Year Three

Year ThreeKingmakersSofie Lark

Apr 23

Written By Ally Talley

Kingmakers #3

By Sofie Lark

~ Cannot be read as a standalone ~

~ Must at least read Year Two (Kingmakers #2) prior to this one ~

TheStory

After bearing witness to Cat’s misdeeds last year, Dean blackmails Cat into doing whatever he tells her to do. After spending time humiliating her in public and dealing with her resistance to the agreement, Dean decides to change the rules - Cat will be fully submissive to him for one full month and then he will keep her secret forever.

As the two spend time together, their feelings grow from resentfulness to interest to lust. Now Dean is dreading the end of the month and Cat isn’t as angry as she once was. But when a major blowup causes tension, Deal will have to prove that Cat isn’t just a game to him…

TheReview

ANNOUNCEMENT: THIS IS A BULLY ROMANCE! So if bully romances aren’t your thing… shoo shoo now. Everything spicy is consensual. All the bullying is part of the romance. And everything is going to be okay.

Moving right along…

The bullying wasn’t anything too drastic but oh my gosh… I was getting second-hand embarrassment for Cat. Poor thing. Dean just humiliates her in public repeatedly and I was cringing! Especially since there was nothing Cat could do to stop it. Dean literally held her life in his hands thanks to the Rules of Recompense (an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for a life).

Frankly I just had no idea how Dean was going to redeem himself from the last two books and then he was so smarmy in this one in the beginning. Honestly, I don’t really understand bully romances but I get that it’s a certain genre of romance so I can get down with it.

If someone did any of these things to me, I would literally never talk to them again. There would be no relationship to build because I would lose it and stab them. But it’s not about me, it’s about them. And Cat had a strange sort of fixation with Dean even as he treated her badly.

When the bullying turned from humiliation into sexual control (CONSENSUALLY!), Cat actually enjoyed that part. She liked to be dominated and please Dean. She wouldn’t explicitly say that she was into it but she never said no and she told Dean everything he needed to know with her words and her body language. She seemed very quiet and mousy but she was sneaky and smart. She knew how to get what she wanted.

Slowly but surely, the relationship became less one-sided. As Dean became more obsessed with having Cat as his mercy, it strangely caused his character growth. He changed and became a better person. However, when a tragedy back home hit him in the gut, he broke down.

He may have thought he was healing with Cat but really he was using her as a crutch to hide the parts of him that he didn’t like. He had to figure out how to fix himself before being able to truly grow into his full potential.

Wow… normally I’m not so philosophical in my reviews but that character arc was so clear and defined.

It was a beautiful story about love and forgiveness - not just from those around you but for yourself from yourself. The ending was sweet and beautiful. I loved this book. It was the best in the series so far but now I’m EXTRA excited for Year Four. I think it might be even better given the little hints in this book.