Wretched by Emily McIntire is the third complete standalone novel in the Never After series, and it takes inspiration from The Wizard of Oz while turning familiar imagery and themes into something much darker. Instead of a traditional villainous hero, this installment places the morally dangerous role largely in the hands of Evelina Westerly, a ruthless woman who helps run her family’s drug empire and has no interest in pretending she is anything other than dangerous.
That alone makes Wretched stand out within the series. Evelina is not waiting for a morally gray man to drag her into darkness, because she already lives there comfortably, tending to her greenhouse, eliminating threats, and pursuing revenge for her sister’s murder while helping maintain a criminal organization.
Nicholas Woodsworth enters that world from the opposite side of the law. He is an undercover DEA agent sent to infiltrate the Westerly operation, but his assignment becomes far more complicated when he discovers that the woman at the center of the empire is the same woman he cannot stop thinking about after a one-night stand.
For me, the chemistry between Nick and Evie is easily the strongest part of the book. Their attraction is immediate, dangerous, and loaded with moral conflict, although I wanted more resistance from Nick before his convictions began bending around the woman he was originally supposed to help destroy.
Wretched Quick Review
Wretched is a dark contemporary romance built around an undercover DEA agent and the ruthless woman he has been assigned to investigate. Their relationship combines forbidden attraction, hidden identity, criminal intrigue, revenge, moral compromise, violence, sexual tension, and the constant risk that either one could destroy the other if the truth becomes impossible to contain.
Evelina Westerly is one of the most distinctive heroines in the Never After series because McIntire does not soften her into someone who only appears dangerous. Evie is involved in her family’s drug empire, makes brutal decisions when necessary, and accepts that the rest of the world would probably call her wicked.
Nicholas begins from a very different moral position. The drug trade has already devastated his family, so infiltrating the Westerly organization is personal as well as professional, which makes his growing attachment to Evie especially complicated.
The relationship is electric, but the emotional development does not always feel equally strong. Nick’s willingness to compromise his original convictions happens faster than I wanted, while Evie’s internal reactions occasionally feel inconsistent enough that I struggled to understand exactly when attraction became something deeper.
Even with those weaknesses, the book kept me hooked. The suspense, drug-empire setting, forbidden romance, morally complex heroine, and Wizard of Oz references give Wretched a personality that feels different from many villain-centered dark romances.
Wretched Summary
Evelina Westerly has never needed anyone to tell her that she is dangerous. She is the mastermind behind much of her family’s drug operation, and she has built a life where power, retaliation, and survival matter far more than conventional morality.
Revenge is also deeply personal for her. Her sister’s murder has left Evie with an anger that shapes many of her decisions, making the violence around the Westerly empire feel less like an abstract criminal enterprise and more like something intertwined with grief.
Her greenhouse offers a striking contrast to the brutality surrounding her. Evie can nurture living things with patience while also eliminating people who threaten her family, which captures the contradiction at the center of her character better than any simple villain label could.
Love has no meaningful place in that carefully controlled world until she meets a mysterious man during a night out. Their encounter is supposed to be temporary, but the chemistry lingers long after they separate.
Then the same man appears inside her family’s organization.
He has a different identity.
That immediately makes him dangerous.
Nicholas Woodsworth is not actually another criminal hoping to earn a place inside the Westerly operation. He is an undercover DEA agent tasked with infiltrating the empire and helping dismantle the very business Evie has spent years protecting.
His mission is personal because drugs have already damaged his family. Nicholas does not enter the assignment with a neutral view of the people he is investigating, and he has every reason to believe the Westerlys represent everything he should despise.
Discovering that Evie is the woman from the nightclub throws his sense of certainty into chaos.
He knows she is involved.
He knows what the organization does.
He knows that getting emotionally attached to her could compromise the investigation.
None of that eliminates the attraction.
Evie is equally suspicious of the man who has suddenly reappeared in her life under circumstances that make very little sense. She is accustomed to deception, understands that power attracts enemies, and has survived too long to trust easily.
Their interactions become increasingly dangerous because desire and suspicion grow together. Neither is dealing with someone safe, and neither can afford to expose every truth they are hiding.
The more Nicholas learns about Evie, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the simple moral categories that helped him accept the assignment. She is ruthless and deeply involved in the drug empire, but she is also shaped by grief, loyalty, family history, and wounds that complicate the idea that she can be reduced to one word such as evil.
Evie experiences her own version of that contradiction. Nicholas represents an intrusion into the world she controls, yet he also becomes someone capable of reaching parts of her that she had never expected to expose.
Their attraction eventually forces both characters toward choices with consequences far beyond romance. Nicholas must decide what happens when his feelings for Evie begin conflicting with his badge, his mission, and everything the Westerly empire represents.
Evie must confront whether loving someone requires vulnerability she has spent years avoiding. For a woman who survives through control, allowing another person close enough to hurt her may be more frightening than any external threat.
Evelina Westerly
Evie is the reason Wretched feels different from many dark romances. She is not dangerous because a powerful man introduces her to crime, and she is not secretly innocent while everyone incorrectly believes she is wicked.
She really is capable of terrible things.
That honesty makes her compelling.
Evie understands the family business, knows exactly how much violence is required to maintain it, and has learned how to wield power rather than merely survive near men who possess it.
Her grief over her sister adds another layer. Revenge is not simply a convenient reason to make her violent, because the loss has become part of the emotional structure supporting the life she has built.
The greenhouse is one of my favorite details about her.
A woman capable of cruelty also finds meaning in cultivating plants, which creates a contrast between destruction and nurture without pretending one side cancels the other.
That contradiction makes Evie feel much more interesting than a heroine written to fit neatly into either victim or villain.
My difficulty with her comes more from the emotional transitions.
At times, Evie feels intensely connected to Nicholas, while other moments make her seem emotionally removed enough that the movement toward love feels less natural than the chemistry.
I wanted more internal continuity between those extremes.
The character itself remains fascinating.
The execution of her romantic development simply does not always match the strength of the concept.
Nicholas Woodsworth
Nicholas enters the story with one of the clearest moral positions available to a dark-romance hero. He is a DEA agent infiltrating a criminal organization responsible for the kind of drug trade that has already damaged his own family.
That history should make Evelina almost impossible for him to accept.
She is not simply related to the problem.
She actively participates in it.
That is why his attraction to her creates such a promising conflict.
Nicholas can understand physical desire while still believing Evie represents something he has dedicated himself to fighting.
The stronger version of his arc would require those two realities to remain in conflict for a long time.
For me, that struggle resolves too quickly.
Nick’s moral capitulation happens faster than I expected considering what the Westerly empire represents to him personally and professionally.
I wanted him to wrestle more deeply with the fact that loving Evie does not make the damage caused by her world disappear.
That does not mean his attraction is unbelievable.
Their chemistry is strong enough that wanting her makes sense almost immediately.
The issue is that desire and moral acceptance are not the same thing, and I wanted more space between those stages.
His undercover role still gives the romance strong suspense.
Every intimate moment exists alongside the possibility that his identity could destroy whatever trust has developed between them.
That hidden truth keeps tension running underneath the relationship even when Nick himself becomes more emotionally certain.
Evie and Nicholas’s Relationship
Evie and Nicholas begin with physical attraction before either understands how dangerous the other will become. Their first encounter creates chemistry without context, which makes the later revelation of who they really are especially effective.
Nicholas discovers that the woman occupying his thoughts is directly tied to the criminal empire he has been sent to destroy. Evie discovers that the intriguing stranger from one night has somehow entered the organization surrounding her family.
That setup creates a strong forbidden-romance foundation.
Every step toward intimacy increases the potential consequences.
Nicholas is risking his investigation.
Evie is risking access to a world where one misplaced piece of trust can become deadly.
Their chemistry works because both characters possess enough power to threaten the other.
Evie is not someone Nicholas can simply rescue from a criminal family, and Nicholas is not merely another expendable man who wandered into her orbit.
Each has an agenda.
Each has information the other does not possess.
Each is capable of changing the other’s future.
That balance gives the relationship intensity.
The emotional development is where I wanted more.
Nick’s shift from seeing Evie as part of the problem to accepting increasingly serious feelings could have used more internal resistance, while Evie’s movement between emotional intensity and detachment occasionally made her commitment difficult for me to read.
The relationship still works because the chemistry is so strong.
I simply think the moral and emotional complications had enough potential to support an even slower, more conflicted progression.
The Female Villain Changes the Dark Romance Dynamic
One of the biggest strengths of Wretched is that Evie occupies the role often reserved for the morally dark male hero. She has the power, the criminal connections, the willingness to kill, and the reputation that should warn a sensible romantic interest to stay far away.
Nicholas enters her world rather than pulling her into his.
That reversal matters.
Evie does not need to discover that she enjoys danger because she already knows exactly what kind of danger she is capable of creating.
The romantic tension instead comes from forcing Nicholas to reconcile attraction with morality.
He is supposed to represent law and order.
She represents the criminal enterprise he has been tasked with dismantling.
That makes his compromise more significant than a conventional hero simply accepting that the heroine has a few questionable secrets.
Evie is not morally gray in a harmless sense.
She is deeply embedded in violence and the drug trade.
The book becomes more interesting when it allows her to remain difficult rather than trying to sanitize her for romance.
Undercover Deception Creates Constant Suspense
Nicholas’s hidden identity gives the relationship a built-in expiration point because trust is developing around information that Evie does not possess. No matter how genuine his feelings become, the foundation remains unstable as long as she does not know why he entered her family’s operation.
That creates suspense even during quieter romantic scenes.
Nicholas is never only Nicholas.
He is also an agent performing a role.
Evie is therefore responding to someone she does not fully understand, which makes emotional intimacy dangerous in a way that goes beyond ordinary relationship secrecy.
The situation is equally difficult for Nicholas.
Every new piece of information may help the investigation while simultaneously placing Evie at greater risk.
That conflict could easily become melodramatic, but it works because it is inseparable from the premise.
The relationship cannot exist outside the deception.
At some point, the truth has to matter.
Revenge Gives Evie’s Darkness Emotional Weight
Evie’s desire for revenge over her sister’s murder prevents her violence from feeling completely detached from emotion. She has reasons for wanting control, and those reasons are tied to loss as much as ambition.
That does not make everything she does morally acceptable.
It makes her understandable.
There is an important difference.
Dark romance works best for me when a character’s cruelty has psychological roots without being excused as secretly noble.
Evie fits that approach.
She can be grieving and still dangerous.
She can love her sister and still participate in a destructive criminal system.
She can want justice while choosing methods that cross lines other people would never accept.
Those contradictions give her more depth than a heroine whose darkness exists only because the genre requires it.
Morality Becomes Personal for Nicholas
Nicholas begins with a clean framework.
The Westerly empire is criminal.
The drug trade destroyed people he loves.
His job is to help bring the organization down.
Evie turns that framework into something painfully personal.
She is not simply a name in an investigation once he has touched her, talked to her, and started understanding the person beneath the criminal role.
That does not mean his original moral judgment was wrong.
This is where I wanted the story to push harder.
Loving someone involved in harmful behavior should not automatically resolve the ethical problem.
Nicholas has to hold two truths at once.
Evie can matter to him deeply while still being responsible for actions he once believed were unforgivable.
That is a fascinating conflict.
The book explores it, but I wanted more resistance before Nick’s feelings became stronger than his original convictions.
The Wizard of Oz Inspiration
The Wizard of Oz influence is one of the more enjoyable surprises in Wretched. McIntire uses familiar thematic and character inspiration without turning the novel into a literal retelling, which allows the references to add texture without overwhelming the crime-and-romance plot.
The source material also fits surprisingly well with the story’s obsession with morality and perception. Wretched repeatedly asks who gets labeled wicked, who is allowed to define goodness, and whether a person can be reduced to the role society has assigned them.
Evie embraces the villain label rather than running from it.
That gives the Wizard of Oz influence a particularly strong connection to her character.
The nostalgic elements also provide contrast with the modern criminal setting.
A familiar fantasy framework is filtered through drugs, undercover law enforcement, revenge, sex, and violence, which is exactly the kind of transformation the Never After series handles best.
The Greenhouse Adds an Unexpected Layer to Evie
Evie’s greenhouse may seem like a small character detail compared with the drug empire and murder, but it says a great deal about her. Caring for plants requires patience, attention, and an ability to nurture growth, qualities that complicate the image of a woman defined only by destruction.
That does not make the greenhouse proof that Evie is secretly gentle.
Instead, it demonstrates that people can contain contradictory capacities.
Someone capable of killing can also create.
Someone who protects fragile living things can still destroy human threats without hesitation.
That contrast makes Evie more human without making her less frightening.
For me, details like this are more effective than giving a villainous character a sudden sentimental speech designed to prove she has a heart.
The greenhouse shows complexity rather than announcing it.
Forbidden Attraction Drives the Romance
The attraction between Evie and Nicholas is forbidden for practical, moral, and professional reasons. Nicholas should not be sleeping with someone connected to the investigation, while Evie cannot safely become emotionally involved with a man whose true identity could threaten her entire family.
That makes every moment of chemistry carry additional danger.
They are not merely breaking social rules.
They are undermining structures capable of getting people killed.
The forbidden element also supports the heat.
Knowing that the relationship should not happen creates exactly the kind of pressure that makes attraction harder to resist.
Nicholas wants someone he has every reason to condemn.
Evie wants someone she has every reason not to trust.
That contradiction keeps the romance compelling even when the emotional progression feels uneven.
The Heat Level and Chemistry
The chemistry between Nicholas and Evie is one of the easiest things to believe in Wretched. Their one-night stand establishes physical compatibility before either understands the larger conflict, which means later encounters carry the memory of something neither can simply dismiss.
That physical connection remains a major source of tension once Nicholas enters the Westerly organization. Attraction becomes increasingly dangerous because indulging it creates opportunities for both emotional exposure and professional compromise.
The intimate side of the relationship works better for me than some of the emotional transitions.
I never doubted that Nick and Evie wanted each other.
I occasionally questioned whether the movement from desire to love had been developed with enough internal reflection to feel equally inevitable.
That distinction matters in a story built around such extreme moral differences.
Physical chemistry can be instant.
Emotional surrender should feel much more expensive.
Wretched Tropes and Genres
The strongest elements include:
- Dark romance
- Contemporary romance
- Mafia and organized crime elements
- Drug empire
- Undercover agent
- DEA agent hero
- Villain heroine
- Morally gray heroine
- Forbidden romance
- Enemies-to-lovers elements
- One-night stand
- Hidden identity
- Criminal heroine
- Revenge
- Sister-loss grief
- Family loyalty
- Power imbalance
- Moral conflict
- Suspense
- Betrayal
- Secret mission
- High-stakes attraction
- Violence
- Redemption themes
- The Wizard of Oz inspiration
- Fractured fairy tale
- Dark retelling
What I Loved About Wretched
Evie is easily my favorite part of the book because female characters are not always allowed to be this unapologetically dangerous. McIntire gives her ambition, grief, ruthlessness, sexuality, and power without requiring that every dark quality eventually be explained away as a misunderstanding.
The chemistry between Evie and Nicholas is another major strength. From their first encounter onward, there is enough tension between them that every later scene feels charged by both attraction and the threat of discovery.
I also loved the undercover premise.
Nicholas entering the Westerly organization creates an immediate conflict between intimacy and deception, making even quieter moments dangerous because the truth has the potential to destroy everything between them.
The Wizard of Oz elements were especially fun for me because I love the classic story. Recognizing the inspiration added another layer without distracting from the modern criminal world McIntire builds around it.
Evie’s greenhouse is another detail I enjoyed more than I expected.
That combination of nurturing plants while running part of a violent drug operation captures the strange balance in her character better than a straightforward redemption narrative could.
The twists also kept the story moving. Even when I had reservations about parts of the emotional development, I still wanted to know what would happen next.
What Might Not Work for Every Reader
Nick’s moral transition is the biggest weakness for me. His personal history gives him strong reasons to despise the drug trade, so I wanted more sustained internal conflict before he became willing to compromise those beliefs for Evie.
That progression feels slightly rushed compared with the complexity of the premise.
The conflict between duty and desire had enough potential to carry far more of the book, and slowing it down could have made his eventual choices feel even more powerful.
Evie’s emotional development can also feel uneven.
There are moments when her feelings appear intense and undeniable, followed by periods where her emotional distance makes the progression toward love feel abrupt.
That inconsistency made it harder for me to stay fully connected to her internal journey. Readers who need clearly redeemable protagonists may also struggle with Evie. The story does not present her as someone who accidentally became involved in crime or remained completely innocent within the family business.
Her darkness is real. That is part of what I liked about her, but it will not work for everyone.
The drug-empire setting and violence also make this considerably darker than a romance where the criminal world functions only as glamorous background scenery. The ethical conflict matters because Nicholas has direct reasons to understand the harm that world causes.
Standalone Status and Series Placement
Wretched is the third complete standalone novel in Emily McIntire’s Never After series. Evie and Nicholas receive their own central romance and conflict, so the book is structured as a complete story rather than one chapter in an unresolved romantic arc.
The larger series is connected through dark reimaginings of familiar stories rather than one continuing couple. That allows each installment to explore different types of villains, relationships, and moral conflicts while maintaining the same fractured-fairy-tale identity.
This installment takes inspiration from The Wizard of Oz and gives the villain role to a formidable female protagonist. That distinction helps Wretched feel different from the surrounding books while still fitting naturally within the series.
Reader Fit
Wretched should appeal to readers who enjoy dark romance with dangerous women rather than relying exclusively on villainous male heroes. It is especially well suited to readers who like undercover-agent stories, forbidden attraction, hidden identities, morally complicated characters, criminal families, revenge, betrayal, and romance where the protagonists begin on opposite sides of a serious moral divide.
Readers who enjoy female villains should find Evie particularly compelling. She is not written as harmless beneath the surface, and her willingness to embrace power and violence gives the story a sharper edge than romances where the heroine merely flirts with darkness.
The book should also work for readers who enjoy fractured retellings and recognizable fairy-tale inspiration. The Wizard of Oz influence adds another layer of fun without requiring familiarity with the original story to understand the central romance.
Wretched Review: Final Thoughts
Wretched works best when it embraces the fact that Evelina Westerly is genuinely difficult to love. She is ruthless, involved in a destructive criminal empire, motivated partly by revenge, and capable of choices that would make her the obvious villain in someone else’s story.
That makes Nicholas’s attraction fascinating from the beginning. He is not falling for a woman who merely looks dangerous. He is falling for someone whose actions directly challenge the principles that brought him into her world.
Their relationship should therefore be impossible. That impossibility is exactly why the chemistry is so effective. Nicholas knows what the Westerly operation represents.
Evie knows that outsiders are potential threats. Neither has a rational reason to trust the other, yet the attraction creates a connection that neither seems able to dismiss.
For me, the most interesting question is not whether Evie can be redeemed. I am not convinced she needs to be transformed into a morally acceptable heroine for the romance to work.
The more compelling issue is whether Nicholas can love her while remaining honest about who she actually is. That is why I wanted more internal conflict from him.
His family history gives him deeply personal reasons to hate the drug trade, and loving Evie should force him into an uncomfortable reckoning with the difference between understanding someone and excusing them.
The book moves through that conflict more quickly than I would have preferred.
A slower moral collapse, or a more prolonged resistance to it, could have made Nick’s choices feel devastating in the best possible way.
Evie’s emotional journey creates a similar frustration for me.
Her character concept is excellent, but some of the transitions between detachment, attraction, vulnerability, and love feel less smooth than the rest of the plot.
I could always understand why Nicholas was fascinated by her. I did not always feel I had the same access to the progression of Evie’s feelings. Even with those criticisms, Wretched kept me completely engaged.
The undercover plot creates constant suspense, and the hidden identity ensures that every step toward intimacy carries the possibility of betrayal. The criminal setting gives the relationship real consequences. If Nicholas fails, his career and mission are at risk.
If Evie trusts the wrong person, her family and empire could be exposed. That danger keeps the romance from feeling isolated from the suspense plot.
The Wizard of Oz inspiration also works especially well because the idea of wickedness sits naturally beside Evie’s character. She has already accepted the villain role.
The story becomes less interested in proving that society judged her incorrectly and more interested in asking whether someone considered wretched can still inspire loyalty, desire, and love.
That is a much more interesting approach than simply revealing that the supposed villain was secretly good all along. Evie does not need to become harmless to become compelling.
She only needs enough humanity for the reader to understand why Nicholas cannot walk away.
For me, that is where Wretched succeeds.
It gives the Never After series a powerful female villain, an undercover hero caught between desire and duty, a dangerous criminal world, and enough forbidden chemistry to make the relationship almost impossible to resist.
I wanted deeper moral conflict and a more consistent emotional progression, but the tension, twists, Wizard of Oz inspiration, and Evie herself made the book difficult to put down.
Wretched FAQ
What is Wretched by Emily McIntire about?
Wretched follows Evelina Westerly, a ruthless woman who helps run her family’s drug empire, and Nicholas Woodsworth, an undercover DEA agent assigned to infiltrate that criminal organization. After a one-night stand brings them together before either understands the other’s true identity, their attraction becomes increasingly dangerous once Nicholas enters Evie’s world under false pretenses.
Is Wretched based on The Wizard of Oz?
Yes. Wretched is a dark contemporary reimagining inspired by The Wizard of Oz, using familiar themes and villain imagery while placing them inside a modern story involving drugs, revenge, undercover law enforcement, violence, and forbidden romance.
The book does not simply recreate the original story. McIntire uses the inspiration as a foundation for a much darker adult romance centered on morality and the idea of who gets labeled wicked.
Who is Evelina Westerly?
Evelina Westerly is the central heroine and a powerful figure within her family’s drug empire. She is ruthless, devoted to revenge for her sister’s murder, and comfortable occupying the role others would consider villainous.
Her character also has quieter contradictions, particularly through her greenhouse and capacity for emotional attachment. Those softer elements add complexity without erasing the darker choices that define much of her life.
Who is Nicholas Woodsworth?
Nicholas Woodsworth is an undercover DEA agent assigned to infiltrate the Westerly organization. His mission is deeply personal because the drug trade has already caused serious harm within his family.
Nicholas’s attraction to Evie creates an immediate moral conflict. He begins the story believing her world represents everything he stands against, but his feelings increasingly complicate that certainty.
Is Wretched a forbidden romance?
Yes. Nicholas is secretly investigating the criminal organization Evie helps run, which makes their relationship dangerous professionally, morally, and personally.
Their attraction also develops while Nicholas is hiding his true identity. That deception means every step toward intimacy carries the risk of eventual betrayal.
Is Wretched a dark romance?
Yes. The story includes criminal activity, violence, revenge, morally complicated characters, hidden identities, drugs, and a heroine who is genuinely involved in dangerous behavior.
The darkness is not limited to atmosphere. Evie’s actions and Nicholas’s moral compromises are central to the romance and the suspense surrounding it.
Is Evelina a villain heroine?
Yes. Evie embraces a role that would traditionally belong to the antagonist, and the book does not require her to be secretly innocent in order to become romantically compelling.
Her willingness to use violence and participate in the family drug empire makes her a genuinely dark heroine. The romance becomes interesting because Nicholas falls for her despite understanding what she is capable of doing.
Is Nicholas an undercover agent?
Yes. Nicholas is an undercover DEA agent who enters the Westerly organization under another identity in order to help dismantle the drug operation.
That secret creates one of the central conflicts in the story. His growing feelings for Evie make it increasingly difficult to separate the man he is with her from the agent carrying out the mission.
Does Wretched have strong romantic chemistry?
Yes. Nicholas and Evie have intense chemistry beginning with their first encounter, and that attraction continues after they discover how complicated their lives have become.
For me, the physical and forbidden chemistry is stronger than some of the emotional development. Their desire is easy to believe, although I wanted more time devoted to the transition from attraction and moral conflict into love.
Can Wretched be read as a standalone?
Yes. Wretched is the third complete standalone novel in Emily McIntire’s Never After series and gives Nicholas and Evie their own central romantic story.
The books share the larger fractured-fairy-tale concept rather than one continuing unresolved relationship. That structure allows Wretched to be read as its own dark romance.
What are the main tropes in Wretched?
The major elements include dark romance, forbidden romance, undercover agent, hidden identity, villain heroine, morally gray characters, one-night stand, criminal family, drug empire, revenge, betrayal, suspense, moral conflict, and The Wizard of Oz inspiration. The story also features strong enemies-to-lovers energy because Nicholas and Evie ultimately stand on opposite sides of the law.
Who should read Wretched?
Readers who enjoy dark romance, dangerous heroines, undercover investigations, criminal empires, morally conflicted heroes, hidden identities, forbidden attraction, and fractured fairy tales should find plenty to enjoy. It should especially appeal to readers who want a female protagonist who is allowed to be genuinely ruthless rather than simply misunderstood.