Diamonds in the Dust

This is the first book in the Diamonds are Forever Trilogy, an amazingly Dark Mafia Romance. This story is intertwined with Beauty in the Broken, but you don't have to read it before this one. However, if you have not read Beauty in the Broken yet, I highly recommend you to do so. Otherwise, if you loved Beauty in the Broken (which is my case), you'll love this one. Charmaine Pauls NEVER disappoints. This story is dark, fast-paced, intriguing, and captivating. Maxime is the perfect anti-hero, ruthless, powerful, dark, and intriguing. Zoe, Damian's sister from Beauty in the Broken, is young, beautiful, strong, but also vulnerable, and desperate. My heart broke for her. Alexis, Maxime's brother, is a sadistic, and OMG! I am so glad Maxime saved Zoe from Alexis and his family. Some scenes are not for the faint of heart. And now that ending!! I enjoyed it, and I can't wait to read the next book in the Series, Diamonds in the Rough, to know what happens next. I need more! If you like dark romance, this one is definitely for you. Now, I feel the need to read Beauty in the Broken again.

5 Dazzling Diamond Stars for Diamonds in the Dust, the first instalment in the Diamonds are Forever trilogy by Charmaine Pauls.

This book had everything I look for in a dark romance...
Brooding anti-hero ✅
Sharp and fiercely independent heroine✅
Hard lessons to be learned for both H&h ✅
Intricate storyline✅
Steamy Smexy Scenes✅

Charmaine Pauls is a one click author for me and I’ve been waiting for this story to come since she started the Diamond Magnate world with Damian and Lina’s story.

Diamonds in the Dust is set during the time of Damian’s imprisonment and follows his sister Zoe’s life in poverty. The reader gets insight into the childhood Damian and Zoe were raised in and Zoe’s whimsical musings of being whisked away by a fairytale prince where she will live happily ever after.

And Zoe gets a variation of her wish... she is whisked away from poverty, brought to a castle befitting a queen, and her prince? Well, who said Zoe would get it all? Zoe has a choice, she can obey’s Maxime’s requests and he will treat her like the gem she truly is or she can fight him at every turn and risk the safety and well being of herself and her brother.

Caught in a world where she best serves as a pawn, Zoe will obey all of Maxime’s requests if she is to protect her brother.

And the generous benefactor of this world only wants one thing...

Zoe’s compliance.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!

It is hawt, steamy and dark. Maxime is not suave or handsome or even charming, but he sees something in Zoe that he wants to protect from his cruel world. The problem is, who will protect Zoe from Maxime’s harsh and even brutal lessons?

I haven’t read this kinda dark from Ms Pauls since Gabriel and Valentina in Dubious Consent! Maxime is direct and almost dispassionate. His lessons are calculated to be hard and his emotions run cold. Zoe has some tough lessons ahead of her with a cruel lover and even crueler family. But for Maxime, Zoe is his diamond in the rough; it’s now only a matter of time for Zoe to realize this and flip the script.

I’m desperate to see how this sexually charged yet loveless affair will transform into something sustainable. At this point their is no telling if Maxime’s tether on Zoe will erode their arrangement to dust or fashion it into a brilliant diamond.

Charmaine Pauls delivers her most complicated anti-hero and most adorable heroine to date in this very dark and twisted modern fairy tale romance. This is definitely my favourite of Charmaine’s stories so far!!

Zoe Hart is alone and destitute, her meagre seamstress salary allowing her only two tomatoes and an apple for her next meal. But the drudgery of her surroundings has not diminished her dreams of some day designing princess dresses and meeting a proverbial prince on a white stead who will carry her out of the squalor.

Instead, he arrives in an armoured black Mercedes flanked by two shady henchmen. Maxime Belshaw does indeed carry her away, but not in the love-at-first-sight fantasy that she imagined. Max is a psychopath who is waylaid by his fascination with Zoe’s inherent goodness and optimism.

***”She’s a pretty little daisy that pushes through a crack on a dirty pavement, resilient and beautiful, surviving against the odds.”

“I want to know how she can still believe in something beautiful, in anything at all, when everything around her is dilapidated. Maybe, just maybe, if I know her secret, I’ll know how to be happy. Maybe if I can catch her spirit, I can steal her dreams and make her hope mine.”***

So, instead of delivering Zoe to his brother as intended in his original criminal plan, Max takes on Zoe for himself and embarks on a completely different, yet equally dastardly, criminal plan. Max’s sense of right and wrong is, hmmm ..., non-existent. In its place is a firm but misplaced self-righteousness. When he tries to make his new “little flower” happy, he deceives, dictates, and manipulates; and when Zoe isn’t suitably appreciative of his efforts, he seems genuinely put out and reacts punitively. Poor Zoe! What happens when you kiss a frog prince and he keeps turning back into a frog? For her part, Zoe’s actions demonstrate resilience, sass, kindness and honour. I just love loving Zoe and I love hating Max!

Charmaine beautifully captures the battle of wills between one who can’t feel and one who feels deeply and relentlessly. Her storytelling is not just a sequence of intriguing events. It is a journey into the minds of two very thoroughly envisioned characters who defy type-casting. Maxime and Zoe’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are vividly conjured even as they shift and grow and re-evaluate their positions. Her words are pure poetry.