The Ritual: A Dark College Romance

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.

No just no (for me)

To summarize my thoughts: The plot is a jumbled mess of cliques, tropes, song names, and drugs. There is a lot of nonconsensual drugging. I also think in the trigger warnings the author should have included 'Song names dropped into every scene.' This is, by far my least favorite book I have ever read. However, I understand art is subjective, and there are clearly a lot of people that enjoy this book. I respect that, and my review in no way is trying to put other readers down. This is strictly an opinion I have. I read this book for a book club I was in, otherwise I would have quit the book after the first chapter. I morn my time lost to this... This book is set in 'today's world' with some liberties taken into how the government/country is run. Honestly, there isn't a lot of exposition on the exact structure of how this is supposed to work. The 'Lords' are a secret society that run the country (or world? it isn't clear). They go into college, don't go to classes (instead go on assignments that seem to only be murder), come out of college successful, and they are planted in some sort of an important role. Like a judge, or the president. I will suspend my disbelief, but I did find it entertaining that one would not need to know anything at all to do any of these jobs. I do find it laughable that the future 'President' is prancing around in college, committing crimes, and not learning anything academic. The characters in this book are one dimensional and you should not expect consistency from them at all. Blakely is the main character. That is probably her only trait because nothing else is consistent (except for the fact that she has “big tits” and a “bubble ass.” A woman wrote that, apparently). When you meet her, she is knocked to the ground, she stays there, gets turned on (for no reason), and just stares. As the story goes on, that is pretty much her character. Something happens to her, and she does absolutely nothing. There are points when she decides to take the lead, for example there is a point where she kidnaps Cindy who has come to kill her (we will touch on the foreshadowing/lack thereof later). The issue with this is that it is so out of nowhere, it leaves you going huh? What? Who? The other lead is Ryat. Yes. Like Riot. I will let you draw the conclusions. He is awful, and not in a morally gray way. He is manipulative, cruel, selfish, and an idiot. This book will try to convince you the characters are smart. They aren't. Ryat is even less consistent than Blake, so there isn't a lot to say about his character. One second, he is against Matt forcing himself onto a random woman, and the next he has no issues drugging Blakely and... well you get the point. He claims to love her at some point, but you are left as a reader going (again), what? When? I had to go back to try and find where the 'love' started. There is no falling, there is only... well in Ryat's case... thrusting. That's it. In our society we have romanticized morally gray characters, specifically men. And that is fine, and a subject for another time. However, this is an awful attempt. Ryat manipulates her, drugs her (have I said drugs enough? This moved 90% of the plot), SAs her, drugs her again, manipulates her into marriage, messes with her birth control, then confesses to love her and do anything for her? Should there not be build up for this to be believable? When am I supposed to find him redeemable? One could argue, you aren't supposed to find him redeemable. But alas, the book tries to redeem him in the last quarter. It just doesn't quite work with the story. Do you like music? Perfect, because a song (song title including the artist) will be mentioned by name almost every chapter, if not multiple times. Why is this done? Good question. This is one of my least favorite things in a book, so I may be biased against this. But I do think this needs to be in the trigger warnings, because man oh man, it is almost every chapter (if not multiple times a chapter). Example: "You can hear 'Make Hate to Me' by Citizen Soldier blaring from the inside of the house" Chapter Seven "I whisper in her ear as 'Like Lovers Do" by hey Violet." Chapter Seven "I try to think if I've heard his voice before, but the song "Killing Me Slowly" by Bad Wolves is too loud," Chapter Nine And on and on it goes. If you didn't notice it at first, you will now. I understand this book is essentially an excuse to write spicy scenes. You don't want 'Corn' for the plot. But you DO read for plot. So, the convoluted mess of a plot is fair game. Without going into every single detail (because honestly, I feel bad you've had to read this much already), I just want to say that foreshadowing doesn’t exist in the world of lords, because character consistency doesn’t exist. So, characters will come out of nowhere and you are expected to believe they have been the “villain” all along. The twists are somehow predictable and unbelievable all at once. For example, surprise! Blakeley’s mom isn’t her mom, her real mom was the lady that died at the beginning. But actually PSYCH! She isn’t dead at all, and she secretly has been plotting the entire time. She (in her own words) “knows everything.” The pregnancy trope is expected when you realize Ryat screws with her birth control. And once again, this despicable action is excused because AFTER Blakley finds out, she is okay with it. That isn’t how consent works. I understand there is a lot of control play going on, and the book is assuming the reader is into that. However, I have issue with the fact that this is brushed off and called romance. "I remove her birth control pills and then the pack that I've kept stashed in my bag at the back of the closet. I punch the dates she's already used and place the placebos back in the drawer. Blakely isn't going anywhere. If I have to keep her knocked up every day of our lives, I will." -Ryat, Chapter Fifty-Six. And lastly, I find myself wondering if Shantel hates women. It isn’t just Blakeley that is treated like trash, every single female character is. There are three types of female characters in this book, ‘The Bitch,’ ‘Sex Bots,’ and Blakley. Women have no control at all in this book, ever. And if that was what she was going for? Fine. But she tries to portray Blakeley halfway through the book as powerful or independent. Wow she can fight back, wow she talks back. If there was character growth that led up to this, then I would be psyched, good for her. However, these moments happen only when it is convenient for the plot. But in the end Blakley is once again at the mercy of all the men in her life. And that is every single woman in this book. There isn’t a single one that has agency. Even the antagonistic females are just doing it because they want a man, or they are manipulated by one. To sum it up, my biggest issue is the moral(s) of the story. My main takeaway was that people have one single personality trait and motivator, and that women are a tool in someone else's life journey. I am sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings, and I understand that writing a book and putting it out there is hard. You are putting a piece of your soul and heart out there. However, I will not be continuing this series, and you couldn't pay me to read any of her books.

DNF

Finished this in a couple of days! Couldn't put it down