Lords of Mercy by Angel Lawson

 

LORDS OF MERCY is the last book in the original trilogy of the Royals of Forsyth series. The authors later expanded it to include other girls and their men, but this is the end of the first part. I honestly thought it was a pretty decent ending. This whole series has been a mindfuck for me because it made me like a lot of tropes I normally hate, and I felt like the character development for the guys and the heroine were amazing. A lot of the time, when you read a series like this, things sort of stagnate in the character department. But I felt like all of these characters grew in a really believable way.

Story became a total hard-ass. Comparing her in book three to book one, you can see how far she came (ha). The guys: Killian, Rath, and Tristian also changed a lot. They have internal conflicts and conflicts that relate to Story herself, and part of what makes this series so fascinating to read is how those conflicts come into, uh, conflict with each other, and also how they're resolved. In some ways, LORD OF MERCY feels like a softer read because it's so relationship focused. The last book was all about revenge. This was about redemption.

For a while, I thought this was going to be a five-star read because it was tense and hot. But the ending felt way too dragged out and I also felt like there were too many sex scenes. Usually when people say stuff like that, I figure they're a pearl-clutcher who doesn't want any sex in their romance, but there is so. Much. Sex. In this book. Like, there is a foursome scene that's like three chapters long. And it felt like every other chapter, someone was getting railed in an orifice. That's fine, but after a while it started to feel messy and repetitive, and there were a couple of times it was just plain gross. I also felt like the ending was too padded out. There were like three epilogues crammed in that one epilogue.

Overall, though, this was a very satisfying conclusion to a series that was already a surprising favorite. These authors can write and there's a subtlety to their characterization and story-telling that a lot of new adult authors lack. Book two is probably the darkest book in this trilogy so book three was a nice reprieve from that. And we FINALLY find out who "Ted" is (I actually liked the twist, idk).

I'd read more from these authors. I'm definitely curious about the dukes. Thanks so much to Briana for buddy-reading this with me!

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars