Book Review: Lords of Summer by Kayla Wren

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On August 19,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Lords of Summer (Year of the Harem #1)
Author: Kayla Wren
Genre: Reverse Harem, Bully Romance
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

These bully books always kill me with the tension. Knowing that the awful is in the mail is terrible. I think if you’ve had a bully, you have a hard time romancing that crap up. Still, there is a rare breed of us who read bully romance novels for that crack at a happily ever after. Most bullies will never have Layla’s outcome. Mine? We would be lucky to have a PSA outcome. A lot are just statistics, which sucks because bully romances don’t address those sad numbers.

A summer job in Pembroke Bay is Layla MacKenzie’s jam. She’s rocking the freedom of all the woe college has wrought and the hell her bullies, the Birchwood Boys, wreak on her days. This is her summer, and it’s a new Layla, a fresh start, a way to get a breath finally. But nothing could be so easy when her devils are so eager to see her pay for her imagined sins.

Did I like her bullies? One or two were not abhorrent. I’m not a good judge of character since I bookboyfriended Carter Mahoney from Untouchable, and he was a despicable bully. In Lords of Summer I adored Maddox Landry, who seems to be the most twisted of the bunch. Still, waters run slightly dark in this book. Jasper was the other I liked, and I liked him best when he was a bookend–go ahead and call me a dirty-minded harlot, but this isn’t a book about the bible, peeps.

All in all, Lords of Summer is a steamy read, but it’s missing a few layers here and there to connect one part to the next. Layla struggles with her feelings, but I’d like to see her struggle rather than hear about it. And when she gives in to her temptations, I want it to feel less out of character, so she doesn’t seem so porny. And she does come across many times as a pornstar. That bummed me out. I wanted to follow her story, and where I was lead kept feeling disingenuous.

If this book read smoother, I would have gladly rated it higher. But I dinged it for having significant flaws in the characterization of the FMC.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary advance copy of this book.