A review by emilywrayburn
Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This review got lengthy! Sorry! I just had a lot of opinions I needed to get off my chest! 

This is the second romance book I've read this year that has some sort of "gimmick" and it's the second time I'm annoyed and disappointed at the missed potential (for those keeping score, the first one was My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine, which I didn't end up reviewing). In this case, I came to this advertised serial killer rom-com because I'm a fan of serial killer books (read: thrillers), and I wanted to see how the romance take on it. 

Unfortunately, the concept fell entirely flat for me. I just kept muttering things like "How haven't they been caught?", "They're not actually good at this," and "They don't fit the profile at all." Both Rowan and Sloane are just some screwed up young people who occasionally kill people. Their characters outside of the killing didn't match with people who would slice and dice others on the regular, even if they are "ethical" serial killers who only murder objectively awful people (other murderers, child molesters, etc.). Sloane literally blushes on every second page! Blushes "prettily". Uggghhhhh. It was also bizarre to me that all their friends and family seem to know what they do and aren't worried by it. Which kind of lessened the whole "he/she's the only person who can understand the ~dark side~ of me." 

Outside of their yearly killing competition, we don't really see much of their serial killing, though apparently they've both done enough for the public to have given them names like Boston Butcher and Orb Weaver. They didn't seem like they took their "hobby" (and they both refer to it as a hobby) very seriously. It just felt like the author didn't do a lot of research into serial killers other than "they take trophies" and "they stage their crime scenes" and just used it as the fun "quirk" her characters had. 

So with all that, it didn't feel very "dark" to me. Yeah, some of the content was gross and gory, but it felt like an attempt to be edgy, rather than actually being dark. This is compounded by how cutesy the trigger warning list at the start is. I mean, yes, thank you for including trigger warnings, but don't try to downplay them in the way you list them. 

I have to assume that that's what people are meaning when they are calling this "dark romance". Can something be both dark romance and a rom-com? I'm not sure how that works, but I've seen this referred to as both. Anyway, I have to assume they're referring to the gore when they refer to the dark stuff, because the sex scenes were fairly tame, really. I mean, they were fine as far as spice goes, but given Rowan's repeated "I'm going to destroy you" and similar declarations, it was really just... somewhat rough sex? 

The other thing that bothered me about the sex scenes was that the majority of them (with one exception, I think, though now I'm not entirely sure this wasn't in the bonus chapter) are all about Rowan. He gets to enact all his fantasies about Sloane, order her around, and she does everything he says. And obviously that was doing it for her, but there was never any discussion about it or what she wanted. As a woman, it just didn't seem like it would be that fun after a while. Rowan also kept putting his hands around her throat, and yeah, they had a safe word, but they never actually had a discussion about whether it was okay for him to do that. Maybe I'm boring, but that wasn't okay for me. 

Also I will never be eating at Rowan's restaurants knowing that he doesn't bother to clean up after certain activities on the tables, if you know what I mean. (Maybe they cleaned up off-page but it definitely read as them going straight home to do more.) 

Oh, and did I mention the insta-love? Insta-love/lust, followed by a weirdly paced story that takes place over four whole years, but with a whole bunch of time jumps and explanations that half their relationship-build is taking place off screen. Then they get together and things got so boring and mundane and I couldn't believe I still had 70+ pages to go. The ending was pretty silly, and I have no idea what the "villain's" motivation was, other than him also getting off the idea of killing a couple of serial killers. Maybe it was clear while I was reading, but I've already forgotten. 
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