Tempting Venom by Rina Kent Book Review – A Dark, Addictive MM Hockey Romance That Refuses to Play by the Rules
- Joao Nsita
- 5 hours ago
- 10 min read
Why Tempting Venom by Rina Kent Is the Most Dangerously Addictive MM Dark Romance You Will Read This Year
Some books politely ask you to turn the page. Tempting Venom grabs you by the collar and drags you forward.
Rina Kent's Tempting Venom, published June 30, 2026, is the third and most anticipated book in the Vipers series — and the one that readers of Beautiful Venom and Sweet Venom have been waiting for since Preston Armstrong first appeared in the earlier books and made an immediate, indelible impression. He is, as he himself introduces in the novel's first line, the most depraved bastard you will ever meet. He takes what he wants, ruins what he does not, and has been living exactly the way he pleases until Marcus Osborn enters his life with the specific, infuriating force of someone who will not be moved.
Tempting Venom is a male/male college hockey romance set in what Kent calls a "glamorous secret world" — the Vipers' universe, which blends elite sports, dark power dynamics, and the kind of obsessive intensity that is Rina Kent's most recognisable trademark. This is not a sweet romance. This is not a gentle romance. This is a dark, violent, addictive dance between two equally ruthless, equally deranged people who were meant to destroy each other and discovered, against every instinct, that destruction feels remarkably like need.
For readers who love the dark romance genre at its most extreme — unhinged heroes, morally grey choices, chemistry that threatens to devour everything — Tempting Venom is precisely the book you have been waiting for.
The Story at the Heart of Tempting Venom
Preston Armstrong knows exactly who he is. He is the most depraved bastard on the Vipers' hockey team — the one who takes what he wants, who lives by his own rules, who has never encountered a person or a situation he could not bend to his will. He is 6'3", unflinching, and constitutionally incapable of playing by rules he did not write. He likes it that way. The world is simpler when you have decided you do not need anyone.
Marcus Osborn is the captain of the rival hockey team, and he is Preston's migraine in human form. He is the perpetual thorn in Preston's side — the one person who not only refuses to play by Preston's rules but does not even appear to register that those rules exist. Marcus is, by Preston's own admission, his brand of heartless and just as deranged. He is the one person who meets Preston's force with equal and opposing force, who hits back with the specific ferocity of someone who has nothing to lose.
The rivalry that begins between them is professional, personal, and somewhere in the space between the two — it is something else entirely. Their collision is not polite. Their chemistry is not comfortable. It is violent and addictive and completely unwilling to resolve neatly. Preston sets out to crush Marcus, his career, and his infuriatingly gorgeous face. Marcus hits back. And somewhere between crushing and being crushed, both of them discover something that the dark romance genre at its best always reveals: that the person you cannot be indifferent to is the person who has already gotten in.
The book builds through a secret relationship dynamic — the power struggle between two people who refuse to concede anything, including their feelings — toward a resolution that Kent handles with the specific dark-genre understanding that these characters cannot and should not have an easy ending. What they get instead is an ending that is true to who they are, which is the only thing that matters.
How Rina Kent Brings This Story to Life
Rina Kent's prose in Tempting Venom is dark, lyrical, and relentless. The tone is brooding and electric, laced with sarcasm that cuts like a knife. Her pacing starts deliberately — building tension like a coiled snake — then explodes into heart-racing action and intimate scenes that live up to every promise the slow build makes.
The first-person narration from Preston's perspective is the novel's defining stylistic choice, and it is a demanding one: Preston is not an easy narrator, and Kent commits to his voice with complete fidelity. He is not redeemed or softened for the reader's comfort. He is written exactly as he is — and the revelation, gradual and hard-won, that he has a stone-cold heart that is unexpectedly, inconveniently capable of involvement, is the emotional journey that makes the darkness worthwhile.
The dual POV sequences, when Marcus's perspective enters, give the rivalry its necessary dimensionality — both men are unhinged, and seeing the specific shape of Marcus's chaos is as rewarding as Preston's.
The Themes That Make Tempting Venom So Much More Than a Dark Romance
The equal match as the ultimate fantasy. The core of Tempting Venom's appeal is the specific romance of meeting someone who cannot be dominated and cannot be dismissed — someone who forces you, for the first time, to encounter yourself as an equal. Preston has never needed anyone. Marcus is the first person who makes needing someone feel like something other than weakness.
Identity and the bi awakening. Preston's experience of attraction to Marcus — marked as a bi awakening in the book's trope list — is handled with Kent's characteristic refusal to sentimentalise. This is not a gentle coming-into-oneself story. It is a man encountering something he cannot categorise and responding in the only way he knows how: by trying to destroy it. The failure of that strategy is the book's emotional engine.
Darkness and obsession as a love language. Kent's work consistently explores the territory where obsessive intensity, possessiveness, and emotional unavailability coexist with genuine, if unconventionally expressed, love. Tempting Venom is her most fully realised expression of this dynamic in the MM romance space — the book's tag "toxic/obsessive love" is not a warning so much as a genre statement.
The power of meeting someone who refuses to let you disappear. Marcus Osborn's greatest quality — his specific power in this story — is his refusal to be affected by Preston's attempts at indifference. He sees through the armour not by softening it but by refusing to be stopped by it. That persistence, in Kent's universe, is its own form of love.
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Tempting Venom leaves you with the specific sensation of having been through something — exhilarated, slightly undone, and immediately wanting to start again.
What Tempting Venom Gets Absolutely Right
Preston's voice. The first-person narration of a truly unhinged character is one of dark romance's most demanding challenges, and Kent executes it flawlessly. Preston is genuinely dark, genuinely funny in his own specific way, and genuinely capable of growth without ever compromising his essential character.
The rivalry dynamic. Two morally grey, equally matched characters in a genuine rivals-to-lovers arc produce the specific tension that the trope promises and rarely fully delivers. Kent delivers it completely.
The MM dark romance space. Tempting Venom is one of the most fully realised MM dark romances available — a book that brings the full intensity of Kent's darkest hetero romance work into an MM context without softening the edges.
The Vipers world. The glamorous, shadowy world of elite hockey that Kent has built across the series gives Tempting Venom a rich context that rewards readers of the earlier books without excluding newcomers.
The pacing. Short, punchy chapters create bingeable momentum that is entirely intentional — this is a book designed to be devoured, and it succeeds at that goal completely.
A Few Places Where Tempting Venom Could Have Gone Further
New readers' access. While technically readable as a standalone, new readers unfamiliar with the Vipers universe will miss significant context from the previous two books. The recommendation to read Beautiful Venom and Sweet Venom first is genuine, and the book occasionally assumes familiarity that first-time Kent readers will lack.
Marcus's interiority. Preston's POV dominates the novel, and while his voice is extraordinary, Marcus's inner life remains slightly more opaque than the relationship's equal-match dynamic might ideally require.
The resolution timeline. The final third of the novel moves quickly through its resolution after a very deliberately paced build, and some readers will feel the ending arrives slightly faster than the setup's intensity warranted.
If You Loved Tempting Venom, Read These Next
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid is the closest comparable in the MM hockey romance space — a rivals-to-lovers story with all the slow-burn intensity and secret-relationship drama that the trope requires, though notably warmer and less dark than Tempting Venom. Buy it on Amazon.
Beautiful Venom by Rina Kent, the first book in the Vipers series, is essential reading for anyone who wants the full Viper universe context. The world Kent has built is one of her richest, and starting from the beginning rewards readers handsomely. Buy it on Amazon.
For more dark romance and intense love stories, explore the audio drama series at thatlovepodcast.com/episodes, where love always comes with something at stake.
Who Will Love Tempting Venom the Most
Dark romance readers who want MM fiction at full intensity. This is the genre's specific dark energy applied to an MM relationship without compromise or softening — essential reading for the genre's devoted readers.
Fans of enemies-to-lovers with genuine rivalry. Preston and Marcus are evenly matched, both morally grey, and their rivalry is not a pretext but a genuine conflict. The eventual reconciliation earns its heat.
Readers who have followed the Vipers series. Tempting Venom delivers the Preston/Marcus storyline that readers have been anticipating since Beautiful Venom. It does not disappoint.
BookTok and Goodreads dark romance communities. This is exactly the kind of book that thrives on those platforms — intense, bingeable, and with a specific character chemistry that generates passionate discussion.
Fans of intense, high-stakes romance fiction might also enjoy browsing our Romance Books section at That Love Podcast.
Content Warnings: dark themes, graphic violence (referenced), obsessive/toxic relationship dynamics, explicit sexual content (MM), morally grey characters, bi awakening.
How Tempting Venom Stayed With Me Long After I Finished It
I spend a lot of my creative life writing characters who are difficult to love — people whose edges are sharp enough to cut. I understand why Rina Kent's villains and anti-heroes work the way they do, because I recognise the specific challenge of making a character who is genuinely dangerous feel like someone the reader can root for anyway.
Preston Armstrong is one of the best examples of this I have read in the MM romance space. He is not redeemed. He does not become soft. What he does, gradually and against his own will, is become someone who cannot let Marcus Osborn go. And there is something in that specific transformation — from indifference to need, from cruelty to the only form of care that Preston knows how to offer — that is one of the most emotionally genuine arcs in Kent's extensive catalogue.
I finished this book with the specific feeling of having survived something. Tempting Venom earns that feeling.
Final Verdict: Is Tempting Venom by Rina Kent Worth Reading?
Tempting Venom is Rina Kent operating at the peak of her particular genre — a dark, propulsive, genuinely addictive MM hockey rivals romance that delivers every promise its premise makes and several it does not announce in advance.
This is not a book for everyone. The darkness is real, the intensity is real, and the morally grey characters require a reader willing to sit with complexity rather than comfort. But for the readers who love dark romance at its most uncompromising — the Rina Kent faithful, the BookTok devotees, the readers who have been waiting specifically for Preston and Marcus since Sweet Venom ended — Tempting Venom is not just worth reading. It is the payoff the series has been building toward.
Dark and delicious. A venomous delight that blends heart, heat, and havoc into something completely unputdownable.
About Rina Kent
Rina Kent is a New York Times, USA Today, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of dark romance, known worldwide for her unapologetic anti-heroes and villain love interests — characters you should not fall for and inevitably do. Based in London, where she reportedly spends her private days laughing like an evil mastermind about adding mayhem to her expanding universe, Kent has built one of the most devoted fanbases in the romance genre through series including Legacy of Gods, Royal Elite, and now the Vipers hockey series. Her work is celebrated for its specific blend of darkness, angst, and unhealthy intensity that characterises the dark romance genre at its most committed.
Learn more about Rina Kent: Official Website | Goodreads Profile | Instagram
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Frequently Asked Questions About Tempting Venom by Rina Kent
1. Do I need to read the previous Vipers books before Tempting Venom? Rina Kent states that Tempting Venom can be read as a standalone, but recommends reading Beautiful Venom and Sweet Venom first for a fuller understanding of the Vipers world. Preston Armstrong appears in both previous books, and readers who know his earlier characterisation will experience his arc in Tempting Venom with significantly more emotional investment.
2. What is the relationship type in Tempting Venom? Tempting Venom is a male/male (MM) dark romance between Preston Armstrong and Marcus Osborn — two hockey rivals from competing teams. The tropes include enemies to lovers, rivals, secret relationship, bi awakening, and morally grey heroes with a power dynamic.
3. How dark is Tempting Venom? Tempting Venom is a dark romance with genuinely dark elements — it is not light or comfortable reading. The content warnings include obsessive and toxic relationship dynamics, violence, explicit sexual content, and morally grey behaviour from both protagonists. It is most appropriate for readers who are comfortable with and enjoy dark romance conventions.
4. Is Tempting Venom part of a connected universe? Yes — Tempting Venom is the third book in the Vipers series, which is set within Rina Kent's broader Rinaverse. Characters from the Legacy of Gods and other Kent series make appearances or are referenced, and the Vipers world connects to the wider universe that Kent has built across her career.
5. Is there an audiobook for Tempting Venom? Rina Kent's books are typically released in ebook and paperback format simultaneously, with audiobook availability following. Check the author's official website and major audiobook platforms for the most current availability information on the Tempting Venom audiobook.
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External Resources
For more book reviews, discussions, and recommendations, check out these fantastic resources: Dear Author – Honest and well-thought-out reviews with sharp commentary. All About Romance – One of the oldest romance review sites with extensive coverage. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books – Humorous and insightful reviews with a podcast and community. Goodreads – The world's largest book community for reviews and recommendations. Book Riot – A lively hub for book news, lists, and recommendations across all genres. We hope these resources help you find your next favourite read!
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