Category: Fiction

God of Wrath by Rina Kent

Fiction

We finally have a female main character who stands up for herself and doesn’t let a man push her around. Cecily might end up being my favorite woman in this series for that alone. After two books of very submissive female main characters, Cecily’s character was an overwhelmingly welcome relief.

Cecily has been labeled the prude of her friend group, they regularly tease her about not even wanting to verbally call body parts by their actual names. But we find out immediately that there is a reason behind her shying away from all things sexual. After having a terrifying experience with her ex boyfriend, she hasn’t been involved with any men for two years. Until Jeremy. We know all about Jeremy from God of Pain, about how protective he can be, as well as controlling when it comes to the safety of his younger sister, and about how much he has to live up to as he prepares to take the place of his father in the mafia one day. Cecily the homebody, who only seems to be confrontational when it comes to men trying to control women, certainly doesn’t seem like the type of girl who would ever want to be involved with a future mafia lord. The girl who hopes to become a therapist one day hardly seems like she would want to be in a relationship with a man who blackmails and tortures others for a living. There are even rumors floating around campus that he has already killed a man. But the two share a very uncommon kink, and this is ultimately what intrigues Jeremy enough to pursue Cecily.

As the relationship began between these two I thought I was going to be reading what would basically be a God of Malice or God of Pain sequel. But there were finally some differences in the plot that I actually really enjoyed. Both Glyndon and Annika ultimately let the men do what they wanted, that being have the final say in all things. They may have tried to fight them, but they both ended up letting their lovers have complete control over them. Cecily actually put her foot down and set ground rules. And Jeremy actually listened. I loved how she stood up for herself and what she believed in, she didn’t change in any major ways to be with him and she didn’t let him bully or coerce her. Jeremy is not Mr. Perfect. But he actually ends up being quite reasonable, relatively, he listens to what she has to say and he backs off when she tells him to. This makes Jeremy my favorite male main character so far as well, because he actually seems like someone who could really exist. Killian and Creighton were too brutal, too unforgiving, too overpowering. I know these stories are fiction, but sometimes you can take it a little too far. The unrelatability is what made me not enjoy the overall novels. 

So if you have read the first two books and you thought to yourself I don’t know if I can pick up another book in this series, I can’t read the same story again, God of Wrath is different. Or, if you read my other reviews and didn’t feel compelled to pick up either of those books, every book in this series is a standalone, so you could choose to read just this one. And while all these books are standalones, they take place in the same universe and all the same characters are at least mentioned in every story. I am actually working on creating a timeline that I think I will post after I finish the last Legacy of Gods book. All these stories happen around the same time, and I am finding it an intriguing project to map out when all the major events happen.

God of Pain by Rina Kent

Fiction

Almost exactly two years ago I started to read the Legacy of Gods series. Back then, there were only four books released, now the entire six book series is out in print. I wonder, did I not continue reading the next few books on purpose because I knew the series wasn’t finished, or was there another reason? To try and figure out what that other reason might have been I did go back and re read God of Malice, the first book in Legacy of Gods. I did enjoy it, although there were several things that frustrated me. I am going to update the post I wrote for that book in my original post, of which I will have a link for you at the end of this post.

God of Pain begins around the end of the events of God of Malice, pre epilogues. Both novels are standalones, but the characters of focus in God of Pain are introduced to us in God of Malice. Creighton, younger brother to Eli and second cousin to Glyndon and her brothers, is the strong and silent type, emphasis on the silent part. He is a says less, means more kind of guy, only speaking when he deems it worthy enough to do so. This is beyond frustrating for Annika, the new roommate to the Royal Elite girls, who is a socialite and a chatterbox. She is drawn to Creighton the first time she meets him, with his beautiful dark blue eyes and powerful presence. She just wants him to open up and show some interest in her, but he is stubbornly resistant to her charms. Just when Annika is ready to give up on Creighton, he breaks into her room one night, the same night that someone sets fire to a building outside of the mansion she lives in with her brother and the other members of his club, the Heathens. The Heathens and the Serpents, rival clubs at the American King’s University, are also in a tandem rivalry war with the Elites, the club belonging to the English Royal Elite University. After the events of God of Malice, the three clubs have been fighting constantly, and anyone associated with the clubs, including friends and relatives of the members, are either in danger or could potentially be so. 

Why was Creighton in Annika’s room the night of the fire? Was he the one who started it? What changes after that night, after weeks of nothing, that causes Creighton to finally show interest in Annika? This is just the beginning of a very dangerous, forbidden affair. The story escalated in ways I could have never imagined. I was ready for Annika’s older brother Jeremy, leader of the Heathens, to oppose his sister dating a guy whose brother and cousin are leading members of the Elites. I wasn’t prepared for yet another book in which an inexperienced, cloistered virgin, immediately participates in very aggressive, violent sexual acts with a man she barely knows, a man who has vastly more experience in both the world at large and in the bedroom. It was thrilling to read, but also mildly irritating. I don’t believe that anyone goes from being untouched to immediately ready for BDSM, which is pretty much exactly what occurs between Creigh and Anni. And the overly controlling man trope was tiring as well. Anni gets it from both ends, from her brother forcing her to stay with him at his mansion rather than her dorm with the girls, to Creighton having similar tendencies to Killian. It becomes incredibly unreasonable and irrational, an example being when he won’t let any other man touch her, including men that are gay. Annika has craved freedom her entire life, Creighton doesn’t exactly give her any. Why is she ready to commit to a man that treats her almost exactly the same way her brother and father have treated her for her entire life?

I was hoping that the next book in this series would be better, but I’ve already read the first few chapters and I think I’m going to be mentally grumbling again. It looks as though this will be yet another story that follows a similar vein, and even more frustratingly so that this will be the third book in a row in this series that focuses on my least favorite trope, the female virgin who gets swallowed up by a much more experienced man. I predict that our female main character will get sucked into a situation that is more than she bargained for, but she somehow ends up either liking it or just going along with it, and she doesn’t think she has any means of bargaining with the man or ending the relationship, and so she throws her morals out the window. Come back next week if you want to hear me both complain about that while simultaneously gloat about how spot on I was with my predictions.

God of Malice by Rina Kent

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Fiction

I had high hopes for this book when I first started it, but the longer I read it the less I was into it. I feel like I only continued to read it because there were some mildly interesting things going on and I just wanted to know if certain characters were going to be alive or dead at the end of the story.

The main characters of the story are wife and husband, Maddie and Nate, and their son, Oliver. Maddie is an artist, she creates sculptures from recycled materials, Nate is a cop, and Oliver is an overly sensitive teenager. At once, it is very obvious that Oliver’s immense empathy is going to be a major focal point in the novel. Also established early on is how Nate’s terrible relationship with his father is going to be very crucial to the story. Additionally, I got the sense very early on that there was something wrong with Maddie, mentally. The story is part mystery, part thriller, part supernatural. 

Now let me just get straight into all the things I didn’t really like about this novel. There were several different plots going on at once and sometimes it was obvious that you were reading the main plot. Sometimes the author would tell you outright that you were in the past. And sometimes at some point you would figure out for yourself that you were reading a passage that was not happening in the present, and the main characters were not actually the people you were reading about on those pages. I don’t mind a story that jumps between past, present, and even future events, but what made me not enjoy this so much was the fact that sometimes we found ourselves in the past or present of other realities. And some of the realities were so similar that it made it hard to keep track of which passages were part of the reality that the main characters were in, and which ones were the side plots. 

Sometimes, you would think you were reading from a certain character’s perspective only to find out that no, you weren’t. It really interrupted the flow of the story in my opinion. I found myself questioning what I was reading often, and not in a good way. I think I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if the author had picked one way to exercise our brains. I think the back and forth between past and present, this reality and that reality, and both of those elements combined, was what made me slowly lose interest. It wasn’t that bad for the entire book, it started to get more and more jumbled around in the second half of the novel. So, yeah, the first half of the book was pretty decent, then it got messy in the second half.

Then there is the title of this novel. I find that it makes you think that ‘the’ Book of Accidents is going to be important and prominent. But it isn’t. It plays a very small part in the overall plot of the book. I think the author could have come up with something better. 

Finally, I’m just going to say it, I think the character Edmund Walker Reese was redundant. I think you could have taken that character out of the story and it would have been exactly the same. He wasn’t needed and he didn’t add anything to the story. The fate of Nate could have reached its conclusion in another way, he didn’t need to have that moment of redemption in order to go through that door. 

I think this could have been a better story. I think the author got a little carried away. It’s like he wrote this book based on a bunch of different ideas that he had, and he couldn’t pick one so he just tried to write all of them into one story. I think that if he separated some of his ideas and organized them better he could have written two or three better novels utilizing different parts of this story. Edmund Walker Reese and his obsession with numbers and murder could have been one book on its own. I am actually disappointed that the story didn’t get into him very much at all. Jed, his alcoholism, how he went about researching and writing his novels, the tragedy with his family, that could have been a book. And then the main plot with Maddie, Nate, and Oliver could have been a separate book, if it were thought out better. So even though this book got great reviews, it is not something I would read again or recommend.

Pucking Sweet by Emily Rath

Fiction

I knew I was going to love this book before I read it. I did some serious speed reading when I was getting through Pucking Wild and its accompanying novella, because I was anticipating this story so much. And I did not disappoint myself. I loved this novel just as much as I was hoping I would.

The poly relationship in this story felt exactly right to me. Three is the magic number in my opinion, any more than that just feels like a little bit too much, but I am not going to rain on the love parade that consists of anyone in a poly relationship involving more than three persons. We have our female main character, Poppy, and the two men she finds herself equally attracted to and can’t decide between. On the one hand, she has an honest and open relationship blossoming with a man that she has known for a few years, but who has only now confessed his feelings towards her. He is direct with her, telling her exactly how he feels and what he wants from her. But then she finds incredible passion between herself and the team’s potential public relations nightmare, a man who seems to have never had a serious, loving relationship with a woman, a real playboy. By all rights they should abhor the other, but there really is a fine line between love and hate. After these two have what was meant to be a one night stand they can’t deny that there is something chemical drawing them towards each other. You really get the best of both worlds in this story. 

I have to go on a rant about the side plot, that being all the drama between Poppy and her family. The way Poppy was treated by her entire family made me so furious. Her younger sister was bratty and a bit narcissistic. Her mother was prude, withholding, demanding, and controlling. Her father just didn’t seem very aware or observant regarding anything that was going on with his family, he was fully focused on his political career. Why have four children if you aren’t going to know their likes and dislikes, or pay attention to any of them? The brother, who didn’t make much of an impact at the beginning, turned out to be a huge jerk too. He was a bully who loved to run his mouth, but at least someone shut it for him in the end. The only sibling who didn’t seem like they were mistreating Poppy was the oldest sister, who was only mentioned briefly in the beginning. If she managed to stay out of all this drama, then good for her. It seems like she accomplished what Poppy should have done years ago and ignored her overbearing, manipulative, snotty, Kennedy-esque wannabee of a family. 

I can’t recall from memory all the times I have gasped aloud or shouted in surprise or glee over something that I had read in a book. You could say that not a lot shocks me, or that the moments are so few and far between that they are lost to time and memory. But I did gasp at a huge plot twist that happened towards the end, I screamed when I read it. However, after this one line no more mention was made of it, and it was kind of a big deal. Think relationship ending, perspective altering twist. Even though there were several other more pressing matters occurring at the same time that may have needed immediate attention, I was surprised that no one brought this one confession up after the other matters were taken care of. That one line is really going to bother me. I am hoping that the novella that we were promised will include a chapter that covers what went on here.

Speaking of that third novella, it was supposed to come after this book. It is listed in the indexes of both Pucking Ever After Volumes One and Two, which says to me that the author was committed to writing it. But it has not been released and I cannot find any information hinting at a release date. Pucking Strong does have a release date, August, and I already pre-ordered it, but there has been no word on whether or not the third novella is coming out before, after, or not at all. Maybe the author decided not to write a novella starring these particular characters? Maybe she was in a scramble to get this latest installment out and had to put Pucking Strong Volume Three on hold? I do hope that I get to read that novella one day, and I really hope that the one cliffhanger I was personally left on is addressed. Until the news drops on that, I just have to wait until September to read about the boys in Pucking Strong. I fear that I may have gone a little overboard with this blog, but I do tend to do that when I really enjoy a book. Next week, I have a thriller that I want to tell you about.

Pucking Ever After Volume Two by Emily Rath

Fiction

This novella has one more chapter than Ever After Volume One, but is about twice as thick. The author decided to put a little bit of extra care into these stories, in my opinion, and I am all for it. I think that overall you will notice a big difference in tone here. Volume One was mostly playful and sexy, Volume Two is serious, powerful, and heart stirring. 

If you aren’t interested in a heavy read, maybe you should skip this one. I would say that every single one of the chapters in this novella touches on a serious issue or plays through a tense situation. The one serious topic, which required two chapters of plot, involved a life threatening medical issue with Tess. While I myself did not relate to the issue at all, and was not disturbed by what I read, the author was right in putting a warning at the beginning of the novel for anyone who might be sensitive to the issue.  As for the other situation that required two chapters worth of narrative, it was less dramatic, not life threatening, but a delicate issue none the less. It focused on our moody, tight lipped Caleb, and the solemn Ilmari. These two chapters were more about longing and heartache, and they ended up being sweet and romantic and the guys worked through their issues. These two chapters ended up being my favorite in this novella. 

Having finished this novella I fell right into the third novel in this series. If you want to find out who the love interests are in that book, come back tomorrow.