Notes from the Shelf

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The Ruinous Love Trilogy by Brynne Weaver is a series of serial killer romances. Yes, it’s dark and gritty, but also has its sweet moments like any other romance. There are a ton of trigger warnings for each book and a lot of disturbing imagery, so be sure to look at those warnings before starting to read. It’s not for everyone, but they are so good, maybe just because it’s such a different take on a romance.

Butcher and Blackbird

Butcher and Blackbird starts it off with Sloane and Rowan, who are both serial killers, but they only kill other serial killers. They form an annual competition to find and kill their targeted serial killer before the other does, and they fall in love throughout the years.

Honestly from when I first read the blurb, I was thinking they’d both be men. Sloane is gender-neutral to me, so I thought it would be gay and have some more tension of them like trying to kill each other. But that wasn’t at all the case, so I was a bit disappointed at first but it still ended up being very good and still had a lot of tense situations.

I did not expect all the eyeball stuff, which eyeballs usually freak me out. But Brynne Weaver is very good at making a scene absolutely disgusting and then adding in the right amount of humor to make it okay. It’s really a humorous book, which you wouldn’t expect.

I did like that the serial killers they hunted were based on real serial killers. I was a little disappointed they didn’t finish their competition, they were about halfway through it at the end of the book, so I did want to see the conclusion a little, but that’s okay.

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Leather and Lark

Leather and Lark focuses on Lachlan Kane and Lark Montague, with Lachlan being a contract killer and Lark being a serial killer. Someone is killing people tied to Lark’s family business, and to figure it out she makes a deal with Lachlan: use his skills to find the killer and she’ll find a way for him to quit contract killing to live a quiet life leatherworking. But first they have to get married.  

I didn’t expect Lark to be a serial killer, but it made sense. So once again they’re both killers, although he is a contract killer, and he wants out of the business. The scene with the epoxy coffee table gave me anxiety. I thought she’d get caught. Her little trophies being hidden inside her craft projects is disturbing but also fascinating. I liked that the bad guy watching them at the end of Butcher and Blackbird was a focal point for this one. The ending with Lark trapped in the industrial oven was nerve-wracking.

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Scythe and Sparrow

Scythe and Sparrow focus on Rose Evans, the circus performer who breaks her leg and is forced to spend time in a small Nebraska town to heal while the circus moves on, and Fionn Kane, the good doctor who never ever kills, unlike his two brothers. But he’s keeping his own dark secret, one that he’s afraid to acknowledge because he doesn’t want to feed the darkness within him.

This one didn’t seem to fit the vibe as much for me. Sure, there’s some killing, and they both end up being killers just like the other two books, but not much was the deliberate, get-your-hands dirty kind of killing like the other two books were. Rose, codename Sparrow, has always given women the means to kill their abusive partners, to give them a fresh start. It’s just during this book that she decides to start taking a more hands-on approach to setting these women free.

I did enjoy the historical references to Aqua Tofana and tarot cards, since Rose also does tarot readings at the circus. The letters that Fionn wrote and included a tarot card with the theme of each letter was so cute.

I didn’t expect Fionn to be the one that had killed their father, and ever since he’s been trying to put out an image of being “good” but he has a killer inside of him that he lets free by the end of the book. But still there was nowhere near as much murder or disgusting imagery as the first two.

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Conclusion

I gave all of the books 4 stars for different reasons, but I think Butcher and Blackbird was my favorite of the three, probably just because it’s so different from every other romance and horror book out there. The only issue I had with it was that they didn’t finish their competition, but by the end of the third book, they had all started a competition between the six of them, so it seemed like it was wrapped up nicely by the end of book three.

Leather and Lark was probably my least favorite, although it felt like it had the highest stakes of the three with Lark being trapped in the industrial oven and Rose almost dying, so that bumped it up a bit for me.

Scythe and Sparrow was quite interesting even though it was very different from the first two, and I liked that it was over the course of the other books to show what Fionn and Rose were doing during that time, but I had a hard time seeing why Rose would suddenly be interested in killing up close and personal when she’s been doing the poison thing for so long. It didn’t seem as believable to me, and also Fionn being into the murder as well seemed out of character. I know we were falsely led to believe that he was the brother who never kills, but because of that narration in the first two books, it just seemed a little too unbelievable for him to be interested in committing murder and helping Rose cover up her own murders. It felt forced for them to fit the same mold as the style of the other two books.

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