This book was okay. You start with 2 characters, Ash and Gabe who carry a lot of baggage and public images that are opposite of each other.

They get to know each other a little bit more on a road trip and what starts as a pr fake relationship starts turning real. Except, only one person is changing through this and that's Ashley. She's real, she's hurt and she's in love with Gabe. He has a stock up his a**. I did not like Gabe much, for how he never choose Ashley or believed her.

I agree with other reviewers, it should not have ended the way it did. What he did is pretty unforgivable and Ashley should have just rebuilt her life on her own.

There’s an easy way to guarantee a high rating from me and that’s if the book includes the fake relationship trope. I don’t know what it is but I eat it up ever. single. time.

I didn’t expect to love this as much as I did or find myself feeling so immersed in the characters. On the surface, this could seem like your average smutty book but honestly, there was so much more to it for me.

I truly saw myself in both Ashley and Gabriel. They both had masks that they wore to protect themselves and that’s something that I sadly relate to.

I actually found myself wanting to put down reading this book because I didn’t want it to end. I read quite a bit of horror and thriller books so I found this to be such a fantastic palette cleanser and a great book to turn to when I needed something less dark and intense.

I will definitely be picking up the authors other works.

Thank you to NetGalley and Victory Editing Netgalley Co-op for providing me with this ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Brenton is so good at writing flawed characters. Some readers may not get past the setup, but the payoff between Gabe and Ashley is worth it. Brenton reliably writes great spicy with a spotlight on character growth.

I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. I haven't read the previous two books in the series, but I got into the story anyway. I LOVE how Ashley is depicted as a villain unapologetically. I mean, yeah, she is not at bad as you think at first but she's still pretty awful at times (which was very enjoyable to read). The spice is top notch and the chemistry between the main characters is pretty fire.
Highly recommend!

Hi, when I opened this book on my kindle app on my phone, it was not a document to be read, it was photos of book pages that didn’t even show the whole page. Therefore I could not read it. And. When i discovered this the release date was already passed so I was not able to check it on the net galley shelf.
I do still want to read this in the future.

I didn't liked this one right from the start, i thought Ashley was so pathetic then i got to know her and felt bad for her. She had her moments but I liked her she was so funny but I didn't understand gabe at all. How he wanted to protect his image as a good boy. How he treated Ash was so bad. Every single time he chose his career over her and even disrespected and insulted her. Idk how she forgave him so easily. He barely groveled. I didn't wanted her to forgave him.

*Thankyou netgalley and the author for providing me an arc*

I’d give the Villain Edit 3.5 ⭐️
I do have to say that most of the events were rather predictable, but I think that’s what makes this a pretty easy read.. I thought I’d be more annoyed with Ashley than Gabe considering she’s the “bad girl”, but I was actually pretty annoyed with Gabe at times because of his obsession with pleasing his dead uncle. Apart from that, I did enjoy the overall plot, and the spicy parts were actually pretty hot without being cringey 🙏🏼

Thank you NetGalley for the arc!

This was a difficult read to get through. While I assume the author was aiming for flawed characters, the result was deeply unlikeable ones. This might be the first romance I've read where the spice was better than the plot.

Gabe's hangup on pleasing his dead perfect but unperfect uncle was unbelievable. The man had unrealistic standards, Gabe knew the standards were so unrealistic that his uncle didn't even live up to them, but he still was ruining his own life to live up to them.... when the man is dead....? If he hadn't known about his uncle's second life, the pedestal he had the man on might have been reasonable, but all of it as it was made no sense.


The shit Gabe put Ashley through deserved the grovel to end all grovels, and the couple of pages of him on his knees apologizing wasn't it.

This book was just “meh” for me. I felt like I was reading it because I had to finish it instead of reading it because I wanted to finish it. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was.

The Villian Edit was fun, swoony and spicy. With the perfect mix of sexual tension and *drama,* I have no doubt this will be a favorite for a lot of people.

Fun, hot, swoony! Sarah Brenton is definitely one to watch When it comes to romance with high heat but also a good level of connection and plot. I really liked the way the characters were developed and wanted to keep reading and root for them.

I’m not usually a huge fan of morally grey characters. At the beginning of the book, I often found myself wondering how Ashely would redeem herself; as the book progressed and we got to know her better and found out that while she did do some wrong things, not everything is what it seems, the pieces started falling into place and by the end I loved her and couldn’t help but feel for her and want her to get her happy ending. Her character development was amazing and I especially loved the way she started the book alone, believing she was the villain and thinking didn’t deserve to be loved and by the end had a massive support group and was surrounded by love from both Gabe and friends and family.

Although they might have seemed to be opposites at first, they were a lot more similar than they thought. Whereas Ashley wasn’t as bad as people thought, Gabe wasn’t the golden boy everyone thought he was. Once they started opening up to each other and realized this, it was impossible to not let each other in. This, combined with their explosive chemistry, made it inevitable that they would fall in love and I loved following along.

I loved the way Gabe always saw the best of Ashley once he got to know her true self, and always reminded her of that. Similarly, I really liked that Ashley tried to show Gabe that he was trying to live up to impossible standards and would have to let go of them in order to be happy. Like Ashley’s, his character development was really good (though perhaps not as big) and it was great to see him let go of his preconceived ideas of what he needed to be and let himself be a more authentic version of himself.

That was the best thing about their characters’ development: it didn’t turn them into completely different people; it improved and highlighted the best parts of each of them, while still leaving some of the perhaps not as nice parts/character traits that make them human.

Overall, I had an amazing time reading this book and absolutely loved it! I was very invested in the characters, their past and their redemption arcs and I had a hard time putting it down.

A huge thank you to the author and Netgalley for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

★ 4.5/5 stars ★

2.5⭐️

This one was quite hard for me to figure out my final rating for but I don’t think I could give it 3.

I didn’t really like the book for the first half. Ashley was so frustrating with her behaviour and I felt sorry that Gabe was roped into her problems because she felt like she could get whatever she wanted. They both flip flopped so much and it was painful. I debated multiple times DNAing but wanted to keep reading to see what happened and also because I received this as an ARC. I admit that I did end up skim reading the smut to get through the book quicker….

After about 50% I found myself liking Ash and understanding her motivations more and then resenting Gabe for a lot of his choices and beliefs. It felt like he blamed all of the controversy on her when they both had a part to play (hello public indecency). I felt like I believed the emotions that Ash had towards Gabe with it felt like he for the majority of the time he was mainly into her for the sex while also believing himself to be stooping to her level (yuck).

I did appreciate the commentary on the misogyny of Hollywood and how women are vilified for things that men can do without people batting their eyelids at. Ashley having more support from people outside her relationship as the story progressed was also awesome to see as she was so guarded and lonely at the start.

It was also good to watch Gabe finally let go of his childhood and the burdens he had around his fame and how he is portrayed but I would have like to see him work a bit harder for it. I did believe that they were happy in the epilogue though which is really important for me in a romance.

I went into this book with different expectations which brought the book down for me but I definitely understand why some people love this book. I would also be open to reading more from this author in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for providing me with an eARC in return for an honest review.

I enjoyed this one! It was steamy, romantic af, and soo swoony.

Ashley has been fawning over her childhood crush Nic for a long time, and she attempted to ruin her cousin's wedding by convincing him that she was the better woman for him. But it was Gabriel who walked instead. So, Ashley and Gabriel's agencies decided to have them fake date each other. Using Gabe's golden image and Ashley's bad-girl reputation, each party would benefit by hopefully rubbing off on the other individual.

I adored Ashley, she is the epitome of a “Bad Girl”, she’s confident, flirty, and seems to have no morals. But once you get to know her, we realize that she's just not the villain that we thought.

Gabriel is the perfect golden boy with a little wildness in his soul. But he breaks Ashley's heart, and I cry so much. Poor girl, she just need him to want her and love her 😭. What she did for him. OMG!!! I couldn't believe it!!! She love him so much!!! When he knelt begging for forgiveness, it was exactly what she deserved, because she needed someone who would fight for her heart, who would sacrifice for her.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the ARC.

5-star sexual tension gets derailed by 2-star drama in this spicy opposites attract romance. This started out SO strong, and I am incredibly disappointed to have to rate it so low, but… it is what it is. I was immediately hooked in by the unique premise and the smokin’ hot chemistry. I loved the concept of a girl with a bad reputation showing her softer side, but I can’t really say that’s where the story went. The juxtaposition of our squeaky clean yet not-so-nice hero and our messy heroine was interesting, but it went in the wrong direction. There was a real opportunity to do something great - and the potential was definitely there - but it went SO far off the rails. I ended up hating the hero, feeling less than enthused about the romance, and frustrated by how it all fell apart.

The story follows Ashley, a woman who is known for being a reality TV villain and over-sexualized vixen. While scheming to do a very bad thing, Ash accidentally gets caught on camera with Gabriel, an actor whose reputation is pristine. When Gabe’s PR team decides that Ashley might give his reputation the edge it needs to secure a film role, the two find themselves faking a lust- fueled relationship. Though ending up with a girl like Ashley for the long run would prove deadly to Gabe’s career, a sexy, fake fling could work wonders. But as Ash and Gabe spend time together, it’s impossible to ignore that they have more in common than either would’ve predicted.

I love the cover, the premise is great, and this was recommended by one of my favorite authors, so I was excited to dig into this. And for the first hundred pages or so, I was loving it. You could feel the tension between Ash and Gabe, who had the kind of instant chemistry that’s tough to create. I was excited to dig below the surface and see the ways they were perfect for each other, but the story stays lust-focused for significantly longer than I’d like. There was an attempt to create a stronger emotional connection between the two, but it was sorely underdeveloped and frequently sidelined by never-ending drama. The back half revealed a side of Gabe that I did not like AT ALL, and all that potential went right out the window. The conflict was too mean and way too drawn out, all they ever did was have sex, and there were a ton of missed opportunities for greatness. I’d definitely check out the author again once she gets a few more books under her belt, but this left me supremely frustrated.

A cute fast paced romcom, and I simply could not put it down, while the book as a whole was fast paced I did find that the ending for me fell flat, and to me felt a hurried to end the story.
Ashley tries to seduce her cousin’s husband on their wedding day, after getting caught kissing the wrong man, she and Gabe have to enter into a fake relationship due to the paparazzi catching her leaving Gabe’s room. So to further their Hollywood careers, cause she needed someone to make her look less like a villain and he needed someone to make him look less golden boy. Their handlers decided that since he was going on a road trip across country back home that she should join him, but along the way the fake dating turned real as they both dig deep into their past and learn more and more about each other, stuff that they don’t even let their fans know, but due to a gas station bathroom “incident” Gabe is forced to break their contract early and commit to acting and saving his image instead of following his heart.

🔹He falls first
🔹Touch and die
🔹fake dating

I loved the bad girl x good boy trope.
I loved reading this book, I thought both of them had a character development and the FMC being a misunderstood villain.

I loved the villian edit. Ashley starts the book as a TV reality star bad girl who really leans in to the villian that everyone thinks she is. Not only her to the outside world but even by her family too. Then brings in the handsome good make lead Gabe. Who is everything that Ashley despises in a person!
Then comes in the drama when they start faking dating to give Ashley a better image and Gabe a bit of an edge. Obviously the fake dating becomes real but the scenes where this happens are so expertly written it might have you feeling hot and bothered and begging for more.
The deeper you delve into the book it gets hard to see who is truly the villian and who is the good one. These characters have depth and a expansive back story to reveal why they play these characters to the world and even to themselves.
It really needs to be printed and distributed so I can have a copy for my shelf!

Thanks to net galley for letting me read it before realise and letting me review it

Favourite quote
"Welcome to the dark side, Gabe. You'll do just fine here!"

I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are my own

I loved how the roles seemed reversed in this book. The male is the golden boy while the female is portrayed as the morally grey villan.

I enjoyed this book very much. The story and world building.

Thank you for the opportunity to ARC read this.

I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are my own

I love a good spicy novel and The Villain Edit is a fun one to read in front of the fireplace. It's a bit repetitive, but overall fun. Although part of a series stands alone just fine.