"I don’t just want part of her. I want all of her. I want to consume these boundaries between us until I finally feel whole.”
REVIEW
Would I read it again? Yes No Maybe
Spice Level Legend How spicy is this book?
Tropes | Trigger Warnings |
Enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, slow burn, forced proximity, found family, Morally grey/black FMC and MMCs, Touch her/him and die | Accidental (and non accidental) cannibalism, violence, death, medical trauma, physical and emotional abuse, death of a loved one, drowning, lots of eyeballs, kinks |
SUMMARY
MAIN CHARACTERS
Fionn - The youngest Kane brother. He is a doctor who lives in Nebraska. He gets a lot of shit from his brothers because he crochets, works out, and eats healthy. Also, we find out in this book that Fionn helped kill their father - he stabbed him in the back before Lachlan finished the job. But Lachlan and Rowan never knew this. Fionn has been trying to hide his killer side his entire life.
Rose - Works for the circus reading tarot cards. Also helps abused women escape their abusers. Is really bad and not very effective at murder - nothing seems to go the way she thinks it should. Stays with Fionn while healing from her broken leg.
Lark - best friends with Sloane (Blackbird). Was sexually assaulted by a teacher as a teenager. After Sloane handled the situation, she decided she wasn’t going to rely on others to protect her, that she could do it herself. When her boyfriend of two years cheats on her, she ties fireworks to his crotch and lights up the sky. When she realizes she feels no remorse, she decides to take out some predators. But don’t call her a serial killer…she’s a multiple deleter.
Lachlan - Oldest Kane brother. He works for a man named Leander, who found the boys in Ireland shortly after they killed their dad. He brought them to the US and helped set them up a life here. Gave Lachlan a job, as a contract killer/cleaner/whatever Leander wants him to do. He also owns a leather shop where he makes shit out of leather.
Rowan/Butcher - Middle brother of the Kanes. From Ireland. Lachlan and Rowan killed their dad after years of abuse. After helping kill his dad, he realized he really didn’t feel badly, so might as well kill the killers! Is a chef, owns two restaurants in Boston.
Sloane/Blackbird - After being sexually assaulted as a teenager, and finding out her best friend, Lark, was also sexually assaulted by the same teacher, she decides to take matters into her own hands and murders him. After finding out, she didn’t feel badly about it, she decides to start taking out the scum of the earth. Her thing is taking their eyeballs. She also weaves a complicated web behind her victims to try and tell the cops where their victims are, but the cops are clueless.
PLOT
We finally learn how Rose broke her leg. So Rose is working with the circus doing tarot readings. She has made it a mission to help battered women escape from their abusive assholes. Before now, she has always helped them in round about ways, but while in Nebraska she decides to take a more active role. When she attempts to attack and (in Lark’s words) delete an abuser, he ends up beating her with a baseball bat. She stabs him in the eye with some cocktail stirrers and manages to get away. She rides her motorcycle over to the next town and breaks into a clinic. Which just happens to belong to Fionn Kane.
Fionn gets an alert from his security system, thinking its the raccoon that always breaks in, he heads over there, only to find an almost unconscious Rose. He gets her to the hospital where she has to have surgery on her leg.
Fionn doesn’t know why but he feels very drawn to her and can’t seem to stay away. When she gets discharged, he shows up at the trailer park where the circus has parked her RV, and convinces her to come stay with him because there is no way she can get into her RV, let alone maneuver around it with her crutches.
A few days later, Rose is in town at a hunting/fishing store, and overhears some asshole berating his girlfriend on the phone. She ends up purchasing a very large knife (that she ends up threatening Rowan with) and sneaks into the dude's truck. She ends up killing him but then her plan of the truck going over a cliff into the river doesn’t work when the truck gets stuck. So she calls Fionn for help. He comes and helps, with a surprising lack of freaking out. Rose comments on this but he doesn’t elaborate.
Over the next few weeks, they get closer and have lots of sexual tension. She ends up at his crochet club and at the fighting ring where he patches up the fighters. One of the fighters accidentally knocks her over (since she’s still unsteady with the crutches) and Fionn loses it and beats the shit out of him.
I love when Rowan and Sloane show up and we get Rose and Fionn’s POV of this scene. Shortly after they leave, is when Fionn and Rose FINALLY release all the sexual tension. Finally. But they put dumb rules in place because they don’t want to ruin their friendship. One of the rules is No Kissing on the Mouth. Somehow, they go MONTHS being friends with benefits without ever kissing on the mouth. Impressive. Other rules are no bed sharing, no hand holding, no PDA.
After they hook up, they go to Boston for the opening of Rowan’s new restaurant. They break one of their rules while in Boston which is no bed sharing.
When they get back to Nebraska, it's time for Rose’s cast to come off and she goes back to the circus. She doesn’t want to but remember how she stabbed some guy in the eyeball? Well, he’s still around. He used to be a police officer but got kicked off the force for violence. So he may be an asshole, but he’s not an idiot. He has (slowly) pieced together the clues that he beat some female in the leg with a baseball bat, and then all of sudden Fionn has an unknown female with a broken leg living at his house. He insinuates that he knows Rose had something to do with the other guy that’s missing and that he knows Fionn had to have helped. Rose leaves thinking that if she is gone then maybe EyeBall Dude will leave Fionn alone.
They keep in touch though, visiting each other, still hooking up. A year later, Rose tells Fionn that she is going to spend the circus off season living in Boston in Lachlan’s apartment (since he is now married to Lark and living there). Fionn is thinking of moving back to Boston and he wants to tell Rose he wants more than what they have. The night before he leaves, he goes to the fight club (because now he’s fighting). While he is stitching up his own face, EyeBall Dude comes in, and makes more accusations about Rose and Fionn being involved in the missing dude. Fionn basically tells him to fuck off. He flies to Boston but Rose is on her way out to her job. She is reading tarot cards, dressed like a scary ass clown, at what sounds like a haunted house circus. She is just getting ready to be done, and Fionn is coming to pick her up. He told her he wanted to talk to her after about something important. But someone decides to show up and wreck this - EyeBall Dude. He chases Rose throughout the park but because it's a Scare Fest thing, no one thinks it's weird that a clown is being chased by a guy with a knife. She leads him into the haunted house and has plans to delete him so he will leave Fionn alone. Fionn shows up, and takes care of the EyeBall Dude problem. Then they fuck…in the same room as the dead guy…. They also break Rule Number 1 - Kissing on the Mouth. Fionn tells Rose to go home because he doesn’t want her involved in this and then he makes a call. Now - I think he is calling Lachlan…because that would be smart. Lachlan as we know from the second book is a contract killer and also a clean up crew. But does he do that? Of course not. He calls Lachlan’s old boss, Leander. Leander comes with a crew and cleans the scene up but (of course) tells Fionn he wants something from him in return. He wants Fionn to be his crew’s personal doctor, for seven months, in Croatia. And he can’t tell anyone where he is because Leander knows the Kane brothers. He knows Lachlan and Rowan will destroy the world to get Fionn back. He tells Fionn they leave the next morning.
Fionn goes back to the apartment and breaks up (even though they aren’t a couple) with Rose. Obviously, she’s super upset. She decides she is going back with the circus, that she can’t live around Rowan and Lachlan because Fionn has broken her heart.
The next day, Rose goes to get a coffee with Lark, and Fionn is going to the airport. Rose accidentally left her tarot card deck at the apartment, so Fionn meets her at the coffee shop. While they are on their way to drop Rose off with the circus people, Fionn gets a call from Lachlan that Lark is missing. Fionn and Rose go to Lark’s apartment, where Abe had stabbed Lark’s dog, Fionn is helping the dog and Lachlan and Rose leave to go to find Lark. Before they leave, Rose tells Fionn she loves him, and he doesn’t say anything back, he just stares at her in shock. Fionn gets the dog stable, takes him to the vet, and then heads off for the batch oven place where Lark is at. He gets there just as Lark and Lachlan realize that Rose has been stabbed by Abe before she shot him. Fionn thinks she is going to die but she makes it to the hospital and through surgery. She doesn’t wake up before Fionn has to leave and meet Leander. He leaves her a note telling her he’s sorry but he can’t tell her where he is going. Lark and Sloane know because Lark got it out of Leander but they have agreed to not tell the brothers.
Over the next 9 months, Rose gets multiple letters from Fionn. He confesses his love for her in the letters, among other things. His last letter tells her where he will be, if she wants to meet him, he will wait for her. He waits 3 days and at the end of the third day, he thinks maybe she isn’t coming. But she does show up. She is hesitant because he broke her heart. They do get back together, and spend the next few weeks traveling and reconnecting.
The epilogue was fantastic. It's Rowan's POV and OMG….I laughed so hard I cried. The important plot point that happens is that Fionn reconnects with his brothers. Lachlan cried…I cried. Then Fionn asks Rose to marry him.
Epilogue number 2 is a hint to a new book, or maybe series, involving the girl that Sloane and Rowan saved from a serial killer.