A review by booksabrewin
Ruthless Crown by Amanda Richardson

2.0

Briar was glad to have a fresh start away from all the pain and turmoil of her previous home. Her mom is freshly married and Briar finally gets to meet her new stepbrother. Too bad that he seems to have a major chip on his shoulder as do the rest of his motley crew of friends. She is content to just make her way through her school year and go off to college without looking back. Her life was put on hold for so long with her trauma that she needed to move forward. But Hunter and his friends are determined to make Briar's life a living hell simply for existing near them. But Briar is not a roll over and take it sort of girl. She lashes back at them and brings the Kings of Ravenhood to heel. However, her victory and power stance is short lived with a ghost from her past comes back to haunt her. Can she escape his clutches again alone or will she be able to enlist the help of her new stepbrother and his three friends?

Briar as a character was not it for me. She talked a big game about making people pay and holding her head up and the like but she had very little follow through that I saw. She had one quote where she was the Queen and they were gonna see her attack... I waited for the attack. There wasn't much that could backup that statement... She was portrayed as this strong woman in the face of her bullies but I felt it was all bravado.

I know that a lot of reverse harem books have MM relationships in the dynamics. This is fine and love is love and all but for me, it just feels like that makes it more polyamorous and less reverse harem in my opinion. I am not a huge fan of the polyamory in books. Nothing against it, just not my cup of tea. Reverse harems for me is one girl being worshipped and shared between a group of friends. Not relationships within that dynamic as well. But, anyway, this book had a lot of MM romances referenced. Samson in a guy who committed suicide, Samson and another boy in the harem, Ash with another guy from school, and references to Hunter wishing he wasn't straight at some points so he could join in the MM scenes. It was very... MM centric which I would have thought that it'd be more focused on the female protagonist. But if that's your jam then, this is it for you.

The plot was choppy and felt like it was all over the place. It started as a bully romance that fizzled out very quickly so another antagonist had to be added into the mix to keep the story going. Just, not very well structured in my opinion. Maybe if the bully romance had been stretched through the one book and the secondary antagonist introduced and defeated in the second it would have felt more concise.

Overall, this book wasn't really it for me. The subject matter wasn't comfortable for me, the romances were all over the place and the plot was stuttered.