RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 24601: A Dark Les Miserables Retelling – Camilla Harlow

Amazon Link: amazon

After ten years of imprisonment, Valjean has been released. He has no family and nothing to live for. Until he is tasked to kill Javert.

Javert is wanted for murder. After being haunted by his past, he doesn’t know what he has to live for. Until he’s chained up by Valjean.

The two depend on each other to survive, and realise they don’t want to live without the other.

24601 is an enemies to lovers retelling of a classic story. It is a dark romance and may not be suitable for all readers.

This is a dark retelling of Les Misérables that takes place in present day. Victor Valjean has spent ten years in prison for killing his brother Gabriel after seeing him sexually abuse his niece Cosette. It was Theo Javert who arrested him and soon his past and present will collide.

Life did not go well for Javert placed in foster care as a child and getting into trouble until his records were erased after he turned eighteen. He decided to become a police officer and rise in the ranks. Unfortunately, his partner Perez helped get him demoted and lose his position being placed at Riker as a correction officer where Valjean is.

When Valjean, inmate 24601, was released, he went to live in a shelter, no family, no money and no reason to live. Valjean wants nothing to do with his mob family and his father but to get away he requires money and decides on pulling one last job, a job that would bring him face to face with his father.

Javert returns home to find his ex-partner and his wife in bed together causing a fight, a fight that resulted in Javier putting a knife in Perez’s heart. Now he is wanted for murder and is on the run. He hides away trying to keep from being located but his hiding place is discovered by Valjean’s father, and a hit is put out for him. Apparently, Perez was in Valjean’s dad’s pocket, and he wants his death avenged.

Valjean’s father runs the city with an iron hand, he can shake a man’s hand then put a bullet in his head and his son would be no different, there is no love between Valjean and his father, a father who blamed him for killing his son, the son who followed his father. At an early age Valjean and his brother were taught how to steal and deal in drugs, his brother embraced the lifestyle while Valjean tried to stay in the background.

Alaric demands that Valjean find Javert and kill him, but Valjean wants nothing to do with more murder. When he finds Javert, he locks him in a basement, handcuffed deciding what to do with him. In no condition to fight back Javert accepts his situation hoping for death, a death that Valjean is not in a rush to give him.

As the two men, one a prisoner and one holding the prisoner begin to have feelings for each other, they are in danger from a father, who has no paternal feelings for his only son.

This is a dark MM romance that takes place in the present and gives a different story of the relationship between Valjean and Javert. I am a big fan of Les Misérables, so I totally enjoyed seeing a different take on their relationship