February Reads
What tales of love has Cupid sent my way this past month?
February is the month of love, being the calendar home of Valentine’s Day, so what better way to celebrate than with a few romantic escapades? This month’s reads include two offerings from the expansive Rinaverse, a deliciously sweet MM romance, and the rollicking conclusion to a serial killer romance trilogy.
First on my list this month is the third book in Rina Kent’s Legacy of Gods series, GOD OF WRATH. I will admit I’ve read this series all out of order, but as they are listed as standalones, that’s just fine. The Legacy of Gods series is about the offspring of the architects of the greater Rinaverse, and as I have stated here before, you have to do some serious suspension of disbelief to fit these books into the same timeline as those about their parents.
This particular book concerns the relationship between Jeremy Volkov, the heir apparent to Adrian and Lia’s Volkov line of the Bratva family of New York (the Deception Trilogy), and Cecily Knight, the daughter of Xander Knight and Kimberly Reed (Royal Elites’ BLACK KNIGHT).
Jeremy is the head of the Heathens, a privileged group of Russian mafia offspring attending university at King’s U’s College in the U.K. He has a well-deserved reputation for being ruthless, bloodthirsty, and quick-tempered. Cecily is his polar opposite, a quiet, unassuming student who spends most her time studying, reading manga, volunteering, and looking out for all her friends. When she accepts an assignment from one of those friends to crash the Heathens’ annual initiation and spy on them, she’s caught by Jeremy, setting off an unlikely obsession in the unhinged Heathens leader.
Jeremy doesn’t know why he feels this attraction to Cecily, but he can’t stay away from her. He stalks her, discovers her secrets, and bullies his way into every aspect of her life. He makes it his business to help her overcome a past trauma while hunting down the responsible party. Their relationship is a push-pull of sexual tension as Jeremy peels back the layers of Cecily’s deepest self, bringing them closer together before a misunderstanding drives a wedge between them. It takes a revisit of her earlier trauma endangering her life to bring them back together. In the end, all is well and wraps up in a satisfying HEA. Kent really hits her stride in the Legacy of Gods series, and like all the books in the series, I give this one five stars.
I jumped back in time for the next book, revisiting Rina Kent’s Royal Elites series for the final book, RUTHLESS EMPIRE. This is the story of Cole Nash and Silver Queens. Like all the members of the Royal Elites group, Cole and Silver grew up together. Cole was an odd kid, a loner, who preferred spending his time in books and hiding the fact that he lived in an abusive household. But he loved creating chaos, and that’s what drew him to Silver. Because while Silver projected the image expected of her by her politician parents, she was just as chaotic inside.
The book begins in the past and works its way forward. Cole and Silver’s relationship starts off as frenemies from an early age when they happen upon each other in the park after both had endured traumatic events. There they make a pact to give each other all their firsts. It is also at this time that Silver attracts a stalker, a person who watches and waits for her in the shadows, inserting themselves into mysterious chapters in the book. In the years that follow, Cole picks on Silver mercilessly and competes with her at every turn, enforcing her belief that he hates her as much as she hates him. When they become teenagers and Cole’s pursuit of her persists, Silver agrees to go along with her father’s wishes and become engaged to Aiden King. She does it as a buffer to keep Cole away while Aiden does it just to piss Cole off.
But Cole isn’t buying it. When his mother marries Silver’s father, he takes advantage of their new closeness to insert himself into every aspect of Silver’s life. Despite her best intentions, she begins to reciprocate his feelings, but they can’t reveal their relationship because they’re now stepsiblings and it would wreck her father’s political aspirations, so they continue their relationship in secret.
In the third act, several things happen that could change both their lives forever. While dealing with that, Silver’s stalker steps out of the shadows and complicates matters. In a series of events that first drives them apart then pulls them back together, Silver and Cole must both come to terms with their pasts in order to move into their future. It takes two epilogues with several years in between, but Cole and Silver finally get their happily ever after. I give this one four stars because it seems the storylines of these Royal Elites series couples all seem to follow a pattern of past trauma that requires working through.
This month of romance wouldn’t be complete for me without an MM interlude. For February that came in the form of Lucy Lennox’s INHERITING MISS FORTURE, book 3 in the Billionaire Brotherhood series. Devon McKay is a man without a family. When his friend and fellow billionaire brotherhood member Silas moves to Majestic, Wyoming (see MARRYING MR. MAJESTIC in my November reads newsletter), Devon follows suit, hoping to escape the hole in his life left by his brother’s death and his subsequent estrangement from his parents. He has his horses and construction on his new house to keep him busy, but he still thinks about a one-night stand he had two years previous during a visit to Texas to donate sperm to comply with his good friend Katie’s desire to have a baby.
He had accepted his lonely lot in life when the subject of that one sight stand, Tully Bowman, shows up in Majestic with the daughter Dev didn’t realize he had. Seems Tully was also a friend of Katie’s, as well as her probate lawyer, and he took it upon himself to find Dev after Katie met with an unfortunate accident. Suddenly Dev’s life is turned upside down as he deals with the prospect of raising a toddler and dealing with his residual feelings for Tully. It doesn’t help that Tully decides he’s sticking around until he determines if Dev is a suitable father for Lellie, since Lellie comes complete with a hefty trust fund and Dev seems like nothing more than a gold digging, drifter ranch hand. It’s a fortune that her strictly religious grandparents are sure Dev will take advantage of to claim the child that they feel is rightfully theirs.
Dev is torn. He finds himself falling in love with Lellie right away, but doesn’t feel like he’s father material. Still, if he decides to keep Lellie, it won’t be because he needs her money. As the little girl grows on him, he soon he finds himself struggling to find a way to keep both her and Tully in his life for good. But that means fighting her grandparents for custody and reuniting with his own parents, who still blame him for his brother’s death. In the end, it’s just the thing he needs to heal his past and get his life back on track. The book ends with everyone getting what they want and Dev, Tully, and Lellie riding off into a sweet HEA. Four stars.
The last book I read this month was the much-anticipated final book in Brynne Weaver’s Ruinous Love Trilogy, SCYTHE & SPARROW. This book features the youngest of the three Kane brothers, Fionn, and circus performer/tarot card reader Rose Evans. Fionn has given up his medical practice in Boston to escape a broken heart and moved to small town Hartford, Nebraska, where he runs a local clinic. His days are an orderly routine of treating the town’s patients, working out, and crocheting with the Suture Sisters. It’s nice, neat, and predictable, just what he thought he wanted. And then chaos hits.
When Fionn gets an alert on his phone that there’s been a break-in at his clinic, he rushes there to find a motorcycle out front and a barely conscious Rose on the floor with a severely broken leg. He’s about to call the police when she looks up at him and whispers, “Help.” That’s all it takes for him to throw caution to the wind and devote himself to her well-being. Rose ends up in the hospital for a few days while her co-workers at Silveria Circus move on to the next town. That’s when Fionn offers to put her up at his house while she recovers despite every instinct warning him away because he knows there’s more to Rose’s story than she’s telling him.
As suspected, Rose has a dark secret, but then, so does Fionn. Both of them are carrying the baggage from their past deeds, but while Fionn is still running away from his, Rose has embraced hers and turned it into a dark calling. The more time he spends with her, the more he comes to realize he hasn’t been living an authentic life. And Fionn makes Rose realize there’s a lot she’s been missing out on in her nomadic life. In a funny way, they complete each other, though neither has the courage to admit it.
Just when it seems as though they’ve reached a mutual trust with each other, Rose’s past deeds come back to claim her. Fionn steps in to save her and finds himself knee deep in the kind of trouble he’s worked his whole adult life to avoid. He’s forced to turn to an unwelcome source to bail him out, but there are strings attached. A long separation and unforeseen obstacles come between the two before they finally resolve their issues and admit their feelings. The book ends with two epilogues and a bonus chapter that wrap up Fionn and Rose’s story, as well as the entire trilogy in a sweet and funny HEA for all three couples. Of course this makes for excellent five star reading while ruining yet another food source.
That’s all I read this month. I have two Rina Kent books on preorder for next month, including a new Legacy of Gods offering that I’m excited to get my hands on. Until then, happy reading.