Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Lady and the Orc

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Lady and the Orc by Finley Fenn

1 review

shelfgremlin's review against another edition

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

2 ★’s — this book gave me a lot of big feelings, and not always in a good way.

the premise of this book is that jule, our lovely human mc, is left home unguarded and gets kidnapped by orcs when they attack her home. grimarr, our especially lovely orc mc, decides to take her as his mate in an act of political revenge and whisks her away to orc mountain.

i know this was supposed to be an enemies-to-lovers story but it’s more of an enemies-to-abused-and-abuser story. i’m not at all averse to dark romance, kink, kidnapping, whatever. i’ve read and quite enjoyed books where one mc tortured the other and then they got to know each other and fell in love afterwards. i say this to mean that there’s very little that i think an mc can’t come back from, but abusing someone that you are in a relationship with or have already professed to love is one of those things.

grimarr had a bad habit of saying one thing and doing another. he would whisper sweet promises into her ear about being the best mate for her and how he’s so much better than her husband but then he would turn around and act heinously. he thought that because he didn’t physically hit her like her husband did that he was better, but then he’d say shit like this -

“I will bind you and gag you,” his menacing voice said. “I will starve you. I will keep you from the sun for the rest of your days. I swear this, woman.”

they were constantly going around and around in circles. he’d say something horribly messed up, apologize or make an excuse, jule would forgive him (of course,) and then he’d do something again. his mistakes always stemmed from mistreating jule because she didn’t do what he wanted or lying/withholding important information from her. it happened again and again and again. and my issue with that is that he did these things AFTER he claimed to love her and care about her and that's where this crossed the line from dark romance to stockholm syndrome/toxic relationship for me.

and that isn’t even the worst of it. grimarr was far more concerned with maintaining his position of power over the orcs than he was about her happiness and wellbeing. he showed this to be true repeatedly, punishing her for speaking out against him in front of others, making a group punishment when she “dishonors” the orcs,

willingly trading her and her unborn son back to her husband in exchange for a peace treaty. all this despite jule confessing her love for him, showing her loyalty by NEGOTIATING THE TREATY ON HIS BEHALF, and willingly complying even knowing she would be going back to a man who would beat her for the rest of her life, kill her unborn child, and probably kill her too. yet grimarr said nothing and sent her and his son off to die when the men came for them.

some of this is explained away with “he had a plan” and apparently jule just didn’t know it, but putting her in a situation where she would feel that distress and didn’t know it wasn’t real is equally bad when he’s continuing to repeat the same mistakes over and over. even through to the end of the book he doesn’t learn.

he could have easily told her the full plan but instead he let her sit there for days crying and grieving the loss of her unborn child.

and that’s not to say that jule is perfect, not by any means. i can sympathize with her actions a lot more because i’m sure she was traumatized to all hell at this point, but she grated on my nerves. there were some elements i loved about her, but she was so inconsistent as a character. she was not particularly brave (which is fine) but she would have these moments that felt out-of-character, like

when she killed astin, her ex-husband. out of nowhere she suddenly got the bravery to kill him and escape her abuser, but she failed to recognize that grimarr was equally as abusive, just in a different way.

one minute she would hate grimarr and the next she’d be sucking him off under the table. it was incredibly frustrating trying to like her as a character when she acted so erratically.

and she was willing to sacrifice her son to save the orcs that turned their backs on her. she was just gonna go along with it. she made no sense.

their relationship was nothing but toxic from beginning to end and i don’t think it was intentional. i think i was meant to be hoping for a happily-ever-after at the end, but i was just hoping she’d escape to themyscira and never have to deal with men or orcs again. where’s wonder woman when you need her?

the writing was pretty good. i picked up a few words i was unfamiliar with and that’s always a welcome bonus. there was a good arc, though the ending was a bit too fast compared to the rest of the novel. some of the language, though, was very repetitive. i’ll be very happy to never hear anyone described as “hale” or “lusty” ever again.

if this book had been sold as a stockholm syndrome trope i probably would have liked it, but i went in expecting a true romance and didn’t get it. i’m not sure if i’m going to continue the series. i’m interested in some of the other orcs but i’m not sure i wanna read a repeat if it’s similar to this one.

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