always so mysterious, we got nuggets here and there throughout the past eight books (counting the two prequels) but finally it is Shane’s turn to take center stage.
Shane Bennett, at the end of Cruel Love, was arrested for involuntary manslaughter and from page one we discover the encounter that led to that scar in his psyche. Six months of being a bodyguard for fellow Thane student Erica led to the moment he saw all his dreams disappear, but security tapes prove his story, and he is clear only for things to get worse. Winter Patten, after eight years she has returned to where it all began or in a sense where it all ended. Her father died, her sister murdered by their mother and her mother arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. The Childress family, mom Brooke, dad James, and son Jaxon, took her in showing her what a real family was and what love truly is. Just transferring to Thane, where Jaxon attends, she is ready to start facing some of her nightmares and digging more into her past. In the first moment they see each other as adults everything changes. Winter sees someone she wants to intimately get to know. Shane is slammed with the nightmares of fifth grade, and Winter pushing him to the edge to the point he wrote a “note” and was ready to end it all. Only Phoenix was able to bring him back from the edge but not without a side effect in the way of a stutter that he had as a child.
Nothing will stop Shane from making Winter pay for what she did to him. Will Winter’s mom be granted parole at her first board meeting? Once again Isla Vaughn keeps her hooks deep in your soul with this next book in the Hidden Valley Elite series. The world is well developed and yet still morphing as the characters’ stories progress and more details are given. This was the perfect read for a warm spooky day, and not just because I had been waiting for it to finally release. Now the long wait for how Shane and Winter maneuver their circumstances and ultimately overcome them for the happy ever after at the end of, Wicked Ends, November 30th, 2023.

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