Love Thy Brother by Garrett Leigh (Rebel Kings MC #4)

Title: ⟫ Love Thy Brother (Rebel Kings MC #4)

Author: ⟫ Garrett Leigh

Rating: ⟫ 5/5

Blurb: ⟫ The fourth instalment in the bestselling Rebel Kings series

Expect: His brother’s best friend. His best friend’s little brother. The soft-hearted bear and the rowdy chaos gremlin. The inevitable only happens when you let it.

“Riv, if you ever let me speak, you’d know exactly how I feel.”

I’ve told him that a thousand times, but River’s stubborn streak is a mile wide.

He doesn’t want to hear it.

To him, we doomed.

Cursed.

Forbidden.

Because he thinks I love a goddamn motorcycle club more than him.

My worst nightmare is losing him before I get the chance to change his mind, and in our world, bad dreams come true. Our reality is mess and pain, but I love him. And he loves me.

And I’ll fight for us to the end.

Love Thy Brother is a hurt/comfort MM romance from the best-selling Rebel Kings MC series. Content warnings for violence, off page abuse, self-harm, and grief.

Review: ⟫ I didn’t realise how much I needed Rubi and River’s story until I received this. I began reading it just after midnight and didn’t sleep until I’d finished it.

This story is a gut-punch for so many reasons, not least because of the pain our two main leads are dealing with. River is a complex character, in love with Rubi, deeply caring but also wanting absolutely nothing to do with the MC that is Rubi’s life. He struggles with addiction, has a hair trigger and feels like he’s never going to have the man he wants almost more than life itself and it seems to be leading him down a self-destructive path.

Rubi is struggling – his health is messed up following the big hit on the club, his emotions are all over the place and his legendary chill seems to have deserted him. All of that on top of how he feels about River and what he allowed himself to do.

This had much more ‘local’ issues than previous books – there isn’t a real need for Alexei to work his magic, but the club still has to handle some stuff, including ones that drag River back to where he swore he would never return.

The relationship between Rubi and River is incendiary, but Garrett Leigh is a master of writing characters that make you feel incredibly deeply for them. You need them to get their HEA, and are willing to do through the highs and lows with them on the way. We also catch up with our previous throuple/couples including Cam, Saint and Alexei, and Embry and Mateo.

This was a very intense read that had me concentrating hard to follow all of the plotlines, and the darkness and violence is definitely on a par with the previous books in the series. There is no pulling back from the violence, drugs and harsh emotions inherent in the lifestyle and it reminded me very much of the first few seasons of Sons of Anarchy.

No surprise that this is a 5/5 from me and I look forward to book #5 in the series. I received an ARC from GRR.

Unbreak Me by Jesse H. Reign

Title: ⟫ Unbreak Me

Author: ⟫ Jesse H. Reign

Rating: ⟫ 4.5/5

Blurb: ⟫ Young Englishman, David Hammond, discovers life on a remote farm in South Africa isn’t at all what he was expecting. He expected the change in climate to do him good. To lift his mood. He certainly didn’t expect farmer, Jonathan Rosseau, to be so rugged or handsome. It turns out, it’s more than the warm weather that gets David hot under the collar.

David deals with his emotions the only way he knows how. By keeping a diary. A very detailed diary. A diary you get to read.

Unbreak Me is a story about first love and coming out. It contains a dollop of angst, smatterings of self-deprecating humour, and enough steam to make your hair frizz.

Depression and self-harm are mentioned.

Review: ⟫ Oh, this book! Because I was on a Jesse H. Reign kick, I didn’t read the blurb – I just downloaded it and dived straight in. So I was a little confused with the format it took as the story is told in the form of David’s diary entries. Initially, I wasn’t sure where things were going, but slowly you get an idea of what has been going on and just why David is in South Africa.

Because you are reading diary entries, a lot of the extraneous details were removed – it was literally how David felt and experienced everything that was happening, and as such it was an intimate, sometimes heart-wrenching, always touching read. We can feel his lack of self-esteem and insecurities, his inner voice making it utterly clear why he was struggling as much as he was. And I fell a little in love with him reading his words – self deprecating but revealing a caring, sensitive young man, unsure of who he truly was but learning to accept everything that is within him as part of himself. It was beautiful.

Of course you fall in love with Jonathan as well – just the descriptions of him from David’s perspective were enough to make you need to fan yourself, let alone when he and David become lovers.

The book does cover aspects of self-harm and depression, and obviously everyone’s experience of this differs. I found it realistic and true to life, which is probably why David’s dilemma affected me so much – to find such happiness after experiencing such sorrow only to face the choices needed was heart-breaking.

The sex between David and Jonathan was steamy, sultry and absolutely downright filthy on occasion, and I loved it. It took me back to the days when I was first really discovering sex and they were excellent memories. This book cemented for me that the author is on my auto-buy pile as everything I’ve read has moved me – sometimes infuriated, sometimes made me cry – but always made me feel, and that is special.

The Rationale of Leander Wells by Ashlyn Drewek

Title: ⟫ The Rationale of Leander Welles 

Author: ⟫ Ashlyn Drewek 

Blurb: ⟫ Murderer. 

Madman. 

That’s what the newspapers call wealthy recluse Leander Welles after he is accused of killing four people in his picturesque hometown. Little do they know they’re half-right. 

Sent to Parkview Psychiatric for an assessment before the trial can begin, Leander falls under the care of Dr. Lorelei Clayton, an up-and-coming criminal psychiatrist. She is the one unknown element of his elaborate plot, the one game piece he has no control over. 

 Believing he’s innocent, Lorelei works tirelessly toward his freedom. But there’s just one problem — he’s not innocent. The harder she tries to prove it, the harder he falls for the one person he never expected to. 

Haunted by his past, Leander tries to envision a future with Lorelei, but the truth keeps getting in the way. If she ever learns his secret, not only could she destroy everything he spent years planning — she could destroy him. 

This is a companion/alternate point-of-view book to THE MYSTERY OF LEANDER WELLES, featuring Leander Welles' perspective instead of Lorelei's. Each book can be read as a standalone, or together. If you're a MM fan, I suggest skipping MYSTERY and starting here. There's FTB/vague MF sex scenes, but the MM angst starts in this book before continuing into DAMNATION. 

* A warning to the reader. This book contains references to abuse, self-harm, and suicide. 

Review: ⟫ I skipped the first book in this series because I seriously wasn’t interested in reading the M/F aspect of things – I’ve read three MF books recently that reminded me quite strongly of why I prefer MM. And it clearly states in the blurb that you should start here if you are an MM fan. But this book was full of Leander’s relationships (or rather relations) with women and I felt duped. 

Yes, we meet Bennett and there are delicious indications of what he and Leander could/will be to each other. But that is the extent of it and I thought that there would be more. I didn’t feel any chemistry between Leander and Lorelei, even less between him and Gracie. I have awarded the two stars for the look into Leander’s inner psyche, as well as the machinations/planning of the group to handle the whole thing about Leander being on trial for four murders. 

The twists, turns and background stories were very interesting, but the overlay of Lorelei and Gracie made this book a bitter experience for me, especially coming straight from Roan Sinclair to this. 

 I do have the next book in the series lined up on my kindle because I want to know about Leander and Bennett after meeting them in the Roan Sinclair duology, but I can’t in all honesty recommend this to fans of MM because although there are hints of it, this didn’t strike me as a MM book. Disappointed and wary going into the next one. 

2/5 from me.