Review: Knot in Their Wildest Dreams Part 1

Knot in Their Wildest Dreams Part 1 by Violet Coltair
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I honestly didn’t like any of them.

Celeste should have been unstoppable. She’s positioned as a true Omega badass! She’s sharp, strategic, and powerful, but the second she learns the pack are her scent matches, all that backbone dissolves. Suddenly, she’s slicking for the very men who are blackmailing her? For a woman built up as a formidable business leader, it reads like she’s been handed a spine made of cracked glass.
And that’s what frustrates me most, because Celeste deserves better.

She’s already fighting uphill every single day. She’s an omega CEO in a world determined to reduce her to a party girl stereotype. Behind the scenes, she’s brilliant and intentional: growing her company, quietly advocating for other omegas, improving employee satisfaction, and funneling resources into under-resourced communities. She’s doing the work, moving the chess pieces, playing the long game.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that the narrative undercuts her strength the moment romance enters the room. Poor Celeste isn’t weak; she’s written that way. And that choice does her character a real disservice.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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Review: Trailer Park Princess

Trailer Park Princess by Nikki Lark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ellie moves into a trailer park as a kid and finds her people in the form of Tank, Kade, Cyrus, and Jinx. Four boys who become her entire world. They grow up tangled together, inseparable, chosen family in the truest sense of the word. Until Ellie’s mother’s luck changes and she gets engaged to a senator. She’s high flying now folks, and just like that, Ellie is uprooted and taken away from the only home she’s ever known.

Four years pass. Those years are not kind to her. Ellie is abused by her jerkhole of a stepfather and, desperate for escape and justice, reaches out to a group of vigilantes for help. The twist? Well not really a twist for us. The vigilantes are the same four boys she grew up with. The same ones who never forgot her. And this time, they’re not letting her slink off into the sunset.

However, there’s a price for their help. They aren’t Robinhoods after all. If they’re going to kill her stepfather, Ellie has to belong to them for one year.

Fully.

Completely.

No limits.

She leaves her dorm and moves into their house. They give her a room painted exactly like something she once dreamed of. They all want her. They all remember her. And she’s never stopped wanting them either.

Here’s where my frustration kicks in.

This book ends abruptly. No real cliffhanger. No rising tension. Just… done. And with only one book currently out, that ending feels especially unsatisfying. I genuinely loved the first half of this book. The childhood chapters, the bond between Ellie and the guys, especially Tank.

I’m rooting for you Big Guy!

Their childhood was emotionally rich and well done. The kids didn’t feel like someone was writing for babies, and they didn’t feel like tiny adults. They were kids thrust into adult situations.
But once we hit the present timeline, the story peters out! And that’s where the fun should’ve begun!! We’re introduced to Ellie’s new life and barely introduced to the Big Bad of the story. Then BOOM, the guys show up, and suddenly the entire second half of the book takes place over roughly a week.

The Big Bad just slips from the pages. Ellie’s mom does a page runner too. The abuse storyline barely gets explored. Character development slows to a crawl, her trauma just glossed over.
We get a small burst of rushed spice near the end, and then the book is over.

There’s no real payoff, no escalation, no thread that makes me desperate to continue the series. It feels like the author had a strong concept and a solid beginning but didn’t fully flesh out the plot.
With deeper character development and a clearer storyline, this could have been something really compelling. As it stands, it’s a promising start that never quite commits to its own potential.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.


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Review: Kane's Prey

Kane's Prey by Jolie Vines
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well… I did not see that coming.

And truthfully, I love a surprise ending. Don’t get me wrong, I love a predictable, cosy ride just as much as the next Kindle girlie. But sometimes I want my pulse quickened, my breath caught, my nerves humming.

Kane’s Prey understood MFKing the assignment!

Kane, my bonny prickly pear, oh Kane! If you look up primal play in the dictionary, you will find his picture. And that’s saying something, with 2 of the guys in this series having chased down their loves and claimed them in a brutal and sexy cat-and-mouse chase in the basement of Divide. Kane can give them a master class. Like the rest of the guys, he is a tortured soul, and I hate that for him. I wanted to rip his aunt’s throat out with my teeth and feed the leftovers to my dogs. I couldn’t imagine saying half of those things to my nephew.

Lovelyn, First, full honesty: I hate her name. No logic, no deeper meaning. I can’t put my finger on why, but I just do, her name grates on me like a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth. With that said I like her as a character. She has personality, a little bite to her. Something Mila was sadly lacking. I still can’t get a read on her, even though she had a named chapter in this book. She’s just kinda a blank hole for Convict, where Lovelyn is an actual person outside of being Kane’s prey.

Here’s where I have to take a pause; the repeated female death and strangulation is starting to sour the experience for me. It edges dangerously close to the “Girl in the Fridge” trope, which is a hard no for me in this genre. Karla was, let’s face it… an ass. We won’t pretend otherwise. But was that her inevitable end? Was she written solely to be awful on her way to the hangman’s noose? It feels that way. And I’m too much of a girl’s girl to sit comfortably with that.

Could this book have worked without that murder?

Honestly, yes.

Absolutely.

Still, Kane’s Prey surprised me, rattled me, and made my heart race and had me reaching for my rose on more than one occasion. I just hope future installments learn to let women live long enough to be complicated, messy, and human, without paying for it with their lives.

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