Kelly St. Clare

I made pretty negative predictions about this book but it turns out while they have been partly correct there are much worse issues in this one.
Until the climax, I actually was positively surprised that the author made an effort to separate trust from love. As I said in my review about the first book those can be completely disconnected from each other which is something most romance authors (particularly in love-hate romances) don't seem to understand. She failed at it in the end but she tired at least for a while. Maybe it's a lack of experience which I guess is a good thing. I wouldn't wish being trapped in fucked up relationship like that on anyone.

The much bigger problem is the plot climax and the following conclusion. It's bullshit piled on top of tstl beyond anything I've read before with even more bullshit on top.
It's one of the most contrived plot-convenient reasoning I've ever seen.
I kind of want to rant about specifics just to vent frustration but I that isn't of any use to anyone so let's just say after this disaster of a book finale I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone.… (mais)

The concept, while somewhat cheesy, was actually well designed to create interesting conflict but I didn't find the daily running of the agency even remotely interesting and I believe this is due to how it is presented and not because of the concept in itself.

The day-to-day running of the agency dragged a lot and was full of constant repetition of thoughts. It's not that I wasn't empathetic to her situation but she kept on harping about different details of her problems over and over again. This wasn't too annoying in itself but it just became boring as there was no sense of progress whatsoever which lead me to put it down a few times and do something else which is never a good sign.
But it suddenly got a lot more frustrating when the book just ended. If you had to end somewhere without resolution of any of the conflicts the point the author chose was good but why end in the middle of the story in the first place especially if you wasted half the time just filling up pages with minutia and repetition?
I can tell you why because I have already read the 3 most popular series by this author. It's because that is what she always does, most likely to make more

To be fair, it's not precisely a cliffhanger that tries to bait you with an immediate unresolved situation but it still feels cheap, especially considering how little substance or progress happened within the story compared to all the mundane waste of time.

Don't question the world-building of the story too much because you very quickly encounter contradictions and non-sensical stuff at every corner. This is the kind of fast-food UF story you have to suspend disbelief deliberately and just turn off your brain.

I will probably check out the second one and adjust my rating of this one if the unfinished plot actually leads somewhere interesting that I just couldn't see yet in this one.

Edit:
Well, the second book has better pacing, and a lot more interesting things happen, but in exchange, the writing became even lazier. More cardboard cutouts, more cheap clichées so the author doesn't have to waste time properly introducing and developing other characters. Just one or two throwaway lines that invoke exaggerated tropes to the point of being a caricature and voilà, new character.
The weaknesses in the worldbuilding become much more apparent too as said worldbuilding becomes more relevant because the protagonists interact with aspects of the world beyond their agency more.

One thing that already annoyed me about the first book but which started to grate really badly is the constant repetitions of slogans. The MC can not even think of her agency without repeating their own slogan every single goddamned time. It's the worst but not the only example of this kind of nerve-grinding repetition throughout the books.

I am done with this author as there seems to be next to no improvement in writing over the years. I don't think this author even attempts to genuinely improve as long as her mediocre stuff sells. That sounds bitter, and I am, but to be honest it's fair enough. If people buy and enjoy this stuff, why should she change anything?

So I stand by my rating and I do not recommend this series.… (mais)

This book explores some interesting ideas but it also has quite a few clichée flaws I despise.
I really like the exploration of how some powerful people play political games, how it is incredibly hard to escape these hierarchies as well as other dynamics and implications that result from these power games.
I want to say more but I believe that would come too close to spoiling.

Sadly, the romance has by far the most page time and suffers from the worst flaws simultaneously.
Namely caring for someone does not imply trusting that person.
Neither does forgiving someone mean previously broken trust is restored.
This is something that particularly annoys me because I read it regularly across the romance genre.
If someone breaches your trust in a bad way he should apologize and atone for it as best as possible and sometimes the victim might be able to forgive the perpetrator and all that stuff but it doesn't fix broken trust.
Restoring broken trust can be a very slow process depending on the severity of the wrong and consecutive breaches of trust exponentially increases the difficulty to rebuild it. This is how trust works.
In this particular instance, the entire path to redemption after a pretty fucked-up start to the main romance relationship is just missing.

Another thing I usually don't like which is very much present in this book is the traitorous body™. In this case, at least it stays limited to purely physical attraction for the time being.

I really hope there is a well-done recovery for all that lost trust in the next book but I honestly can not imagine the next book having a plot that actually recovers from this in a believable way. It most likely will be "It is love so it is fine" which I already talked about above.
Sadly only the first book got an audiobook version so far which is my only way of consuming them so I guess I will not find out for now.

Edit:
The audiobook of the second volume has been released in the meantime and it's even worse than I feared.
Here is my spoiler-free (even if you haven't read the first one) review of the second book.

tl;dr:
I do NOT recommend the series.
The first book had potential but is too open-ended to the point of being cliffhangery to be read as a standalone and the second books ending is just a disgrace.… (mais)