This is our book review for Whips and Chains – the second installment in the Saint View Murder Squad series by Elle Thorpe.
At the time of publishing this guide, this story is available on Kindle Unlimited.
Star rating
Pepper rating (find our Pepper scale here)
Book Review:
After being left on a cliffhanger at 2am at the end of book #1, I needed to download the second in the Saint View Murder Squad series, Whips and Chains, by Elle Thorpe. The second book continues to follow the continuous thread of Violet’s developing relationships with X, Whip, and Levi and the mystery that surrounds them.
X continues to be the comic relief we all need, while Whip and Levi’s biting humor, usually at X’s expense, is funny too. The introduction of Harold, the ugliest cat in the world, as what will complete X and Violet’s family also adds some levity to the entire storyline. We also have the growing tension between Whip and Levi moving this from a solid reverse harem to a why choose storyline. It’s these positive elements that keep it in the realm of a 3* read for me rather than a 2 – 2.5* read.
What I didn’t enjoy in this book, and honestly across all three books of the series, is that the action used to create tension outside of the relational elements felt too rushed. The mystery element to the storyline that runs throughout is interesting, but just as the intrigue from that line develops the timeline jumps, or there’s random sexy time to help the FMC disassociate from the horrors of her life (which are bad, don’t get me wrong), and it pulls you out of the building tension again and again. But, not in a satisfying or even exciting “edging” kind of way. Just abruptly, which I found as a reader deeply unsatisfying to the point of frustration.
By this point I was committed to finishing the series. I have pretty strong personal feelings about my own DNFing (something about feeling like a failure or whatnot which honestly carries throughout other parts of my life too) which I’m working on (with my therapist unlike Violet who just has all the sex to fix her life – what does it feel like to be the gods’ favorite Violet!?) – but they say life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy and you’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson with the Scarlet Letter and Love in the Time of Cholera but no, I still struggle to DNF any book. And I felt like I was enjoying this enough to keep going.
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