Our Vicious Oaths - Review

 I have no idea how to feel after listening to this book. I am extremely conflicted. I feel the same way I felt after reading another book from last year. I wanted to DNF but at the same time I couldn't look away from the crash that I was witnessing. So this will have spoilers, I usually try to stay away from them in reviews but I also feel like I can't accurately describe my feelings of what I listened to without them. So first lets start with my feelings towards Kadeesha. I liked her in the beginning but she just felt very lackluster. Like she tells us how strong she is and what-not but I didn't believe her. There was no instance where she proved exactly what she said and what we were being told. At every instance she was being shown to be weaker than those that she was around. So I'm left with thinking that she is average and has this over inflated sense of power for herself. She also didn't even seem to really like Malachi. Yeah they had some great smex together and the scenes themselves were pretty hot but up until about a 3-4 chapters away from the end she was thinking of killing him. Nothing about them really seemed to point towards wanting to be with each other. I mean they did bond and she showed some compassion for him when he relayed to her how he felt about his family but that's about it. The side characters don't even stick out here. I really don't remember any of them other than Malachi's cousin, the aunt, Kadeesha's mom and Rashard. Like everyone else just kinda blurred into the background. There was nothing that really made them stick out in your memory. As a matter of fact when one of them died, like...I forgot who they even were. Other than when Kadeesha kinda expressed sadness about their deaths, I would have forgotten who they even were. Onto Malachi, he just seemed like a slut. He was out here sleeping with everyone under the sun and didn't seem to have a care towards ruling. There was nothing in the beginning pages that led me to believe he was a strong leader. Then we find out he has this policy of kill first ask questions later. Like....huh? Where do we see him be a true leader other than when things actually start to head to war? Sure he's powerful but I would definitely question his leadership skills. ESPECIALLY when we get to some of the final scenes. Like he was playing around with the Rashard while his people were literally out there dying? What kind of leadership qualities is that? I feel like there is a lot of telling in this book but not a lot of showing. Then there is the fact that it feels like there is a lot more words than necessary in this book. I feel like you could probably space out for most of the book and not really miss anything important. The world itself is interesting and has the potential to be a realm that is revisited by this author for the side characters or others who we haven't met yet. I liked that aspect of it and the fact that everyone is a POC.

The spicy scenes were amazing. Despite everything else, whew the spice was spicing! I would give it a 100 out of 5 if I could. Overall, I don't know if I would recommend this book to anyone simply because it felt all over the place. It was pulling from a lot of different tropes that just didn't all need to be there. I can tell that the author reads fantasy romance as well as writes it but some things don't have to all be together to make a good and interesting story.