Review:
When Sloane and Rowan first meet, it's three days after Sloane has killed Albert Briscoe and accidentally gotten herself locked in the cage Briscoe used to keep his victims in. Rowan reveals himself to be the serial killer known as the Boston Butcher. Sloane, in the hope that he'll help her get out of the cage, reluctantly reveals that she's the serial killer known as the Orb Weaver. Both of them exclusively target other serial killers.
It's pretty much love at first sight for Rowan, who finds himself desperate for an excuse to keep Sloane from slipping out of his life and disappearing forever. He's the one who proposes that they play a game. Every year at around the same time, they'll both travel to a location picked by Sloane's brother Lachlan, who'll use his connections as a contract killer to find likely serial killers for them to target. The first person to find and kill the killer wins.
They both enjoy the companionship as well as the game, finally getting to meet someone else on the same wavelength. Rowan has lots of friends, but the only people who know him as he really is are his brothers. Sloane only has one close friend. As Sloane and Rowan get to know each other, they both find themselves wanting more but are reluctant to admit it. Rowan is afraid of scaring Sloane off, knowing that she's shy, skittish, and doesn't trust easily. Sloane is attracted to Rowan but has no idea how to do relationships.
I approached this with lots of trepidation, so it was a pleasant surprise, to put it mildly, when I found myself really enjoying it. It helped, I think, that both Sloane and Rowan were killers and that they both exclusively targeted other killers - there was an appeal there similar to Jeff Lindsay's Dexter Morgan series. Sloane and Rowan opened up to each other maybe a little more quickly than was believable, and I couldn't help but think that the FBI of their world must be filled with idiots considering all the evidence they probably left lying around, despite Sloane's efforts to clean up. Also, I had some difficulty believing in Lachlan's skills at locating hidden serial killers. Maybe the fact that certain aspects weren't quite believable also contributed to how well this worked for me.
Anyway, this turned out to be pretty fun. Rowan oozed charisma, and I generally loved his and Sloane's scenes together. The author put a lot more time and effort into building the relationship between the two of them than I expected - I thought for sure there would be sex scenes fairly early on, but in reality Rowan and Sloane spent a few years playing their game and dancing around each other before anything like that happened. In another book, both of them would have been giant red flags, engaging in occasional stalkerish behavior. In this book, it somehow worked. I loved Sloane's initial visit to Rowan's restaurant, and Rowan's attempt to get her to talk to him again afterward.
There was only one moment that I didn't really like and that kind of crossed a line for me - the way Rowan acted near the end of their first competition, when he briefly behaved threateningly towards Sloane and then beat their target to death. Although he never had another moment quite like it in the book, it still bothered me.
The sex scenes, when they started up, were frequent and not really my cup of tea, but I enjoyed the prior relationship buildup enough that it wasn't too much of an issue. I plan on reading the next book in the trilogy, although I'm not convinced it'll work as well for me as this one did. I guess I'll find out.
Extras:
Includes QR codes for Apple Music and Spotify playlists.
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