Review:
In this final book of the Ruinous Love Trilogy, Doctor Fionn Kane and circus performer Rose Evans, who had previously seemed like the least murdery characters in the trilogy, reveal themselves to have murdery tendencies. Because of course.
When she isn't doing death-defying stunts with her motorcycle, Rose does tarot readings. More specifically, she is a mysterious woman known as the Sparrow who will, after doing readings for abused women who want to escape their abusers, provide those women with the means to kill their abusers. However, after one of her attempts to help has unintended consequences, Rose decides that it's time for her to take more direct action. This, unfortunately, also does not go as planned, leaving Rose with a broken leg and a very angry pursuer who is now minus one eye.
Fionn is no stranger to violence. He helps Rose get her leg taken care of and, skeptical of her "I was in a motorcycle accident" explanation, offers her a place to stay while she heals up. He's more than a little stunned when Rose immediately starts befriending neighbors he has barely spoken to since he moved to the area to get away from his almost-fiancee. He can't help but find himself charmed by and attracted to her. At the same time, he's worried about what might happen if the monster inside him, the one even his brothers don't know about, finally gets free.
Just like the second book, this one has some overlap with events from the previous books, although it's still its own story. I enjoyed the progression of Fionn and Rose's relationship even though I kind of wish, same as with the second book, that the author hadn't felt the need to work murder into the entire trilogy. Sloane was, hands down, the trilogy's best killer, both in terms of successful kills and her likelihood of staying out of prison. Lachlan didn't actually do much on-page killing, but he'd probably be #2 after Sloane. Everyone else only managed to stay alive and out of prison due to luck or connections to people with better self-control and/or planning skills.
Rose's first attempt at murdering someone went terribly. Her second should have gone terribly, and her third only turned out okay due to dumb luck. I still preferred her efforts to Lark's, I think because there wasn't much effort to present her actions as anything other than murderously poor choices born from good intentions. In a different romance, she'd have been a "wacky hijinks" kind of character.
In her acknowledgments, the author wrote "While writing Butcher & Blackbird was joyful, and Leather & Lark was challenging, Scythe & Sparrow felt healing." I think that came across in the writing as well. Leather & Lark was decent enough, but Scythe & Sparrow felt smoother and easier, and Butcher & Blackbird was easily the best book in the trilogy.
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