Stained by Ella James

After a fire destroys seventeen-year-old Julia’s home and kills her foster parents, she chases the half-demon responsible across the country and back, determined to avenge her family and discover why a host of celestial baddies want her dead. With Julia is enigmatic hottie - Cayne, who has his own score to settle with the half-demon, and who might be just as dangerous as the creature he and Julia hunt

Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars
Series book: Yes
Will I read the Next: Yes
Damnit. Damnit. Damnit. I am soooo tired of cliff hangers. When I first started reading Stained, I was reluctant to continue reading. The writing style in the first few chapters was a little too much for me. But when Cayne came in it was like bam! Must. Read. Book. And it got super interesting and by the end I was not only super pissed about how it ended, but that it ended at all.
Like I said, at first the writing was too much. It was just too detailed, there was just too much imagery. It kind of gave me a headache. But when that stopped it became way more bearable. And then it got confusing. It's like it switched one thing out for another. Annoying writing for confusing writing. Just when your pretty sure its gonna be in one POV for the rest of the book, it changes. Like randomly. If that wasn't hard enough to follow then you couldn't tell if it was a dream or real life. And everything just happened so fast it was hard to keep up.
The pacing in this book was super fast. I feel like the plot would have been much better if it had just been a little slower and easier to understand. Other than that I liked it. It had the whole who-am-I/what-am-I identity crisis thing going on. It was seriously action-packed ad hard to put down.
So there were two main characters in this book. Cayne and Julia, but mostly told in Julia's POV. Cayne was your typical bad boy, with a you don't need to know attitude and very nice abs(that wasn't exactly said, in those words, but it was implied). I really like how you could see his whole character arch as he struggled to open up and accept who he was. Julia also had her own character arch, having to learn how to overcome her past and deal with everything that was happening to her in the present. I really enjoyed getting to know these characters.
The romance was definitely not instant. It actually took a while(like the whole book) to escalate. But when itdid escalate, it really escalated. It was rated R or anything, but it was intense. And really, really sweet. It was super mushy, lovey dovey, stuff. I just loved how slow and sweet it was. One of my favorite romances.

SUMMARY OF REVIEW(In case you don't actually feel like reading the review):
Writing:  3 out of 5
Plot: 4 out of 5
characters: 5 out of 5  
Romance: 5 out of 5
Overall: 4.5 out of 5
PG-13 Kissing and gruesome violence