The Ritual: A Dark College Romance

It isn’t that I didn’t like this book, I actually ended up getting very hooked but similar to other extra spicy books I’ve read, I was hoping for more plot. The book is primarily spicy scenes and the ones that aren’t, are just violent and reference sex. If you’re into dark romances this is perfect but if that’s not your thing, stay away. About halfway through I started seeing a twisty mystery coming into play and that’s when it really hooked me, I actually very much enjoyed our main characters, Ryat and Blakely, and was really rooting for them to grow into deeper characters. Ultimately, this is an acquired take. This is the first book in a standalone series so I might find my way back into the world of the Lords at some point again.

After reading the H.Adeline series I got onto a dark romance kick and this was a great new series to get into! I was unsure at first about it, but very quickly this book got into the action and completely hooked me! Really looking forward to the rest of the series, even knowing they are all considered standalone but set in the same universe.

If you want spice….

🌶🌶🌶

Read this one as an audiobook and the duet narration performance was a better than the story, so we land at a 3.5 ⭐️ on Fable / not good enough to round up in GoodReads so 3 ⭐️ / and here I am giving it a 5 ⭐️. While I hoped there would be a more compelling and engaging plot, we didn’t come for the plot. We came for that dark romance fucking. And oh boy did it deliver. 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️. The FMC is pretty blah for me, but hello Ryat Archer MMC Dom extraordinaire. Peak “Touch her and die”. Hell, “Look at her too long and die” is more like it. This narrator saying “Good Girl” changed my brain chemistry for sure. Like I said, the narration performance was good haha I probably will audiobook read the rest of the series - assuming the other narrators aren’t annoying - but in no rush to do so. Decent smut but not good enough to jump to the top of my audio TBR.