3⭐️ Almost, But Not Quite Love...
After meeting Benji and Ri earlier in the series, I had high hopes for a romance that would feel earned, layered, and intimate. And Unjust Love certainly had the ingredients for that: a complicated emotional setup, a strong family dynamic, and a lead couple with a shared history. But ultimately, the execution left me more frustrated than fulfilled.
Let me start with the positives.
One of the things Donnia Marie does do well is showing how close-knit and emotionally available the Bennett brothers are. That softness, that brotherhood, it is a real highlight for me. And the fact that therapy and counselling were included without stigma? Huge. Authentic introspection is difficult to write, but DM made it work.
But then came the handling of the romance itself.
I don’t mind a good (!) third-act breakup or drama if it's done well. In fact, when the emotional tension builds organically and the resolution is satisfying, it can make for an incredibly cathartic read. But here? The drama felt more like an obligatory twist than a meaningful turning point. And the resolution? Rushed. I needed emotional closure, not just a hasty reunion that glossed over the very real wounds that had been inflicted. There were so many threads left dangling—apologies that felt incomplete, realisations that never fully came to light, and conversations that simply didn’t happen. Instead, we got holidays and boinking, nice but not enough!
Donnia Marie spends pages on scenes that add very little to the emotional core of the story—side conversations, setting details, minor plot points—and then skims right past the scenes that should carry emotional weight. Why do we get depth where it doesn’t matter and a surface-level brush-off where it absolutely does? It's a strange imbalance that makes the story feel hollow in places where it should’ve felt deeply grounded. The uncle twist, was really well done, but this was supposed to be a romance.
Now let’s talk about Rianna.
She was hard to read—not because she’s an unlikeable character, but because her choices weren’t always earned or fully explored. The whole Benji–Rianna–Santos triangle felt like a missed opportunity in some aspects. In the hands of a more emotionally layered narrative, this could’ve been a painful, complicated story about being torn between past and future, loyalty and desire. But here, it just appeared unfair and immature. Rianna’s behaviour felt selfish at times, and instead of seeing her reckon with that honestly, the book seemed to move past it too quickly. She played both men in ways that were emotionally manipulative, even if unintentionally so—and that needed more narrative accountability.
While Benji needed some time to mature, he deserved better than what he received. Thus, all in all, I didn't really buy their romance.
Ultimately, Unjust Love felt like a novel that could’ve been so much more than it was. There were glimmers of a powerful, healing love story here, but they got buried under uneven pacing, confusing emotional priorities, and a resolution that didn’t do the characters—or the readers—justice. It wasn’t a bad book. It was just okay. And with these characters, that’s a real shame.