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abmalada 's review for:
Wrath of an Exile
by Monty Jay
I read this book as a break from [b:The God of the Woods|199698485|The God of the Woods|Liz Moore|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1717970538l/199698485._SY75_.jpg|204225210] and it was perfect for that purpose. This book is a standalone within a follow up series of Jay’s other work. My understanding is that this series follows the kids of the characters in her last series (which I didn’t read), but I did not feel like that impacted my ability to understand and enjoy this book. This book is a standalone dark romance with relatively low stakes and an HEA.
I really like our MMC, Jude. His demons, so to speak, were justified, but he doesn’t act irrationally in the book. He acts *relatively* maturely and we don’t end up with a miscommunication trope as our main conflict between him and the FMC, Phi.
There were two main things that I didn’t like about this book. The easier one to talk about is that … not a lot happened. The book was mostly about Jude and Phi working through their traumas, not actual events, and it left the rest of the plot feeling shoe-horned in. The whole conflict with Oakley felt like a last minute addition and kind of superficial. I know it’s a dark romance so *something* scary has to happen, but this wasn’t it for me.
The other thing I didn’t like, and I acknowledge that I’m fortunate enough to not be speaking from experience, is that the premise felt… like not enough to me? Phi’s backstory is that she was raped when she was 14 because he wanted to break her father as payback. In her “I’ll sacrifice myself under the guise of being strong” mindset, Phi doesn’t tell her family because then the rapist gets what he wants. In doing so, Phi completely isolates herself from her family, which they all recognize, causing most of her issues for the first half of the book. It also had the hypocrisy that by refusing to tell her family to avoid breaking them, she’s just breaking them little by little in a different way as they lose their connection to her. I get that isolation after that sort of trauma is common, but the way it was presented in the book and for how many pages it took up, it just felt like a miscommunication trope in a different font
I really like our MMC, Jude. His demons, so to speak, were justified, but he doesn’t act irrationally in the book. He acts *relatively* maturely and we don’t end up with a miscommunication trope as our main conflict between him and the FMC, Phi.
Spoiler
I was really expecting him and Rook to come to blows, but that never happened. I’m actually bummed we didn’t get to see the family’s reaction to Jude and Phi being together.There were two main things that I didn’t like about this book. The easier one to talk about is that … not a lot happened. The book was mostly about Jude and Phi working through their traumas, not actual events, and it left the rest of the plot feeling shoe-horned in. The whole conflict with Oakley felt like a last minute addition and kind of superficial. I know it’s a dark romance so *something* scary has to happen, but this wasn’t it for me.
The other thing I didn’t like, and I acknowledge that I’m fortunate enough to not be speaking from experience, is that the premise felt… like not enough to me? Phi’s backstory is that she was raped when she was 14 because he wanted to break her father as payback. In her “I’ll sacrifice myself under the guise of being strong” mindset, Phi doesn’t tell her family because then the rapist gets what he wants. In doing so, Phi completely isolates herself from her family, which they all recognize, causing most of her issues for the first half of the book. It also had the hypocrisy that by refusing to tell her family to avoid breaking them, she’s just breaking them little by little in a different way as they lose their connection to her. I get that isolation after that sort of trauma is common, but the way it was presented in the book and for how many pages it took up, it just felt like a miscommunication trope in a different font