Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Lover at Last

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Lover at Last by J.R. Ward

3 reviews

mk_meow's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense

3.5

4.5🌶️

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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.

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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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