Reckless
By: Lauren Roberts
Format: Physical Book
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Spice: 🌶️🌶️
**My review below may contain spoilers.**
Good Reads Summary
The kingdom of Ilya is in turmoil…
After surviving the Purging Trials, Ordinary-born Paedyn Gray has killed the King, and kickstarted a Resistance throughout the land. Now she’s running from the one person she had wanted to run to.
Kai Azer is now Ilya’s Enforcer, loyal to his brother Kitt, the new King. He has vowed to find Paedyn and bring her to justice.
Across the deadly Scorches, and deep into the hostile city of Dor, Kai pursues the one person he wishes he didn’t have to. But in a city without Elites, the balance between the hunter and hunted shifts – and the battle between duty and desire is deadly.
Positives:
Negatives:
- Romance: The SLOOOOOW burn from Powerless finally ignited. The tension and romantic scenes between Paedyn and Kai we well worth the wait of the first book. I love their banter and some of their conversations were so sweet.
- Inner Turmoil: Both Kai and Paedyn are haunted by their past, their decisions, and the things they don’t know. They continually go back and forth about what to do with each other, what decisions to make, and whether to love or hate each other.
- Kitt: The broody, whiny version of Kitt we saw in this book got really annoying really quickly. I found myself groaning internally whenever I got to one of the chapters from his point of view. The way he refuses to think about why Paedyn may have killed his father and broods over how she betrayed him was tedious and frustrating.
- Slower and Lack of Action: The pace of this book was much slower than Powerless. The plot got a bit redundant (cat chases mouse, mouse escapes, so on and so on). There also was much less action than the first book. There were only bits and pieces of Paedyn’s badassery and I found myself missing it.
Review Synopsis
I really loved the dynamic between Kai and Paedyn in this book. He was hunting her to fulfill his duty to Kitt, but he still had feelings for her that he was fighting. She hated him for killing her father and was running for her life to stay away from him, but still reluctantly had feelings for him. The slow burn continued on from Powerless, but we finally got sparks in Reckless. The romantic scenes with them were adorable, but realistic. We witness both Kai and Paedyn’s inner turmoil and trauma from their pasts. We got answers to many of the questions from the first book, and are left on the edge of our seats from yet another massive cliffhanger at the end.
I did think there was a lack of action in this book as compared to Powerless, and the plot was redundant at times (chase, catch, escape, chase, catch escape, rinse and repeat). Paedyn was still snarky, but I missed some of her badass action and style from Powerless. Kitt also got quite annoying with all his brooding. I found myself dreading his POV chapters.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and have already preordered the third one! It ended on a cliffhanger (again, Lauren?!?!) and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next one.
Below is an affiliate link to Amazon if you are interested in reading Reckless, leave a comment to let me know what you think if you give it a try!
Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/4d8es1I