Lost Boys – Book Review

Lost Boys: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance

(Crazy Vicious Love #1)

by Eva Ashwood

★★★

Expectation

It has been a while since I’ve read something on my Kindle and while I scrolled trough some new recommendations this book caught my eye. I was in the mode for something angsty and smuty and this one fit by the description. A Reverse Harem Bully Romance in the title got me interested to see how a contemporary and relatively new author would make it work. I even went all in and bought it after reading the sample.

Summary

A Reverse Harem them is often done in anime with a generally comedic and silly touches. I usually liked how it was done in urban fantasy setting with some exceptions. Matriarchy is rarely done right in literature because for most of our patriarchal upbringing it is difficult to grasp.

But onto the book in question…

Most of this first book in the series is an introduction and setting the characters in the required situation that would justified the taboo of polyamory. While the female leading character Cordelia gets plenty of pagetime since the book is written from her point of view I felt like it was missing on character depth. Her evolution form a puppet of her estranged parents to someone who decides to fight for what she wants is somewhat sudden. The “sink or swim” situation she gets herself in might account for it but it seems a bit lacking in the end. I am trying to leave out any spoilers and this will seem vague without them…

The characters were interesting enough. I resented the author a bit for leaving out the color and depth from most of them. Characters had potential for much more angst and a bit more of the backstory would have made a big difference to the flow of the book.

The male characters were stereotyped so that that their description did not cover more than some basic physical traits as hair and eye color with mandatory ripped bodies. There were some hints as to character traits but nothing to set them apart in a more memorable way.

As I’m writing this, the second book “Wild Girl” is not out yet.

Conclusion

I have respect for writers for trying out taboo themes. There was a lot of angst in this book and the suspense was keeping me on the edge half of the book. The lack of character backstory made them seem shallow and their action had less sense for it. The overall impression left by this book was that the author could not move past the frugal writing style often used in short smut stories to make this book rise above it and give it life and more meaningful story. That’s a shame since the character had potential for more than just being described as physically pretty.