Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Lover at Last

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Lover at Last by J.R. Ward

4 reviews

mk_meow's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense

3.5

4.5🌶️

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allingoodtime's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Quinn has done so much growing over the last year, the last couple of books for the readers, and I couldn’t wait for Blay to realize the changes that had taken place. The problem with when you’ve known someone almost their whole life is that it’s sometimes hard to see the change because you misread their intentions at every turn. Since that was the way this story was being laid out, I would get impatient when the POV in the book changed away from the Quinn/Blay story. Every time I thought Blay was going to truly see Quinn, it didn’t happen and the book veered to a different storyline.

Knowing these books always have a lot of different storylines going on, all of them being important in some way either now or in the future, I knew I had to be patient. The good thing about that is I ended up fully invested in Assail’s part of the story and cannot wait to see how that all plays out. And while I’m not thrilled with the Band of Bastards, I am curious about the Xcor/Layla pairing. I love Layla and her journey has been fascinating to me. She still has so much to learn and so much to reconcile about her life before and her life now. I just want her to be happy, but I am having a hard time seeing how that will be with her current attachment to both Quinn and the Brotherhood and Xcor.

Back to Quinn and Blay. Even with the growth Quinn has had, there were still some things he had to come to terms with. I don’t know that it had to drag out through the length of the book. The good thing is that the two couldn’t stay away from each other even when one thought they were “the other man” and the other thought he was just scratching an itch for the other guy, so there was plenty of heat and emotion throughout the book. Yet Blay was keeping quiet about his breakup and then getting mad at Quinn when he would back away. Quinn thought he was taking his cues from Blay. It was all a mess and I understood it to a certain extent, but think it went on too long before things were sorted.

I’ve seen criticism that this book didn’t have a lot of relevant stories being told. I disagree. Although there isn’t a lot happening in the Brotherhood itself, I think the stories being told will have significance in the future. I wasn’t crazy about Trez’s story, it was the one I was most annoyed with overall. Yet I know that down the road I’m going to be glad I got the information that was presented to me here. His story will eventually be told and it seems it could involve one of the Chosen. So it may not be what the die-hard readers wanted or are interested in at this moment in the series, but I know it will play out eventually as all this author’s little threads tend to do.

I’m just happy Quinn finally has a family (multiple families!) who love him unconditionally. The little neglected child is now an adult of great worth who is much loved and respected. If that’s not revenge on those who shunned him I don’t know what is.

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kaadee's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I had high expectations for this book, only for them to fall down in a great collapse. I have been waiting 11 books, eleven books, for Blay and Qhuinn’s love story. I love them so so so so much that I just wanted to see them together even if it’s the last thing I saw.
Let’s start out with the terrible writing of mlm relationships. JR Ward is brilliant at writing male characters, so inherently I thought that she would be great at writing two men together. The other books gave me great hope especially the build up with Blay and Qhuinn and even Vishious and Butch. But no. The sex scenes were incredibly bland and never talked about anything below the belt ever. It was badly written and to make it even worse she didn’t even write them to use lube. I don’t care if you’re an unbeatable vampire, but raw dogging it is rough. It’s unrealistic. I hated every second of every sex scene they had together.
Next, is Qhuinn. I have had a love and hate relationship with Qhuinn for many books but this book just made me hate him more than usual. After forever he finally realizes he is in love with Blay after Blay is finally in a happy relationship. He’s a homewrecker and it makes me upset. Blay has every right to not want to be with him now and deny Qhuinn in his advances. Ok ok they’re meant to be together though so I can look past it.
Next, I’m honestly excited for the Layla story arc even though I’ve heard a ton of people hate Layla? I freaking love Layla. She’s a badass and totally stood up to Havers and Phury when they dismissed her. I can’t wait for her to have kids because Qhuinn and Blay are gonna be the best damn fathers ever.
SOLA AND ASSAIL. THEY ARE HONESTLY THE ONLY REASON I KEPT READING AND THE ONLY REASON THIS BOOK IS 3 STARS. Their relationship is so fucking hot I can’t even describe how much I love it. Their game of cat and mouse is so erotic and cute and Assail is everything i want in a man (besides the raging coke addiction) I loved Assail the second I met him and I will love him to the end of my life. Sola is the badass woman I have been waiting to get some of for 11 books. She doesn’t even compare to Xhex or Cormia or Bella to me. She’s on a whole other level and that makes her perfect. I want more of their story sososossoososososo bad. Anyway, The ending of the book was really good with the dancing and the proposal and all of it. The ending made it worth it because we finally get to see them happy together. Also the fact that Qhuinn is now a brother is pretty perfect and worth the read. I HOPE JR WARD GETS BETTER AT WRITING MLM RELATIONSHIPS BECAUSE JEEZ I WILL BE REALLY UPSET.

Content Warnings

the_disreputable_dog's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

At first I really enjoyed this book, because I felt that the characters seemed to grow quite a bit. They both had some things to accept about themselves, and they're quite enjoyable as well. I also did really enjoy the way that Trez is around the person he's attracted to and it makes me want to hurry up and get to his book! I'm still not so enthused by Xcor and the BoB, but I am very enthused about Assail and Sola. I'm not sure exactly if I will like what's happening there but I am intrigued for certain. I have to give this book a bit of a lower score though, because I really don't like the way it deals with Qhuinn's bisexuality.

It feels like erasure and it's not fun. It felt like a really cool thing to have a bi character in the story, but then to have the resolution include an "Oh, I'm not actually bi" moment? Not nice. It took some of the happy out of the happy ever after for me. I don't think it's intended that way, but I do think that a lot of the harm that bisexual people go through is from people who think that bisexuality is just a pause en-route to officially being a "gay person" or a "straight person", and that's just not the case. Bi people will usually get into relationships with someone of one of those genders or someone who is non-binary, but being in a relationship with someone who fits a certain gender binary doesn't automatically make you fit a sexuality binary. It actually kind of took away some of that final sweetness at the end.

Also I was surprised, especially later on in the book, how many times the scenes went into fade to black mode. I'm not sure if I just noticed it more than I have in the past or if there actually were more scenes that happened that way this time, but it did rankle me a little.

It did make sense for the character to be afraid to admit his love because he hated himself, which also makes sense because of how his father treated him while he grew up, but then just have him be scared to admit he loves Blay, without the whole scared to say he's gay part. He could still be bisexual and it would still work for the story. I don't know exactly how many bisexual people, homosexual people, people of colour, non-binary individuals, transpeople, or other groups I haven't thought of right now read these books in hopes of seeing themselves reflected, I'm just disappointed that we had the opportunity to do it here for a few marginalised groups, and we didn't.

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