Nonfiction and Nonsense

I did it, it may have taken me a little bit longer than I anticipated but I finally finished the Monsters and Muses series. We’ve gone full circle here, ending the series in the same way that it began with my least favorite trope, the virgin. I was hoping it would have gone out with a bang. There was banging, but it could have been just so much better if the female main character wasn’t a virgin. I will say though, that everything was wrapped up fairly well. 

Our female main character in this story is Violet, the half sister of Kallum, of whom we meet in the very first book, Promises and Pomegranates. I wasn’t very enthusiastic about getting a book focused on her, I have never much liked her in any of the books where she has made an appearance in the past. And honestly, out of all six books and the book one prequel, this book was my least favorite. I didn’t really like Violet any more by the end of this story than I had liked her in book one or any other time she was mentioned in any of the other books. I kind of didn’t care for the male main character either. His name is Grayson James, and if that name sounds familiar, it is. He is the uncle of Aiden from Vipers and Virtuosos, although they are fairly close in age due to Grayson’s father being kind of a lecher. There are sort of a lot of messed up men in this family of musicians. I don’t really want to discuss the plot any more because I just can’t find the motive to make the effort over a book I didn’t enjoy all that much. If you have read the rest of the series, and you are a stickler for finishing things you’ve started, and you don’t care what I have to say, then I encourage you to read it. If you were a fan of the series overall, you will definitely want to read the epilogue.

Because I don’t want to discuss the plot, I will give my final opinion on the series. I thought it was really excellent. I loved how everyone is connected to everyone else in some way. It can be a little overwhelming at times, but it is not overly confusing. I was a little let down that I didn’t get a book about Boyd and Fiona. That was, until I went to Sav’s website and saw that she has a trilogy of King’s Trace novels and one of them focuses on these two. I am very excited about this because ever since I finished book two, Vipers and Virtuosos, I wanted to delve deeper into King’s Trace. On top of that, it looks as though another trilogy of books is going to come out in January of next year, and I believe these stories will star the offspring of some of the Monsters and their Muses. I have a lot to look forward to with this series and I am anticipating great things from Ms. Miller.

I was very excited when I learned that the male lead for the fifth book in the Monsters and Muses series would be Cash. I was intrigued by him the first time he came onto the page. He and his twin brother, Palmer, couldn’t be more different. Palmer is lively, friendly, and social, while Cash is reserved, serious, and consumed by his work. We get to know Palmer a little bit in Oaths and Omissions, as he seems to be the brother Lenny is closer to, but whenever Cash entered the scene he just stood out to me in the best way. I wanted to know from the get go why this guy was so stiff and serious. From what I got, he has just always been this way.

Cash has done very well for himself in life. He is a young, successful lawyer working environmental cases. He seems to have very little involvement or care for the Primrose family business of realty, of which his father had done very well for himself in collecting investment properties for the mafia. Cash and Ariana meet for the first time purely by chance, she was out for her bachelorette night and he was reluctantly dragged out by his brother to celebrate their birthday. Cash reflects on how he has never been interested in any woman, emotionally or physically, until he sees Ariana. Nothing comes to fruition that night, but through another chance encounter not too long after, Cash finds himself with Ariana as his wife. There are extreme similarities between what happens to Elena in her quick marriage to Kallum, and Ariana, as she was also promised to an abusive mafia husband that she had no wish to marry. So while Ariana is happy to have an out for the one marriage, she finds new struggles in this harried contractual arrangement with Cash. Cash meanwhile struggles with emotional and physical feelings he has never had before, and he slowly loses control of the tight leash he keeps himself on.

I enjoyed this book a lot, much more than I predicted I would. I wasn’t sure about a story with Ariana as the female main character at first, but the calm and collected lawyer and the wild and emotional ballerina end up being just what the other needed. There was only one thing that I found bothersome. It really irritated me that several times throughout the story we are reminded that Ariana quit dancing because of an injury. But we never get an answer as to what that injury was, or if that even actually happened. The way Ariana speaks of it I think it was a cover up and she had to quit dancing because of something with her family. Given that she was still dancing when Elena began her relationship with Kallum, I think it might have had something to do with all the scandal that came after Elena ratted on her father’s mafia ties. I don’t know if this is something we will ever know for sure seeing as there is only one book left. However, the author mentions at the end of her books that you can sign up for her mailing list and get extra content. I think I might do this, not to see if she ever reveals what happened, but because there are other characters that I would love to get some more time with. I am still in love with Lenny and Jonas, but maybe the couple in the last book will be even more interesting and could become my new favorite.

I literally said, “Oh yeah!” out loud when I got to the first chapter of this book, which came after a very brief prologue. It read Alistair at the top of the page, so I was excited about coming up with the correct prediction regarding the main character, and equally elated that there was going to be an entire book about him. I first got the feeling when Jonas mentions watching his brother watching a blue haired girl at the art gala near the end of Oaths and Omissions. I think I knew then that the mayor’s story would be up and coming. 

Arrows and Apologies takes place at about the same time as Oaths and Omissions, you will see the overlap where this story begins and the art gala from the previous book. So while Jonas is in the middle of his arrangement with Lenny, Alistair is trying to figure out why he is so enamored with this stranger he met once in Boston. Cora, our main lady, is on a mission to find a missing person and her search leads her to Aplana Island. She had no idea that the man she encountered one time in an alley on the mainland was the mayor of the island town she was led towards in her search. Now she finds herself face to face with the possessive, slightly irritating,  and dangerous man everyday while she vigilantly pursues any and all leads to finding the person she has been looking for over the past year. 

There is a lot more mystery involved in this story than the others, the reader is not privy to all, or most, of the information. You are actually trying to find out what happened to the missing person as we do not get a first person point of view from them. There is one shifty character, which is normal for this series, and the entire time you are trying to figure out what his angle is and where his loyalties truly lie. Also, he’s kind of a huge jerk, I disliked him every time he appeared on the page. We get introduced to what I believe is the big, majority ruling crime family that is a backbone behind all the crime in the entire series. The amount of power they hold makes the power that we have seen from Kallum, Jonas, and now Alistair, less so in comparison. Alistair doesn’t quite seem scared of them, just worried. But for a man like him, a man who seems to rarely be bothered by anything, this is a cause for concern. I wonder if we will get a deeper view into the organization in the remaining two books. 

The next book, number five, I accidentally got a preview of as I was finishing up this one. An excerpt from the next book followed the epilogue of this one, and it was on the same page and my eyes strayed. I usually enjoy the surprise of discovering who our next characters will be when I open up the next book, but when I saw who it was I exclaimed, “Ooooo” a little loudly. I won’t say who I saw, but I did see them coming. And I do intend that ‘them’ to be read as plural.

I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think this might be my favorite book in the Monsters and Muses series. It outshone the first two in that I loved the story, the couple suited each other well from the start, and my least favorite trope was omitted! And I got my wish, a book focused on Jonas. There are minor spoilers ahead. 

Our leading man, part bar owner, part hitman, wants revenge. He wants to finish a job he started over a decade ago involving a botched hit on a man who played a part in the death of his father. Jonas ends up serving jail time due to his errors but for a much shorter period of time than he should have. We get his origin story here, how he became who he is and how he met and started working with Kallum. After being introduced to him in Promises and Pomegranates and being very intrigued I am very satisfied in getting to know all about him. It’s been said that due to an overwhelming desire for readers of the series to get more Kallum and Elena the author was motivated to write a prequel to their story. But I want more Jonas and Lenny!

Lenny is the only daughter of a well to do and well known family that lives on Aplana island, the same island where Kallum, Elena, and Jonas live. Similar to Elena, Lenny has lived her entire life according to her parents wishes, perhaps in an even more restrictive sense than the daughter of a mafia leader. Having been exploited since she was born, her parents have always found a way to use Lenny to boost and promote her fathers business. You will notice that there are a lot of similarities between the two women. But in my case I ended up feeling much more sorry for Lenny while at the same time feeling a lot more distaste for her mother and father. She finally gets out from under her parents’ very large thumbs when she decides to start a fake relationship with Jonas after a chance encounter. 

We get a lot of new characters here, which I found very welcoming after the small cast in Vipers and Virtuosus. I think the large cast made the story all the more interesting and the conflict all the more provocative. I hope that the next three books follow this formula. And with three books to go, I think I may want to change my predictions about who might be the focus. I previously stated that I could see each of Elena’s sisters getting a book, but I think things are going in another direction. I got a feeling that the end of Oaths and Omissions was kind of hinting at the next book, which I think could star Jonas’ brother, Alistair. I am less certain that we will get a book on Blue, the bouncer and sometimes fill in bartender at The Flaming Chariot, as there wasn’t much mention of him in this book. Instead, I could maybe see one of Lenny’s older brothers getting a book. I would really enjoy a story focused on Cash, the polished lawyer who works in Boston. And I won’t spoil the ending, but a character from the previous book was briefly on page, making me think that we will get a King’s Trace romance. I am literally going to grab the next book in mere minutes, as soon as I finish typing the last few words of this review and have looked it all over. I won’t have time to post another bonus review this Friday, I will be going on a quick weekend getaway, but hopefully by next week you may have caught up to me if you have started the series and you’ll be ready to see what I have to say next.