Welp. That’s it for Jocelyn O’Roarke. I’m not hiding any spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.

The series ends with Josh’s New York theater career once again possibly ruined by her involvement in a murder case. Because even though Dentinger came up with some new ideas for the plot, I guess she couldn’t help repeating herself a little bit. Honestly, though, after that denouement I can’t help thinking Josh deserves to be permanently blackballed. It was so mind-numbingly stupid and unnecessary and downright cruel. If you’re as unconcerned for an epileptic’s well-being as Josh obviously is and you’re trying to prove that the murderer used a strobing music box to induce a seizure so the epileptic wouldn’t realize he’d left the room to do the deed, would you do the logical (but cruel and ruthless) thing and expose the epileptic to the strobing music box too see if it really has the desired effect, or would you hijack a curtain call in a full theater and con the director into using a mirror ball and flashing lights and bribe the conductor into changing the score to play the same song as the strobing music box and hope all this somehow induces not only a seizure, but a full confession? I can’t help thinking even Dentinger knew how stupid this was, as she pulled back to the POVs of the people in the lighting control booth so as to distance herself and us as much as possible from the depraved idiocy.

To add insult to injury, nothing was resolved in the will-they-won’t-they-who-will-she-choose annoying love triangle. I actually wish it was a REAL love triangle and that Jack and Phil decided to hook up and ditch Jocelyn and go solve crimes and raise horses together in California. You know what? I’m just going to tell myself that’s what happened after the last scene in the book. I’ll be happier that way.

(Read for Halloween Bingo Murder Most Foul Square)

Quick review for a not so quick read. Short version: This book was a hot mess. I'm basically ending my journey with the series here because of how things were (mis)handled through the narrative. Read on for details.

Yeah, I'm a fair shade of vexed, might as well get the hot air out of me before I dive into the bulk of my review. I feel like I just wasted a day and a half's-worth of reading time just to do, what - power through close to 500 pages of filler? Anti-climatic self-indulgent character tokenism with incomplete scenes that seemed to jump willy nilly? Vital scenes that could've been interesting to watch/see/experience are skipped while others about bland place details or character self-loathing go on for page after page? Side characters, who have interesting motivations on their own, keep marching to the chain of centering on the heroine while their own stories and revelations get shafted?

I just...can't, man. Argggggh.

Okay...hot air gut reaction released. Now into the reasons why I'm so thoroughly vexed at the journey of this book. I'll put this in list form just to make it easier to digest.

WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!![

At that final point, to the effect of seeing this series through to the end? My reaction was much the same:

So I think I'll wait to see what other series Aveyard writes because this one's lost me. And that's unfortunate really, because there's so much potential in the ideas this series has, but the execution isn't there. Not at all.

Overall score: 1.5/5 stars.

Initial reaction: Nope, this book was the worst in this series so far, and narratively showed more of a decline in the writing style. No imagination in the plot or character resonance whatsoever. I'll admit there were a few moments when I genuinely laughed (the "Macho Pikachu" line was funny, dangnabit), but it was such a slog to get through this crap that instead of taking me hours to read, it took days.

The nicest thing I can say about it was that the colors in the cover scheme were nice. The inside on the other hand - different story.

Full review:

I debated a little while as to how I'd write this review, but for the sake of summary, this will be half discussion, half (constructive) venting.

I actually had more fun buddy reading this series with my bookish friend (with whom I've read the first two books in this series) than flying solo for this read. We had ideas and discussions about McGuire's expansions and New Adult as a whole that were food for thought, and I wish I could telegraph everything that we were able to discuss. She asked me if I was going to continue reading this series after the second one, and I said "Yeah, might as well - it's two more books. We can read it between us and discuss them when they release."

Well, two things happened in the time between me reading "Beautiful Redemption" and this book: my bookish friend moved away (she and her husband both got job ops in another state, which made me happy for them and sad at the same time), and another, I pretty much had to decide whether I'd still foot the bill for reading this. I did end up paying the $5.99 for this from a gift card I had on Amazon (which I assure you, I bought other books I knew I'd enjoy). Some might ask me: "Rose, you hated this series from the beginning, and you were still willing to give this series a chance?"

Well, considering I read K.A. Tucker's "Ten Tiny Breaths" series and hated all of them save for "Five Ways to Fall" - I figured there was a chance that my mind would change in the progression of a series (and I've been impressed since following K.A. Tucker's narratives from there). There were some reads that worked the same way with me for Samantha Young and other NA authors. I haven't completely written off New Adult as a category either, I've read titles I've really liked, but I've been hard pressed to find anything from McGuire that would suggest there's some narrative growth and resonance that'd connect with me personally. Was there a chance this would be different? Maybe, but I figured the only thing I had to lose was $6 and time. Some would probably say I shouldn't have even bothered putting money in the author's pocket, but considering I paid to read Raani York's "Dragonbride" earlier this year, I figured this couldn't be worse than that experience.

So the verdict: Not to sugarcoat it - it's the worst in this series thus far. The long and short of it was that this featured very bland, underdeveloped characters, dialogue that was drawn out with more self-insertion-y comments that made me shake my head, and for another thing: this was really...boring and tedious considering the scheme of events of the novel. I mean, it's hard to follow characters that you feel are pretty much being force fed to you from point one and that the heroine is pretty much Abby Abernathy 4.0 for voice and recounting of events. But the more vexing thing is that this devolved into a drama that was so over the top that I shook my head and said "Yeah, even if Jamie McGuire ends up writing five more books in this series or even a new one entirely, I'm not going to follow her as an author even if she co-writes with an author I actually do like." Reason being, the quality of the book isn't there for the price tag or for the time taken for the read.

First, there's cases of awkward writing that are more frequent than not:

"Before I had time to stop my expression, I narrowed my eyes and sneered."

"His lips baptized my skin in a line of tiny kisses..."

Then there are contradictions in the text, such as Taylor saying he has a master's degree in Women's Studies bud didn't go to graduate school. This was my comment on the matter for one of my status updates on Goodreads:

The reason I'm quoting this is because it's a contradiction: he says he doesn't have a graduate degree, but then says he has a masters in Women's Studies, but then doubles back and says he was kidding about the degree and then said he'd taken a few courses in women's studies.

Dude, what level of a degree do you think a masters is? It's graduate school, it's considered a "graduate" degree. Not to mention you pretty much contradicted yourself in the scheme of the conversation to Falyn. She should've seen through you lying because of the contradiction, but she didn't until you pointed out the truth.

Yeah...this likely didn't see a final edit for the turns of awkward phrasing and logic for conversational flow.

Another problem comes with the repetition for story elements/scenes: in this book, we have a laundry room scene (there was a similar scene in "Walking Disaster"), a scene where Taylor walks in the shower on Falyn and she giggles after the fact even when she tells him to get out (Travis and Abby did this in "Beautiful Disaster"), Taylor makes references to try to "bag" Falyn (Even though Falyn's like "No" -by this point I want to facepalm every time I see the word "bag" - it's such a stupid word for having sex with someone) and Falyn refers to Taylor as a stray puppy (which Abby made about Travis as well in "Beautiful Disaster." That's too many narrative references to be a coincidence, and it doesn't work as an ode to the original book because the nature of the inclusion feels repetitive. There are more references like that through the book, but think about how much of that is from the *beginning* of the story.

Pre-read: I told myself I wasn't going to read any of Evans' "Real" series because of issues, but I might try one book of hers on my own to see if at all her narration or anything with respect to her writing/plotting has improved.

We'll see. I'm not going into this with high expectations though.

Post read: So even with not going into this with high expectations, I was still very disappointed. Poor writing, juvenile presentation, threadbare characters, plodding pacing, predictable plot, and manipulative cliffhanger ending.

I can honestly say I didn't enjoy this at all.

Full review:

This may be a quicker review to write than the time it took me to get through this book. I will at least give the book credit for having a decent audio narrator with Grace Grant. I've read a few audio narrations with Grant as the lead voice. She's fair with this performance; her narration did insert some signs of life into the narrative that I wouldn't have gotten if I'd read the print version. She's the only reason I'm giving this book even a fraction of a star.

Honestly, I don't understand the hype around Katy Evans's writing at all. Nothing about this was steamy or sexy to me. Nothing about it was even really worth writing home about. It's incredibly juvenile and everything about this book was just horrifically rambled and bland, leaving the experience for me an empty read.

The book isn't necessarily bad as far as the premise is concerned. If anything, probably the only thing that could be bad about the premise "in theory" is that it's predictable. A woman (Rachel Livingston) is asked to write an expose on a public figure (Malcolm Saint) who's considered to be a "manwhore" for her publication. I knew in a sense that this story would be a matter of me waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I decided to go along for the ride.

But all I got out of this were two lifeless characters who really had little to no flesh to pinch from them, mounds of infodumps defining their beings, and predictable scenarios from point one. Yes, Rachel shows up in unconventional clothing (she comes from a volunteer experience in paint covered overalls to meet with him in a very well-to-do business office) meeting Saint for a potential meeting to hook up with him, but really the only two things that are tying these two together are that they're unconventional for what they're used to. Saint's attracted to Rachel because she's the first woman that's not falling at his feet and having sex with him (except when she does) and Rachel's only attracted to him because "OMG, he's so hot - I can't stop thinking about his abs/muscles/insert body part here!" I can understand if some of that is part of the dialogue, but not when it's constantly repeated and nothing else is given to bring the appeal of either Saint or even Rachel's attraction to the other.

Where the heck were their personalities beyond the blushing girl and brooding, private businessman who had multiple "floozies" (and man, don't even get me started for how many times this word was used, or even the obvious slut shaming that came with this narrative, because you know every other woman is useless in the relationship with Saint except for the heroine - and that every other woman is the enemy including a co-worker that Rachel works with at her magazine)? I feel like this book was trying to convince me these characters were developed, but failed miserably. The bulk of this information was told, not shown. Despite the proposed sensual scenes and "hot" sex - there was no true intimacy here. No intimacy for the characters, no intimacy to the situations, just surface details and hyperbolic comparisons that were mostly in Rachel's head and presumptuous for the situation. I don't care how old Rachel is supposed to be, even with her naivete, the presentation of this was just too juvenile to work. Just because you have a juvenile character doesn't mean that the presentation should be lacking or completely absent for development.

The side characters aren't even interesting because they're simply used as background noise to justify doubts about the relationship coming together, between Gina's prejudiced justification of a previous relationship making Saint to be a bad deal (she doesn't know the dude and never really does through the narrative), and Saint's posse congratulating him on another potential conquest, another lay.

With that consideration, let's talk about how the title of this book is a completely misleading fabrication. You would think that with the title "Manwhore" this book might have something to offer as to what makes Saint the way he is and why he lives his lifestyle the way he does, maybe with Rachel observing his interactions and the way he changes from this to be with Rachel. But no, all we get are infodumps on his "tragic past" and his so called bad boy antics when really all we see of him is how he's different toward Rachel and her prejudiced assumptions over what he's doing when she's not with him. I felt cheated because it was no true coming to terms or showcase of change, just surface details, just as bad as the so called judgmental attitudes that surround Saint in the book in social media circles and beyond. And what good does that do? It doesn't develop the characters. It doesn't show them growing beyond perceptions. Heck, it doesn't even show how these two really came to bond with each other. It's empty, it's presumptuous, and honestly I'm a little more than fed up because I see this all too often in New Adult and erotic stories following the "bad boy billionaire trope."

The ending was the thing that made me really throw in the towel with this series, because it's really a non-ending. Nothing's resolved. You get to the point where the other shoe drops and there's some hint for a resolution, but then it's yanked out of your grasp just to lead into another book, to make you buy into another story, which it's hard to tell whether it'll really have another resolution or just drag out details just for the sake of promoting more drama between characters who are little more than surface cliches.

This reader is not going to be manipulated out of her time following what happens. Apart from the narration, I didn't like this at all, and it's not likely I'd pick up another one of Evans's works if the quality's just going to be like this.

Overall score: 1/5 stars.