Loving the Wicked by Rebecca Johnpee

 Loving the Wicked

by Rebecca Johnpee

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶

Blurb:

The next exciting novel in Rebecca Johnpee's Wicked trilogy where dark steamy mafia romance meets heist thriller.

Elio
They say obsession is a weakness. But I’ve never been stronger. No distractions. No softness. No Zahra.

Until she returns.

She’s trouble wrapped in a fantasy, and even as she threatens everything I've built, I find myself falling.

And for the first time in my life, I don’t want to stop.

Zahra
I’ve waited years for this.

Every lie, every con, every stolen secret has led me to the endgame.

Just as everything begins to fall into place, a ghost from my past appears. Now the clock is ticking. And if I make the wrong move, I won’t just lose the man I’m falling in love with.

I’ll lose everything.

Loving The Wicked is slow burn mafia meets heist romance that explores darker themes, subjects, and scenes that may not be suitable for everyone. Please see the author's content note at the beginning of the book.

My Review:

REBECCA. Where is book three. WHERE IS IT. I am on my knees. I am not okay.

Let me try to compose myself long enough to tell you why this series has completely taken over my brain and refused to leave.

Elio. That is it. That is the whole argument. I will love this man forever and without condition, and here is why, I am almost certain he is neurodivergent, and if that is the case, Rebecca Johnpee has done something I have genuinely never encountered before in my reading life. A neurodivergent MMC written with this much care, this much depth, this much love. The way he carries himself, the way he exists in the world, the way he loves, it is unlike anything I have read on a page before.

Now imagine this, a man who has spent his entire life convinced he was incapable of feeling real emotion. And then imagine being the person he feels it all for. The enormity of that. The tenderness and the weight of being loved by someone who never believed he could. I am not a book boyfriend person. I want to be very clear about that. I do not do that. And yet here I am, completely undone by a fictional man, with zero regrets and zero shame.

The pain in this book though, why do authors insist on ripping their readers apart? Why is that the job? I felt everything, and not gently. This series burrowed so deeply into my mind that I genuinely could not enjoy anything else after finishing it. Other books felt distant. My brain was still here, still with Elio, still processing.

If you want action, mystery, and the most compelling MMC you have ever had the privilege of reading, this series is everything. It is the whole package wrapped in something that will haunt you long after the last page.

Rebecca, I will be waiting for book three with every ounce of patience I can gather, which is not very much. I will be shaking my leg. I will be biting my nails. I will be checking for updates more than I should admit. But I will be here, ready, because this series deserves every bit of the wait.

Love this series completely and without reservation. Now please, for the love of everything, book three.

 Final Girls by Riley Sager

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊⯨

Spice Rating: 🫑

Blurb:

Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
 
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
 
That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.

My Review:

What happens to the ones who survive?

That is the question sitting at the heart of this book, and Riley Sager does not let you look away from it for a single page. Final girls, the ones who made it out of mass killings, who somehow kept breathing when everyone around them didn't, are supposed to be the lucky ones. But luck is a complicated thing when the nightmares follow you home and normal starts to feel like a language you no longer speak.

Our FMC is not adjusted. She is not fine. She is doing what survivors do, holding it together on the outside while something much messier lives underneath. And just when the fragile life she has built starts to feel manageable, other final girls start turning up dead. The very women who understood her world in a way nobody else could, gone. And the feeling that leaves behind is not just grief. It is something darker and more unsettling that crawls under your skin and stays there.

This book gives you a lot to digest. The layers build slowly and deliberately, and just when you think you have found solid ground the story shifts beneath you. I had a feeling about the twist, that particular gut instinct that starts whispering halfway through a thriller, and even then, watching it unfold was deeply satisfying. The kind of reveal that makes you flip back through pages to see what you missed.

If you want a thriller that keeps you guessing, keeps you uncomfortable, and keeps you turning pages long past when you should have put it down, this is exactly the book for you.

 Bossed by the Orc by Saam King

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊⯨

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

The damsel in distress is supposed to fall for prince charming, not the monster in her fairy tale…right?

Cleaning offices was far from Penelope’s dream job. But dreams don’t pay the bills, and if she wanted to save her family’s home, she needed money fast. Her grumpy, annoyingly sexy orc boss didn’t factor into her plans at all. Or so she kept telling herself…

Dristan was too busy running his empire to waste time on things like romance. Then he saw his pretty new employee and everything changed. He knows Penelope would be a perfect mate. Too bad wooing is not part of his skillset…

When danger finds its way to Penelope’s door, Dristan will do anything to protect her. But when all is said and done, will it be enough to convince her to take a shot at happily ever after? Or will their love story end before it ever truly begins?

My Review:

Sometimes you finish a brutal, heart-wrenching fantasy saga and your soul needs a palate cleanser. Not just any book, the right book. This was exactly that, and I did not know how desperately I needed it until I was already fifty pages in and smiling like an idiot.

After everything Keera put me through, the grief, the betrayal, the relentless emotional devastation, this book was a warm blanket. Cute, funny, and completely charming from start to finish. I could physically feel the weight of the last few months of reading just melting off of me page by page. That is not a small thing. That is a gift.

Here is what I love about monster rom-coms and I will not apologize for it, they take every element you already adore about a classic romantic comedy and then hand the lead role to a monster. The awkward moments, the slow burn, the comedy, the heart, all of it is still there, just wrapped in something delightfully unexpected. It is a formula that should not work as well as it does, and yet every single time it absolutely does. I eat it up without shame and I will continue to do so.

This one moves fast too, the kind of book that disappears in your hands before you realize what happened. Light and fun and completely absorbing in the best possible way.

And can we please talk about the audiobook? Because it is everything. If you have the option, immersive listening is absolutely the way to experience this one. It takes an already entertaining story and turns it into something you want to live inside for a little while longer.

Highly recommend. Your soul will thank you.

 An Honored Vow by Melissa Blair

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶

Blurb:

“Your land is not the one you take, it is the one you die for.”

Still reeling over her discovery of a staggering secret about her closest ally, Keera has no time to rest. She and her fellow rebels plan a desperate rescue mission after King Damien takes one of their own hostage. Opening the kingdom’s magical seals has transformed Keera in ways even the wisest Fae elders could not have anticipated. With the kingdom’s Halfling population suddenly posing a risk to the crown, the land is plunged into violence as the king begins a new blood purge.     Keera and her allies gather an army to meet Damien’s forces in a final confrontation of epic, and tragic, proportions.

The epic final installment in the Halfling Saga will thrill fans of Melissa Blair’s lush, action-packed, romantasy series.

My Review:

She got what she deserved. Finally. Finally.

If you have followed my reviews through this series, you already know what Keera's journey cost me emotionally. You know I was pained, furious, gutted, and at one point had to physically put the books down and read something gentle just to recover. So when I tell you that this final installment was everything I needed it to be, I need you to understand the weight of that statement.

I deliberately did not talk much about the love interest throughout this series because honestly, in the thick of everything Keera was surviving, romance felt almost beside the point. But here is what I will say now that we have reached the end, Keera needed someone in her corner. Genuinely, unconditionally, fiercely in her corner. And the person who turned out to have always been there? The last one you would ever expect. I love when a series does that. When it has been quietly showing you something the whole time and you only see it clearly at the end.

This book is healing. It is love. It is Keera finally being seen and protected and valued in the way she has deserved from the very first page of book one. And if Melissa Blair had denied her that after everything she put this woman through, after everything she put us through, we would have had a serious problem. A very serious problem.

What I also loved deeply is that Keera's worth, her importance, her place in this story, none of it was tied to a man. Her power was always her own. Her significance was always her own. The love she receives in this book adds to her story without ever becoming the whole of it, and that distinction matters more than I can properly express.

Yes, there is still trauma. There is still death and darkness and moments that will make you hold your breath. This is still a Melissa Blair book after all, and she does not do anything halfway. But it is all worth it. Every single page of heartbreak across this entire saga was worth it for where Keera ends up.

If this series teaches you one thing, and it teaches you many, let it be this: even in the deepest, most suffocating darkness, light eventually finds a way through. Keera is proof of that. And getting to witness her journey from broken to whole is one of the most rewarding reading experiences I have had in a long time.

Read this series. All of it. Feel everything. It is absolutely worth it.

A Vicious Game by Melissa Blair

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating:  🌶

Blurb:

“It seems fate has dealt me the same hand again. I know how to play it.” 
 
A new king is on the throne and the rebellion lies in ruins. Keera spends her days drinking and her nights avoiding the strange dreams that have haunted her since she returned from the capital.

Keera’s family in Myrelinth won’t let her go without a fight. With new intelligence about the magical seals left behind by Keera’s ancient kin, the Light Fae, she rallies to face her demons and unleash the formidable powers she inherited from her people. But a shocking truth is hiding in plain sight, one with the power to unravel the entire rebellion...

The pivotal third installment in the Halfling Saga will upend everything Keera thought she knew about her enemies…and her allies.

My Review:

⚠️ Spoiler warning — if you plan to read this series, turn back now. I mean it.

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Book three broke me. Completely and utterly broke me.

By this point I thought I understood what this series was capable of. I was wrong. The pain in this installment is not the kind that sits quietly in the background, it is loud and relentless and it gets into your chest and stays there. Watching Keera fight just to be loved, trusted, and accepted by the very people she would burn the world down for? Devastating does not cover it.

She is not asking for much. She never has been. She just wants to belong somewhere, to not be used up and discarded for what she can offer and then left the moment things get hard. And yet, the betrayals keep coming. One after another, from people who should know better, who do know better. I was furious on her behalf. I am still furious.

And underneath all of it, the grief she is carrying, the mourning that has hollowed her out, the addiction she is drowning in because feeling nothing is safer than feeling everything. It turned my stomach. It broke my heart. It made me want to reach into the pages and tell everyone around her to leave her alone and let her breathe.

Keera just wants what is best for her people. That is it. That is all she has ever wanted. And they could not survive without her, and somehow that makes it worse.

I had to put the series down after this one. I needed something soft and sweet to come back to myself, and I have zero regrets about that decision.

Please check the trigger warnings before going into this book. Your mental health matters more than finishing a series. Take care of yourself first, Keera would want that.

 A Shadow Crown by Melissa Blair

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating:  🫑

Blurb:

To the kingdom, Keera is the king’s Blade, his most feared and trusted spy and assassin. But in the shadows, she works with Prince Killian and his Shadow—the dark, brooding Fae, Riven, who sets her blood on fire. Together, they plot to kill a tyrant king.

In Myrelinth, the lush, secret city of trees, Fae, Elves, and Halflings like Keera live in harmony. But Keera cannot escape her past: her crimes against her own people have followed her all the way to the Faeland. There is a traitor in their midst, and Keera is the top suspect.

Keera finds comfort in the allies that have become her family. She swore she would never open her heart again after a loss she barely survived. But she will soon find she has more to lose than she ever imagined.

My Review:

I am in deep. There is no other world right now, only this one.

By book two, Melissa Blair has built something so rich and immersive that stepping away from it feels genuinely difficult. The world-building alone is worth the price of admission. The way the Fae world is constructed, the landscapes, the magic system, the creatures woven into every corner of it, feels so right that when I pictured where Fae might actually live, a tree made complete and total sense. Of course it does. Where else would they be?

But what elevates this beyond beautiful world-building is Keera herself. The love she carries for her people, the pain she absorbs in silence and never lets anyone see, it is the kind of quiet, crushing devotion that does not announce itself. It just is. And it is so powerful that while you are reading, nothing else exists. Not your to-do list, not the time, not the world outside the page.

There is a love interest woven into this one, and I want to be clear, it adds to the story without ever hijacking it. The plot stays exactly where it needs to be, and the romance breathes alongside it naturally. No detours, no derailing. Just a beautiful addition to an already layered story.

The sheer number of characters Melissa Blair manages to hold together, main cast, side characters, threads upon threads of storyline, is honestly breathtaking. How she keeps it all in line is a mystery I am grateful for.

Do yourself a favor. Read these books. Please.

 A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating:  🫑

Blurb:

Keera is a killer. As the King’s Blade, she is the most talented spy in the kingdom. And the King’s favored assassin. When a mysterious figure called the Shadow starts making moves against the Crown, Keera is forced to hunt the masked menace down.

She crosses into the magical lands of the Fae, trying to discern if her enemy is Mortal, Elf, or a Halfling like her. But the Faeland is not what it seems, and neither is the Shadow. Keera is shocked by what she discovers and can’t help but wonder who her enemy truly is…

The King that destroyed her people? The Prince that tortures them? Or the Shadow that threatens her place at court?

As she searches for answers, Keera is haunted by a promise she made long ago. A promise not only to save herself but an entire kingdom.

My Review:

I went in blind. A recommendation from a friend in book club, the promise of fantasy, maybe some romance, and I thought I knew what I was walking into. I did not. I was not even close.

This is fantasy first, romance second, and plot absolutely everywhere. The story grabs you and does not let go, and by the time I finished I was rushing headfirst into the next book without stopping to breathe. That is not a choice, that is a compulsion. This series creates compulsion.

Can we also talk about these covers for a moment? Because they are stunning. The kind of beautiful that does not fully translate on a screen, you need to hold one in your hands to truly understand.

But the heart of this book is Keera. She is messy and broken and achingly real, carrying addictions and traumas that never feel like plot devices, they feel like weight. The kind of weight a real person carries. I felt everything she felt, and there were moments it physically hurt my chest to read. That is rare. That is the kind of character writing that stays with you long after the last page.

The rest of the cast? Full of people you will question, distrust, and despise, and you will love every complicated second of it. I finished this book genuinely unsure who I was rooting for, and honestly? I might still be figuring that out.

If you want a series that burrows into you and refuses to leave, characters so human they make your heart ache, a plot so full of twists it gives you anxiety about the next book, this is it. This book has everything.