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.

Dirty Love by Bethany Winters

Title: ⟫ Dirty Love

Author: ⟫ Bethany Winters

Rating: ⟫ 5/5

Blurb: ⟫ In a small town like ours, you’re either straight or you keep your mouth shut.

Being gay would be dirty.

Touching the guy who’s been your little brother since you were three would be dirty.

Falling in love with him would be even worse.

I protect him because it’s my job.

I resist him because I have to.

But when one night leads to two and two nights lead to more, lines are blurred and morals are tossed and my sanity takes a walk.

Now we’re risking everything we have for something we know we shouldn’t want.

And the only thing we’ll have left is each other.

This is a 60,000 word, M/M, dark high school, stepbrothers-to-lovers romance with themes some readers might find offensive.

Complete standalone with a HEA and no cliffhanger. 

Review: ⟫ Have you ever had the hankering to read something dirty/bad/wrong? Like, the kind of book that you’d hide from your Mom even at the grand old age of *well over 21*, full of red flags, drugs and just downright WTF? Okay, then you might be looking for this book.

To be fair, our male leads are stepbrothers so the whole incest thing isn’t quite there, but they were brought up together from the age of three so there’s that.

Kade is the older brother – by a whole three months I believe – and has been protecting Nicky from everything from a young age. Everything includes a father who murdered their mother and regularly beats Kade – adding being gay to that would paint a target on Nicky’s back that even Kade couldn’t protect him from. Kade is protective, possessive, obsessive and sounds hot in all the wrong ways, including how he treats his on-again/off-again girlfriend and the animalistic way he makes money by bare-knuckle fighting on the weekends.

Nicky isn’t a dreamer – life would have beaten that out of him years ago – but he is much more in touch with his emotions than Kade. And from a young age, his emotions have fixed on Kade as his safe place. His everything. He’s not ashamed of being gay or being in love with his brother, but he is understandably scared.

The warnings about this book being dark were not kidding – there is no fade to black when it comes to the violence and drug-taking, and that might not be to everyone’s taste.

I was so in the mood for this book and it didn’t fail to deliver in any way. I didn’t care about things that I might ordinarily nit-pick because I was too busy devouring the whole book in one sitting. I picked it up this morning and read it immediately and when I finished, I was literally sitting there with a huge grin of satisfaction on my face. The sex scenes were hot and steamy; the whole bantering, snarky vibe between Kade and Nicky was so my cup of tea, and how the story was handled worked for me on every level.

Especially when we meet the boys’ uncle.

I’ve grabbed the other book by the author that I could find even though it’s M/F which I haven’t really had any luck with this year because I really loved the style of writing and wanted to read more.

If after reading the warnings – and other reviews – you think you might want to take a chance on this book, I don’t think you’ll regret it!