The second book in a dark romance trilogy is always the most unforgiving test of an author's craft. The first book establishes the world and sells the hook. The third has the resolution to fall back on. The second has to carry the full weight of a story mid-flight, without the clarity of a beginning or the relief of an ending. Rina Kent's Lies of My Monster arrives into that challenge with real confidence.
I listened to Sebastian York's narration over a single afternoon and evening, which tells you something about the pacing. At 8 hours and 20 minutes, this is a tight, efficient continuation. A word of essential context: this is not a standalone. You must listen to Book 1 first. Jumping in here without that foundation will leave you with characters in the middle of a story you don't have the architecture to understand.
The book picks up immediately where Book 1 ended. Kirill, a Russian mafia figure of calculated menace, and Sasha, whose past is still being revealed in pieces, continue their dangerous, compulsive orbit around each other. Kent uses dual POV, we're inside both Sasha's experience and Kirill's, which means we have access to the manipulation as it's being designed, not just as it lands. That's a structurally interesting choice in a genre that often keeps the dark hero's interiority opaque. Here, knowing what Kirill is thinking makes him simultaneously more sympathetic and more unsettling.
The mystery of Sasha's family and history is the book's forward engine. Reviewers who've been with the series from Book 1 describe reaching revelations that recontextualize earlier scenes in ways that require the reader to go back mentally and reassemble. That's good thriller craft in service of romance. Kent is not simply writing a love story with obstacles; she's writing a psychological puzzle where the love story is one of the threads.
Why Listen to Lies of My Monster
Sebastian York has become almost synonymous with the dark romance audiobook, his voice carries the kind of controlled menace these characters require without sliding into camp. His reading of Kirill is particularly effective: restrained, precise, with an undercurrent of something that could be genuine emotion or calculated performance. That ambiguity is the point, and York holds it without collapsing it in either direction. His Sasha POV sections are equally strong, he differentiates the voices clearly without over-dramatizing the shift.
The dual-perspective structure also benefits greatly from audio as a format. The transitions between Kirill and Sasha's chapters feel natural in York's hands in a way that can feel abrupt on the page, and the cumulative effect of hearing both perspectives in sequence creates a specific kind of dramatic irony that the format heightens.
What to Watch For in Lies of My Monster
The cliffhanger. Multiple reviewers flag it with theatrical despair, and they are not exaggerating for effect. This book ends at a point of genuine crisis, not at a comfortable resting place. If you are not prepared to immediately move to Book 3, you will spend an uncomfortable stretch of time wondering what Kent has done to you. Plan accordingly.
Content and trigger warnings also apply throughout, dark mafia romance conventions include violence, psychological control, and morally compromised dynamics that are intentional features of the genre. The age gap and power imbalance between Kirill and Sasha are central to the story's tension, not incidental to it. Listeners who engage with dark romance knowing this will be on familiar ground; those hoping for lighter emotional territory should look elsewhere in the genre.
Who Should Listen to Lies of My Monster
Listeners who've completed Book 1 of the Monster Trilogy and are fully invested. The book rewards the investment already made in these characters and deepens rather than simply extends the story. Sebastian York fans will find his performance here among his stronger recent work. Readers new to Rina Kent or to dark mafia romance should begin with Book 1, not as a formality, but because the emotional and narrative architecture of this book genuinely requires that foundation.
Key Details
- Performance: Sebastian York is the industry standard for dark mafia romance, his controlled intensity fits Kirill's POV especially well, and his handling of the dual-narrator structure is one of the production's strongest technical aspects.
- What it covers: dark mafia romance, psychological manipulation, identity and secrets, power imbalance
- Feel: Volatile and obsessive, relentlessly propulsive
- Our call: A worthy middle-chapter in Rina Kent's Monster Trilogy, it deepens rather than simply extends the first book, though the cliffhanger ending requires Book 3 immediately in hand.
