3.7 stars
For a first novel, my goodness, wow! Pretty solid for a betrayal/ grovel romance and also as an MC romance. For those who know, this author originally published on Wattpad to great acclaim, and then quickly self-published commercially. Her prose is very good and neat, and it was written pretty quickly. I am impressed. Kudos Himera Ink!
TW (just in case because YMMV): personally, things were not hyper graphical though there were heavy issues at hand, namely violence (physical and emotional), rape, murder - btw the very first chapter sets the tone, so if this is already all too much for you, this book might not be for you
In a betrayal/ romance story, most books fail the mark by not delivering on the grovel part. Not so here! Almost 50% of the book is grovel, redemption and retribution. Some acts more on the extreme sides than others - and probably not to the taste of everyone. But this is an MC world, so there is some expectation that violent retribution may happen. I may not have been comfortable with everything, but overall, I appreciated the grovel. I am the kind of reader who needs the amount of grovel to balance the betrayal part. And in this book, Himera Ink was royal in delivery. It helped that the psychological background to the behaviours of Ely/Temper and Bones was rock solid. And Ely/Temper did not suffer from any BBS and there was no grovel sex. Which is a rarity in the genre and a super win for me. They only got intimate again once she healed her demons (for the most part) (in the last 20% of the story 👏👏👏) and Bones remained a monk through all the years since the betrayal (while she didn't). So again, kudos Himera Ink!
As an MC story, it was also a win. A good balance of lawless bikers who actually do bad things (no Barbie world bikers here) but at the same time who have decent brains so that the MC business does not sound like a joke. Also, no offputting MC behaviours on page like orgies, mysoginistic behaviours, nasty club girl dramas etc.
So why not a 5 star rating?
‐ Because for me (and it could be a Me thing), all the angst felt more cerebral than emotional. Part of it was because the author decided to not go deep into the graphical horror of all the bad things that happened to Ely/Temper - I appreciated that because more graphical would have been hard to read, but at the same time, it kind of muted the potential emotions. So maybe it needed a bit more balance on that?
- Also, I noticed that the POVs of Ely/Temper and Bones had a common characteristic that unsettled me: in each of their POV, the character always seemed to be able to read the other like an open book (e.g. [not an exact quote] at this, his eyes clouded as if his mind could not bear the pain...). So much, that it seemed like mind reading. It felt too uncanny. Hence, it was transparent that the same writing style was used for different characters - maybe it's using the 1st person narrative that didn't help?.
- I also found the book was a smidge too long (though I am thankful that the author was so generous with all the bonus chapters!).
Of course, given that it's a first novel it's totally understandable and does not lessen the merit of this wonderful story.
All in all, I hotly recommend the book because this author deserves it. Being a prolific writer writing with heart and guts, I will certainly read her future works.
P.S.1 That cover... ❤❤
P.S.2 On the rule that every betrayed heroine needs a psycho girlfriend who will burn down the world with her, Ria certainly is a reigning queen 😅! OTT as she may be, I love her much, much more than another celebrated psycho (the one with the spade) from another author's universe (I won't name that other psycho yet because I haven't reviewed her book yet). IYKYK 😅