WHY DO YOU WANT TO HURT ME, TATE JAMES?! Oh my my my- Club 22 emulates everything we’ve come to love about it’s fiery heroine- it’s gritty, sexy, unapologetic, bold, and utterly savage. But, as we come to find in this brilliant fete of storytelling, like Hades, this novel is about the big beating heart at the core.
Like so many Tate stories, our prior Hades outing ending in yet another cataclysmic cliffhanger, one that left one of our characters bleeding out on the floor and the delicate romantic entanglements of our fierce heroine in tatters. I can’t speak much about this plot, or even really our remaining characters, without spoiling- and though I know you’re all dying to know just what led to that heartbreaking moment, this series, more than any other series, is meant to shock and ensnare you. I spent much of the book being gobsmacked- by the surprises, the secrets, the panty exploding steam, and the fantastic character evolutions of each and every character, small and big. But mostly, I spent this story in awe of the delicious and twisted story telling unfolding with each passing page. This is by far Tate’s most ambitious narrative-and not just because it is her most complicated and most twisted, but because of the profoundly riveting depth of our title character.
LIke I mentioned in the beginning, Club 22 is about heart. And to explore heart, Tate has to rip down the walls of Hades moment by moment, kiss by kiss, betrayal by betrayal, and emotion by emotion. Hades is an image- a carefully constructed armor that our leading lady has donned everyday since her trauma, a persona she puts on every morning like her Louboutin heels. Club 22 lets us finally see Hayden more clearly- we’ve seen glimmers, the brief flashes of her inspired by gumdrop in particular, but in Club 22 Tate let’s us immerse in her more and more. Our hardened, fierce, and brutal queen has a broken and lost girl, a girl who just wants to be seen, a girl with a lot of baggage and unexamined self-hatred. Hades was built on solitude, violence, and pain, but Hayden is being reborn from connection, love, and healing. Hades has no safety so she engineered it for herself, but now she’s exposed in a way she hasn’t been before- her greatest vulnerability is loving others, NEEDING others. And Club 22 explores that beautifully- both Hayden herself but also Hayden and her crew. Hayden is learning to lean into her heart, and those around her are also exposed, just in different ways. Ultimately, Club 22 is about vulnerability and truth- until now these characters have never been or explored the full parts of their identity. They’ve all hid something, repressed or denied- and Club 22 is about exposing them fully- so they can figure out how they all work together.
And the Hades-Hayden dynamic is what makes this series the best Tate has written- because she's developing not one but TWO characters as she writes these aspects of our heroine's identity. And no heroine of Tate's has ever had this much baggage, this many layers to unpack, this much nuance. And to make sure her harem is WORTHY of that level of complexity, Tate has also paired Hades with a harem with equal complexity and nuance with entirely unique dynamics and a female-centered power dynamic. This leaves a tall task for Tate in her finale book- but one I know she can conquer- the task of fusing the various parts of Hades/Hayden into one owned identity, merging the present and the past, so that Hades emerges as the self she chooses for the future. BUT THERE IS SO MUCH BAGGAGE!
We have a lot of action, A TON of steamy times, more secrets and mystery, and the breadcrumbs to a finale that seems to be both a battle of past and present- because for Hades to emerge as Hayden, for her to find the nexus of both parts of herself, she’s not only going to need to open her heart, like she’s done here, but she’s also going to have to confront what is inside it- the dark trauma and pain that created her. That destroyed parts of her. Chase is on the red herring- Hades’ true battle is going to be with her own brokenness. And it’s going to hurt.
I have read A LOT of Tate James cliffhangers, but I have never been as destroyed by one as I was by this one. Yes, you read that correctly, this one is WORSE than the one in the book prior- and that one almost killed me. Because this finale hurts our characters in their very core- and the wait until the finale is going to be brutal. I am devastated and raw- but so very in love with this world and these characters. There is nothing like it- and I’m desperate for more!