Review:
This second book in the trilogy stars Lark (indie singer-songwriter, beloved and pampered daughter of the wealthy Covaci family, and serial killer Sloane's best friend) and Lachlan (Rowan's older brother, and a contract killer who'd like to retire and focus on his leatherworking). The first time they meet, Lachlan is wearing a mask and a wetsuit and has been hired to clean up after Lark's latest "accident." What Lark can't bring herself to tell anyone, not even Sloane, is that she's a serial killer who's deliberately targeting men like the teacher who abused her when she was younger. Lachlan, however, assumes she's a spoiled, rich, walking disaster and treats her as such...which gets him in trouble with his boss when it affects his boss's contract with Lark's wealthy father.
A year or so later, Lark learns that someone has been killing members of her family, and that her parents suspect Lachlan might be responsible. Unfortunately, by taking care of this "problem," they'd be hurting Rowan and, by extension, Sloane. Lark can't let that happen, so she latches on to the best solution she can think of - pretend that she and Lachlan have suddenly fallen in love and decided to get married, and then work with Lachlan to find the actual culprit. Lachlan agrees to the plan because mending things with the Covaci family might make his boss more willing to let him retire, and because he genuinely wants to help Lark figure out the truth, but he and Lark haven't exactly gotten along since that time he locked her in the truck of a car. Still, there's an attraction between them, and as they spend more time together they start to realize that they might have misjudged each other.
This didn't quite live up to the unhinged fun that was the first book. Despite Lark's little serial killing hobby and Lachlan's job, this somehow read like a more traditional romance than the first book. Lark and Lachlan had some nice moments as they worked together and got to know each other better, and, as a romantic hero, Lachlan probably worked a bit better for me than Rowan. Still, I kind of missed the gleeful nastiness of the first book. As a serial killer, Lark was a lesser version of Sloane - not nearly as meticulous and careful, and she'd almost certainly have ended up in prison long ago if it weren't for her family's connections and money. Her storage methods for her trophies were risky, at best, and ugh, the table just made me think about all the stuff I've read about the difficulties of preserving fresh food items in epoxy resin.
I think I'd have preferred it if Lark hadn't been a killer at all. Her worries about what Sloane would think about her if she found out never made sense to me (seriously, Sloane would be the last person to judge something like that). Having her aware of Sloane's activities and the less legal things her family occasionally did would probably have been enough. At the same time, the first book set a pretty high bar for the kinds of gory messes this trilogy could deliver, and it would have been odd not to have any of that here.
I definitely still plan to read the last book, although I'm not really sure what sorts of expectations to have for that one. As far as I know, neither Rose nor Fionn is secretly a killer, so theoretically it'll be the most "normal" book of the bunch.
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