Book Stats
- Format: ebook
- Chapters: 28
- Pages: 388
- POV: 1st person, alternating between Harper and Nolan (with the last chapter in a different character’s POV)
Book Rating
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Spice: 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️/5
Summary
Brynne Weaver is known for her very popular Ruinous Love trilogy. She writes dark rom-coms with wild trigger warnings. I will admit that I rated the Ruinous Love trilogy 3 stars overall. The books were good, but I really felt like they were missing aspects that would’ve made them top reads for me. But this one? This one was fantastic. I was pulled in right away and couldn’t stop reading. I’ve even thought about it a few times since completing it, so I may have to come back and eventually update this to a 5-star read if it continues to stick around in my mind.
This story follows Harper, a gardener in the small town of Cape Carnage, who protects her town from crappy tourists, with the help of her woodchipper, Cookie Monster, and her pretty little murder bird, Morpheus. She has a secretive past that she escaped and is committed to protecting her town from monstrous visitors. We also have Nolan, a charming killer seeking revenge on Harper for a tragic event in his past that caused the loss of his brother.
My favorite character overall is Arthur, Harper’s curmudgeonly landlord and BFF. He’s a charming, grumpy character and I enjoyed every interaction with him.
Harper and Nolan don’t trust each other and yet they find themselves in the midst of a very fragile truce. They have bigger issues to deal with, so they form an alliance of sorts and work together to keep their biggest secrets from being revealed to the world. This was fun because it only increased the intense interactions and banter between the two characters. Not to mention they were extremely attracted to each other, but tried to ignore it since they were supposed to be enemies.
This story has enemies-to-lovers, a sassy raven sidekick, serial killers, dark humor, morally gray characters, boundary-pushing true-crime documentarians, obsession, light stalking, and kidnap. And no, that’s not a complete list. This was a thrilling, fast-paced rom-com with mystery and dark topics.
My Review
I gave 4 stars because I truly enjoyed it. I thought it was a great time and had very enjoyable characters, as well as an intriguing story. I didn’t realize that this story would span the entire 3-book trilogy, whereas the Ruinous Love trilogy highlighted a different couple in each book. But I love that we’ll get to dive deeper into Harper and Nolan’s relationship, so that was an exciting surprise!
As much as I enjoyed this story, it didn’t feel like one I would re-read or continuously think about afterward. I didn’t feel like I needed to own it, that borrowing from Libby had been sufficient. However, as I stated in the beginning of this post, this book has stuck around in my mind and I randomly think about it at times. If that continues, I might just have to re-consider my 4 stars.
I gave 3 chili peppers because there were more than 3 sexual scenes, one was a brief less-detailed mention while the others were much more detailed. There was also mention of masturbation and inner monologue that could be considered dirty.
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