This is our book review for Reaper and Ruin by Elle Thorpe – the third book in the Saint View Murder Squad series by the bestselling author.
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:
Finishing book two on another cliffhanger… literally, I downloaded book #3 of the Saint View Murder Squad series by Elle Thorpe. Reaper and Ruin is the final story in a trilogy about Violet, X, Whip, and Levi who is also known as Reaper within the Slayers Motorcycle Club and now includes the ugliest, meanest cat in the world… Harold.
I think the reason I kept coming back despite my slight objections throughout both of the first two books is the character development we see, particularly in the guys and their own struggles and insecurities. X finds relief from his fears about his own dangerous impulses, Whip is able to find some closure for his grief from a former life, and Levi makes important moves towards the life he dreamed of having that he was close to abandoning because it didn’t seem possible.
In my opinion, Violet doesn’t really have the character development I would’ve liked, but maybe that’s because she hasn’t been my kind of FMC from the start of the series. Her life goals didn’t resonate with me, her actions never felt reasonable, her view of what happened when she first met Levi in person really soured me on her from the start, and generally I wasn’t sure why these three hot guys were hung up on her – but as they say there’s a lid for every pot.
Violet does get some satisfying retribution but it still all happened too quickly for me to really enjoy it. The timeline over the three books felt disjointed and I was constantly trying to figure out if hours, days, or weeks had passed between certain events. None of it was off-putting enough to DNF, especially in the final book of a trilogy, but it’s not a series that stands out as a must-read to me which is why it’s another 3* read for me.
This was my first time reading anything by Elle Thorpe. Maybe if I’d started at the very first of her series that this trilogy ties into I’d feel differently, but I’m not planning to rush out and read all her other works as I’ve done with other authors. If I see something that sparks my interest by her and it’s a different setting, I’d still give it a try because overall the writing was solid (no distracting grammatical errors), the characters were funny (especially X), and there was some good character development throughout the series which is always satisfying even when I thought other elements of the storyline were lacking.
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