Conclave (Devil's Night, #3.5) by Penelope Douglas Review

This review contains spoilers - please read with discretion. You can read my reviews of Corrupt, Hideaway, and Kill Switch on my blog, now!

Like an addiction you cannot kick, I cannot seem to stop reading these books, no matter how many brain cells I continue to lose. I always expect a different outcome and yet I am continuously shown that these books are nowhere near the hype everyone gives them. I truly wish the case was different, because I can definitely see the potential in these characters and their stories, but unfortunately they do not hit the mark.

We see Damon and Winter mostly in Part 1 with Rika and Michael taking more center stage in Part 2 in this novella. Of the three installments that I had read, these two pairings are my least favorite, which only indicates how I was going to feel when reading these updates to their stories. I will never forgive Damon for the way he treated Rika and the extremes he took in terrorizing her in Corrupt and the relationship between him and Winter will never sit right with me. Michael is probably second worst to Damon and the fact that he spent so much of his time tormenting Rika in their book and now I am being tortured with their relationship drama.

Damon wants Winter to have eight hundred children and is dead serious when he asks the doctor how long until Winter can get pregnant again after literally pushing a child out of herself mere moments prior. I hate men. Meanwhile Rika is hiding the fact that she has a very high probability of never being able to conceive from Michael, and therefore putting off their wedding for as long as she can... a match made in heaven, apparently. The boys basically spend the entire novella crying over the fact that Will is not there with them instead of focusing on their own relationships. Might as well be dating Will and dumping their wives/girlfriends at this point.

The smut once again is as underwhelming as ever - which is a shame considering the smut in Credence was diabolically addictive if my memory serves true (Uncle Jake, I miss you...). Thankfully there are only two more installments to go and then I will be free from this prison that this series currently holds me captive in. I really do not like to yuck anyone's yum, but unless Douglas manages to truly do a 180 with the next book, I fear these remain lackluster in my eyes.

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Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3) by Penelope Douglas Review

This review contains minor spoilers! Please read trigger warnings - reader discretion advised. You can read my reviews of Corrupt and Hideaway on my blog, now!

I kept putting this book off because I genuinely hated Damon with such a burning passion that I could not even imagine being able to sit through nearly 700 pages of him whining about situations he directly put himself into on his own. There were so many moments in the first two installments that had me wanting to pull my hair out when he would show up, and if you think he gets some sort of redemption in Kill Switch, you are surely mistaken. Things from his past are revealed which certainly changes his trajectory, but by no means excuses what he got up to in the first two books, and frankly, what he gets up to in this book as well.

"That little girl belongs to me" YUCKKKKKKK!!!! What was Damon's obsession with constantly referring to Winter as "little girl" and "kid"? It truly was making this book so much harder to get through because he was always commenting on how he was older than Winter - especially when we were in the chapters where she was sixteen. It got real old, real fast, and it made me want to stop reading on so many occasions. Suddenly Damon develops a moral compass halfway through the book?? He is such a dumb idiot... you literally set Rika up to get harassed and then decide that she does not deserve it?? Obviously she doesn't! Truly cannot stand him.

I have so many questions for Winter... starting with, why are you, as a blind girl, goes through a haunted house on your own??? She has the survival instincts of a fruit fly. The entire book is her literally walking into the most horrible situations on the planet and then getting into danger. She truly does not have a drop of common sense in her body - that being said, maybe if her parents got her a guide dog or a cane, she would be better equipped to be running around town with the world's most overhyped basketball players and their girlfriends. How do you not get your daughter the proper aid devices when she is blind??

Why would you let a blind girl drive your car!?! Damon's decision making skills continue to baffle me beyond belief. Every chapter he chooses to do the most unhinged things I have ever seen, and considering what he put everyone through in the other books, that speaks volumes. Looking at Damon and Winter's complicated history together, I was honestly surprised to see that everyone in town did not believe Winter and were backing up Damon when everything came out. How on Earth does an entire town back up someone who was convicted of statutory rape of a blind girl?? The politics in these books never ceases to amaze me on how stupid the people are.

There was no reason for this book to be nearly as long as it was... there simply is not enough interesting information or plot to dive into to make the author write a brick of a book on one of the worst characters to grace this series. I cannot believe my eyes were bearing witness to what was written on these pages - I could feel my brain cells fighting for their lives. There is not a single character that I was rooting for at any point, and even Winter was pushing it considering she was basically a prop to Damon's so-called character development. Once again, there is absolutely no reason for basketball players to have this much power in a town. They CANNOT be that good of players for them to be town celebrities.

The smut was basically nonexistent in this book - that actually surprised me, considering what we saw in the first two books. Honestly, chapters twenty-nine and thirty were the only points in the book where I actually enjoyed reading the book - everything else was subpar or not worth writing home about. And yet, here I am, continuing to read these books and act surprised when nothing gets better and the only thing holding me to keep reading is that I have to see the series through to the end. Honestly, as long as I do not have to read Damon's perspective any longer, I will consider it an improvement.

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Hideaway (Devil's Night, #2) by Penelope Douglas Review

This is a spoiler-free review! Please read trigger warnings - reader discretion advised. You can read my review of Corrupt on my blog, here.

I kicked myself in the shin the second I requested this on Libby - considering how much I wanted to pull my hair out while reading Corrupt, I do not even know why I did this to myself again. I had much lower expectations going into this second installment, and yet somehow it disappointed me even more than Corrupt. The "twist" was so obvious I could see it coming from the beginning, and the constant going back and forth between six years ago and present day felt redundant - there was only so much we could learn from the past before there was no more content. I will say the last 15% of this book finally had me locked in - it finally felt as though some major plot moves were happening and it was not riddled with constant recalls to the past.

Rika this, Rika that... enough is enough!! I literally do not care about that girl a single bit. Yet she seems to be the apple of everyone's eye - I thought we were completely over her after the first book. Yet she continues to be the driving force of the narrative, even when she is no longer the female lead. That being said, Banks as a lead was interesting only for her relationship to Damon - she was certainly an improvement compared to Rika, but she still just did not have that factor that i was looking for in a dark romance. And of course, where there is Rika, there is Michael. While his appearances were few and scattered, I still rolled my eyes every single time he manifested on page and ran around saying how Rika will always come before his "best friends," even though up until how many months ago was he actively ruining her life???

Kai as the male lead in this installment was an improvement to Michael, but only marginally so. I still felt some distrust towards him considering the way he acted in Corrupt, but he definitely improved now that he was not chasing down Rika and trying to ruin her life at every chance he got. That being said... we get it, he went to jail. Yes, he beat up someone, but it was an abusive cop, so I say we let it go and move on. It felt like every single chapter in Kai's perspective, he was either moping about the fact that him going to jail was the biggest shame his family experienced, or him trying to stalk around town following Banks. Honestly, I was starting to wish that Kai acted more unhinged at some points because at least the plot would have felt like it was moving or had some excitement.

Banks felt like her whole characterization was meant to make readers start to feel sympathetic towards Damon... obviously I hate what he went through as a child, but good grief the man is running around actively trying to kill his "friends" and go way too far with Rika. Banks providing all of this lore on him as he grew up and honestly how he was in the present could have been much more played up if Banks had an actual personality other than being held hostage and crying that she loves Damon. She had more guts than Rika, I will give her that. The fact that she actually was actively aware of her surroundings was an improvement beyond comprehension compared to... whatever Rika was doing in Corrupt.

This needed to be juicier, crazier, and frankly, freakier. I needed the wildness that Corrupt gave us with Michael and Rika but cranked up hundred times, and instead we got a few little smutty chapters that cut much shorter than they should have. If Douglas did not spend so much time having the characters not use their braincells, then things would have wrapped up much quicker and maybe we would have been treated to some debauchery instead of lackluster problem-solving.

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Corrupt (Devil's Night, #1) by Penelope Douglas Review

This review contains major spoilers - read with caution. Please read trigger warnings - reader discretion advised.

Susan B. Anthony I apologize that I am putting feminism back one hundred years - these boys are unhinged and I am sorry that I enjoyed it so much. I was actually taken aback by the fact that I am supposed to see four basketball players be the center of some sort of dark and devious little group where they tun around the town acting like fools and wait in the darkness for Rika to turn eighteen before they start with her. Michael takes the forefront as the man behind the plan to make Rika's life a living hell for the role she played for sending his three friends behind bars - but they are out now and it is finally time for them to make her understand how far they are willing to go to show her how bad it can get.

Basketball players that have a "dark side" is a phrase that I never expected to come across in my lifetime. This is simply ridiculous and absurd - you cannot wear basketball shorts AND terrorize the town. You need to pick a struggle and frankly the basketball shorts are the worse trait in this situation. This is red flag central... what do you MEAN you waited in the shadows until Rika turned eighteen to start torturing this girl and ruining her life??? Absolute freaks in my opinion - and this is coming from someone who loves a good cat and mouse chase... but only with ADULTS!! Michael Crist is also absolutely certifiably insane - a man who covets his younger brother's girlfriend and stirs up a revenge plan over the course of three years on a girl who he has had ONE memorable interaction with that he claims is the reason behind his psycho friends being jailed.

The Crist family in general totally sucks - the only person who is likable is the mother, and she is present for approximately three pages before her use as a page filler is through. The father is just as deplorable as Michael, and Trevor is a nuisance that you can sense is up to no good but hiding behind ulterior motives. Rika, girl... run for your LIFE!! Kai, Damon, Will, and Michael basically have made it their mission to destroy Rika's life because they believe she is the one that leaked incriminating videos of Damon, Kai, and Will committing assault and engaging in improper relations with the mayor's daughter - that event is Damon's alone. Maybe... I don't know... ask her if she did it before deciding you are going to BURN down her house?? Absolute idiots sharing no brain cells.

The things that came out of Damon's mouth in this book had my jaw on the floor. "As long as they're old enough to crawl, they're in the right position." I beg your finest pardon??? This boy needs to go back to jail immediately for that comment alone. I literally could not believe my eyes reading that sentence - sure, his childhood past reveal may explain why he said that, but good lord if I had not already not liked Damon, that would have sealed the deal.

Michael and his merry gang of lame little friends basically commit financial abuse and essentially steal all of Rika's money and act like it's a casual thing. And we are not talking a couple thousand dollars, we are talking millions. And the kidnapping?? They do it so often?? Like guys she is clearly able to get away on her own, think of something better. That being said, they really take this kidnapping on a casual Tuesday very conveniently and are obsessed with making Rika fear for her life at every chance they can get. It is actually diabolical - it's not even a kidnapping where the girl is like "oh my god, nooo, don't!!" when she actually likes it - they girl is literally showing up armed because she thinks they will kill her.

"F**king Trevor" welcome back, Hardin Scott. I think we can all agree that the Trevor twist was something that you could see coming from a mile away. The second Michael and the boys said that Rika was the reason they were arrested, I called BS and said it had to be Trevor - it was clear from the beginning. Trevor was very vocal to Michael on how he wanted Michael to stay away from Rika, so this was obviously a ploy to ruin Michael's life and a way to try to guarantee that Michael would lose feelings from Rika. I cheered when Michael took that boy out on the yacht. Which is an entirely other scenario to address - Rika being kidnapped for about the sixth time in the book leads to Damon and Trevor holding her hostage on this boat because... get this... they're mad that Michael fell for her and does not want to continue the plan of ruining her life. Trevor more so because he wants to get back together with Rika and knock down Michael.

This entire book was nearly 600 pages of sexual harassment and straight up kidnapping. The smut was mildly decent towards the end of the book, which of course did not make up for the fact that the first 450 pages were the boys putting Rika through Saw traps left and right. I wish I could say that I would be abandoning this series because of my views of this book, but unfortunately I low-key want to know what happens with Kai, Will, and Damon.

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