- Voice: Troy Duran is the only credited reader for a text the publisher's own copy splits into two first-person voices, so the point-of-view switches are what to sample.
- Big ideas: Obsession and possession, religious abuse as backstory, a self-sufficient heroine in a dark-romance world
- Atmosphere: Feverish and combustible, with real menace under the heat
- Worth it?: A tightly built entry in a long series, stronger on character damage than the subgenre usually bothers with.
Shantel Tessier splits this blurb straight down the middle. The top half is headed CROSS and written from inside his head; the bottom half is headed ALEXA and written from inside hers. Then the credit on this audiobook names one narrator, Troy Duran, and the distance between a text built from two first-person voices and a reading delivered by one performer is the first practical question a buyer here should sit with.
The setup is straightforward dark romance underneath the fire imagery. Cross belongs to a group the series calls the Kings, who own something called Kingdom. Alexa is off-limits, self-sufficient and uninterested in complications, and the copy hands her the line that sets the terms: "What was supposed to be one night ended up being too many to count." He expects her to flinch at his darkness. She does not.
SekolWieand supplies the backstory that made this book cohere for me, and it explains why the obsession reads as damage rather than as posturing. Cross is "the son of a priest who made him repent since the age of 9," and not the kind who assigns prayers: "this is a priest who will inflict pain on others to repent for your sins, even if you never committed them." Set that against a life of "money, gambling and women" and the character stops being a collection of dark-romance tics and starts being a specific person with a specific injury.
Brittany reads the title as an acrostic, unpacking CROSS into Control, Ruin, Obsession, Surrender and Sin, which is either clever authorial design or a very good reader paying attention. Either way it maps the book accurately. What Brittany identifies as the engine is fixation: "how deeply obsessive Cross becomes once his focus locks in," summarized in one blunt sentence, "His want for Alexa is unhinged." Obsession is the whole product here, and the book does not apologize for it.
Alexa is better built than the subgenre usually manages, to my mind, and the pool bears that out. Brittney Sorenson describes a recognition so complete that reading Alexa felt "like having someone write me in a story I could only imagine," praising a heroine who is "so strong and a hard worker, taking care of everyone." A romance where the woman arrives already complete, rather than waiting to be assembled by the man she meets, is doing something worth noticing inside a genre built on possessive heroes. It also changes what the central relationship is about, since the question stops being whether she can be saved and becomes whether she wants what she is being offered.
The Strengths
Dual first-person is a production decision before it is a listening experience. A single reader handling both halves has to build two distinct interior voices and hold them apart across the whole book, and dark romance leans especially hard on that separation, because the same events read completely differently depending on whose head you are in. Sample a chapter break where the point of view switches. That transition is where this edition either works or does not.
Register is the second thing the text demands. SekolWieand's summary makes the tonal range clear: a childhood of inflicted penance on one side, "murder, theft and blood" on the other, and a love story running through both. Brittany describes Cross as "unpredictable, dangerous, and impossible to ignore" from his first appearance. A reading that plays all of that at one intensity flattens it; the menace only lands if the quieter passages are genuinely quiet.
Runtime comes in at a tight eight hours and nineteen minutes, which is sensible for this kind of book, and Shana R's reaction suggests the pacing holds: "Everything flowed easy," the review says, before admitting the book "Had me in all of my feelings." That is a single-sitting length for a committed reader and a three-evening length for everybody else, without the padding that series romance often accumulates by book four.
Things to Know Before Starting Cross
Content warnings are supplied by the publisher and should be taken at face value. The copy restricts the book to listeners aged eighteen and over on grounds of mature content and themes, and adds that the novel may contain triggers without specifying which. Given that a reviewer describes a father who inflicted pain as religious discipline, that is not boilerplate. Anybody sensitive to religious abuse as a plot element should treat this as a real caution rather than a formality.
Genre labeling on this listing is misleading, too. The book sits under mystery, thriller and suspense with a crime fiction tag attached, and while the Kings deal in the criminal, the written notices discuss this book purely as a romance and the publisher's own copy is a dual point-of-view love story from its first line to its last. Come to it expecting an investigation and you will get obsession instead. That is a categorization problem rather than a book problem, but it will cost somebody eight hours.
Two smaller oddities are worth knowing. Twelve people have rated this, which is a thin enough base that a single strong reaction moves the average visibly, and five written reviews sit beneath that count of twelve. One of those notices is dated August 2022, nearly three years before this edition was published in May 2025, which means the review pool is not cleanly attached to this release. Also treat the standalone promise with mild skepticism: the copy says the book can be listened to on its own, yet Shana R is measuring it against Grave and heading straight for Bones, and Brittney Sorenson is delighted to see earlier couples reappear.
Recommended For
Dark romance readers who want obsession played straight are the core audience, and this delivers it without the winking that has crept into the subgenre lately. Existing Dark Kingdom readers should be told that at least one longtime follower now rates this above the book they previously named their favorite. And readers who want a damaged hero whose damage is specified rather than gestured at will find SekolWieand's summary of the priest father a fair preview of how concrete the backstory gets.
Give this one a miss if possessive heroes are a hard no for you, since the entire emotional architecture rests on one. Give it a miss too if you need your romance clean, because the mature-content notice is doing real work. Want a compact, unembarrassed obsession story with a heroine who was already whole before the hero turned up, though, and this is a strong entry in a crowded field, with the single-narrator credit the one thing worth testing before you commit.
Before You Listen
Does this audiobook work as a standalone or should you start the series earlier?
The publisher's copy says it can be listened to on its own, and the central romance is self-contained. Reviewers tell a slightly different story, though. One measures it against an earlier book called Grave and is already moving on to Bones, and another enjoys seeing previous couples return, so some texture is lost coming in cold.
Why is this audiobook filed under mystery and thriller?
That looks like a cataloging error. The listing carries a crime fiction tag and sits in the suspense category, but the written reviews discuss it purely as a romance, and the publisher's own description is a dual point-of-view love story. Expect obsession rather than investigation.
