Now I know why nobody touched this book since it's release besides the ARC readers who gave it glowing reviews. This is a sequel to Devil of Dublin whNow I know why nobody touched this book since it's release besides the ARC readers who gave it glowing reviews. This is a sequel to Devil of Dublin which was a DNF for me. I remember the first book got so much hype on Bookstagram and Booktube and literal crickets on this sequel. The author said this sequel can't be read as a standalone and being the chaotic reader that I am, I ignored that. This wasn't bad but it's not for me. (view spoiler)[I had no personal attachment to Kellen and Darby from Book 1 and probably why I powered through this but I gotta say, killing off your couple in the opening chapter only to have them reincarnated as another couple who look "the spitting image" of said dead couple who were murdered is not romance in my book. If I were a fan and came into this only to see the couple I loved killed off for some Romeo + Juliet forever soulmates drivel I would be pissed. STOP FUCKING WITH HEAs. I don't understand this morbid fascination of killing off your characters just for shock value? Making your characters miserable and suffer is not beautiful. It may be someone else's kink but it's not mine. (hide spoiler)] I generally don't like apocalyptic war themed stories and I knew going in this would be dark but didn't realize how dark and ridiculous. The story opens up with Ireland getting bombed and invaded by Russia as retaliation for a mafia war that happened 20 years prior between the United Irish Brotherhood and the Bratva. A whole war over an old mafia vendetta where bombs are dropped on unsuspecting civilians and Irish cities and drones shooting down people and girls and elderly taken hostage and raped and brutalized gleefully by Russian soldiers. It was just a little too much and triggering where the violence and gore seemed heavily focused on for no reason. Not the kind of escapism I was looking for.
And the author makes her heroine Clover Doyle do some very questionable stunts in this book where her naivete veers straight into TSTL. Clover honestly was dumb as a box of rocks in her insistence on some things that made no sense. Why would you go off on your own and knock on doors of your evacuated city? Does she get captured by soldiers? Yup. Does she nearly get gang raped and unalived again? YOU BET. I hate when characters are dumbed down just to put them in dire situations of gruesome violence/assault with no help in sight. Awful shit happens all the time in real life. Do I want to read about it? No. Does it elevate this story? Also no. Neither did it make any sense for the heroine to dig her heels in refusing to leave their war-torn country just so she can solve what happened to her in her past life. Listen Nancy Drew, y'all got unalived so many times running for your life with no clothes or shoes or money with literal soldiers after you and now you want to say in a deserted town being invaded? No common sense. The TSTL ran deep in this book with characters lacking agency at the most bizarre times no less. Facing 25 drones armed with rifles about to shoot you down on a rooftop and ya'll just run into a helicopter to have sex instead while bullets are literally flying? WUT? O_o This was *thee* climactic face off with the villain that readers were waiting for but instead it's bow chicka wow wow time? Really? Bizarre as fuck. And I still would like to know how the hero Damien who nearly bled out from 2 separate gunshot wounds just magically heals from those grave wounds with nothing but some whisky and bandages applied to him? The hero is also a virgin but no mention of that whatsoever whenever these two have sex. B.B. Easton creates this huge political atmosphere and war torn landscape but her attention to details and word building is near nonexistent in times that is drastically needed. So yeah, I tried but this author isn't for me....more
Lydia Michaels really needs to work on her pacing. She's a talented writer and the sexual tension in this was divine but omg she waterlogs her storiesLydia Michaels really needs to work on her pacing. She's a talented writer and the sexual tension in this was divine but omg she waterlogs her stories with endless filler nonsense that's not needed. She stuffs her books with so much mundane information and/or secondary characters that the romance completely gets overshadowed and rushed through to the very end with a bunch of loose ends barely tied up. Like the heroine not finding out about the hero's tragic backstory until the very end of the book when he proposes to her....seriously? And the crazy bitchy PA Erin not getting exposed/fired on the page after all the shit she did to the heroine Skylar and nearly hitting the hero's little girl was crazy. The heroine's lack of agency was absurd and just plain stupid. You're the nanny and you don't think it's important to tell your boss right away that his assistant almost hit his daughter?! O_o It made no sense how Skylar kept putting off telling the hero about his assistant especially after that incident. Her lack of agency and urgency was so distracting and made her such a doormat. All the "it's nothing" and "I'll tell you later" brushing off she did drove me insane and made no sense. (view spoiler)[ Neither was the fact that it was never discovered that Erin was the one who deleted a very important email causing the heroine to flunk out of her class. WTF? THEN WHY DO IT? (hide spoiler)] Your readers want to see payoff and follow through ON THE PAGE. Not dusty scenes about the heroine's Gran and Pops babysitting 20 grandchildren or her overbearing family. When you have bad characters do bad things to the h/hr then retribution of some kind is expected and earned. Also, that cover? So misleading. lol This is a fluffy cozy Christmas story with more time spent on family drama rather than sexy times. There's literally just 1 full sex scene and the hero eating her out that's it. They are together for a total of a few days before drama implodes and the heroine takes her sweet time dragging her feet in deciding to make up with the hero (which is another pet peeve of mine). It almost felt like Contemporary Fiction/Chick Lit than true CR at times....more
Gonna pass on this. Always looking for a good cowboy romance but this just wasn't doing anything for me for some reason. Nothing specifically DNF @ 9%
Gonna pass on this. Always looking for a good cowboy romance but this just wasn't doing anything for me for some reason. Nothing specifically wrong aside from there seemed to be a lot of telling readers stuff that is not important. I've been reading a lot of duds lately and just not in the mood to sit through another bland read. Also the heroine Mollie kinda annoyed me. Sobbing over finding out she won't get the money her dead father left her unless she follows the stipulation in his will of living on his ranch for 1 year really didn't endear me to her. Felt very spoiled and entitled. She doesn't need the money by the sounds of her successful boot company, but I didn't get far....more
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