Tabs’ review of Reaper’s Fire (Reaper’s Motorcycle Club, Book 6) by Joanna Wylde
Contemporary Romance published by Berkley 09 Aug 16
Joanna Wylde returns to the Reaper’s Motorcycle Club with the romance between a man on a mission and a woman trying to keep her head down. Gage is undercover in the town of Hallies Falls trying to get intel on the Nighthawk Raiders Motorcycle Club. Since getting close to the club involves sleeping with the president’s sister, he definitely shouldn’t be lusting after his landlady. Since Tinker Garrett is trying to stay under radar and avoid adding to her bad small-town reputation, she definitely shouldn’t be getting anywhere near her intriguing tenant. But when did anyone ever have fun doing what they should?
I’m going to start this review by flat-out saying that this book failed for me and I’m not going to be able to say why without spoilers.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.
I’ve had problems with the time hops and the structure of the last few books in this series and, unfortunately, all of that is dialed way up here. This story takes place concurrently with the middle of the last book, Reaper’s Fall. So a reader who has already read Reaper’s Fall already knows exactly where Gage and the Nighthawk Raiders are headed and will spend the first half of this book just waiting to see shit they’ve already seen happen. How boring is that? Majorly so.
The structure of the romance, however, is this book’s biggest problem for me. I’m a romance reader. I like to read romance. I don’t like to read hundreds of pages in which the hero is undercover, using a fake name and identity, and banging a horrid nightmare of a woman who is not the heroine while flirting with the actual heroine who is pretty turned off by the fact that he has a terrible girlfriend and keeps coming on to her. There is nothing fun about that. There is nothing sexy about that. There is nothing romantic about that. I am not generally the kind of reader who is really strict about the hero/heroine only sleeping with the hero/heroine in a book. If there’s no commitment, then it doesn’t bother me, but having it go on for more than half of the book is where I reach my damn limit.
The abysmal number of pages in which Gage and Tinker are actually free to pursue a relationship with each other is downright appalling for a romance novel. I have been known to enjoy some really satisfying slow-burn romances, but that’s not what is going on here. There is no slow burn. There are some hot looks, some ogling of each other’s assets, and an occasional stolen kiss, but they’re essentially living on separate paths and those paths only cross occasionally and not in any real meaningful way.
Another frustrating point is that there’s some of that magic that Joanna Wylde’s readers expect in here, but it’s incredibly fleeting. Once his cover is dropped and Gage and Tinker are interacting without a mountain of dishonesty between them, there’s some really good stuff. Tinker gives him hell, as she should. The Reapers brothers bust each other’s chops. The fun banter that I except from a Reaper’s MC book is in full force…for a few scant chapters. And then it’s gone just as quickly as it appeared.
This book was a big miss for me. It’s badly paced and structured and feels full of filter material. The main characters are underdeveloped. The romance is seriously lacking in quality page time and is overshadowed by the non-romance plots. I finished it feeling incredibly frustrated and unsatisfied.
Grade: D
Summary:
The club comes first.
I’ve lived by those words my whole life—assumed I’d die by them, too, and I never had a problem with that. My Reaper brothers took my back and I took theirs and it was enough. Then I met her. Tinker Garrett. She’s beautiful, she’s loyal, and she works so damned hard it scares me sometimes . . . She deserves a good man—one better than me. I can’t take her yet because the club still needs me. There’s another woman, another job, another fight just ahead.
Now she’ll learn I’ve been lying to her all along. None of it’s real. Not my name, not my job, not even the clothes I wear. She thinks I’m nice. She pretends we’re just friends, that I’ve still got a soul . . . Mine’s been dead for years. Now I’m on fire for this woman, and a man can only burn for so long before he destroys everything around him.
I’m coming for you, Tinker.
Soon.
Other books in this series:
I haven’t read this series, but I feel your frustration with this new trend of rehashing a previous book word for word (looking at you Kenyon Dragonmark) and you get 1/3 of new material. I don’t know if there’s a fancy word for this kind of book? All I know is that it wastes my time as a reader and my money. It’s also a reason why I never read Styxx. Who wants to re-read a 1000 page torture book only this time,it’s in Styxx’s POV? Oh yay! Not.
If I had to read a romance novel where the lead guy is having sex throughout the book with someone other than the leading lady? No thanks. I get MC books are suppose to be gritty, but that’s just not my idea of anything romantic. I guess if I wanted that much reality I would watch SOA on Amazon Prime.
Great review!
I like seeing some of the books from different POV but this seems to be way too much with little payoff.
I expected the undercover to be 25 or 35% of the book, not over half spent banging the other chick.
Seriously love the series so it makes me sad.
Didn’t realize it was happening in Kenyon’s series SammyC but haven’t really read many of them.
Yes. This is the third book in the DH series where it just reads as copy and paste from past books you just read. I guess it wouldn’t bother me so much if there were two books out a year. We get one book each year and then read it word for word from the last book. Why bother?
I think what would bother me most is the undercover sex thing with someone not the heroine. I’m old school in my romance reading so that just wouldn’t work for me. Plus I would feel cheated at all that time wasted not on the main couple. I hope the next book is a great one!
What’s weird about this one is that it’s not so much a retread retelling from another perspective as it is that the author spoiled the major turning points of her next book in her last book. (And she did it in the one before as well but not to this degree).
And the sleeping with another woman for 65% of the book is worse too because it’s not just another woman. She was a major antagonist from the last novel. She’s an evil psycho villain and regular readers know all the horrible things she’s going to do after the undercover gig is up. It’s just a maddeningly bad narrative choice and the more I think about it the more my head starts to explode.
I have flat out loved the first couple books in this series but I don’t actually know that I can read another book by an author who keeps making these kinds of writing choices. And that makes me incredibly sad.
I couldn’t even bring myself to read this one. The previous book was a hot mess, and this one sounded like an even bigger pile of dog doodoo. I did read that this book was her last book required under this publisher. My guess, she just half assed the last two books to meet the requirements of her contract. I’m cynical that way though. *lol*