Hello everyone! Welcome to another book blog! Today’s book is definitely a dark one, and when I say it, I mean it. Please, if you are not +18, if you cannot handle triggering situations, very very dark k*nks, just pass this book. Do not even bother. It is just too… confusing and dark all at once. I thought I had read the good and the bad when it came to dark romance books, I thought I would have some form of immunity to some stuff that is simply beyond my understanding and damn I wasn’t ready for this. Even “my” brain screamed that this book was too much. Was it the most horrible thing I have ever read? Definitely not. However, this wasn’t easy to read and I do think that it had so much potential if it wasn’t just kinks and smut but also some plot.
The Ritual takes place in a university setting. It is not any university though, it is a university which raises the Lords, the men who are on the top of society, the men raised by this… weird cult are in law, politics, and everywhere you can ever think of. These men are raised with blood, anger and sacrifice. We start the book with some kind of test-like ritual. Or a test to be honest. From the first page, we see how much darkness this secret society puts the “members” through. As if it was not horrifying enough, we have a lot more of these tests coming for these boys, turning them into high-functioning psychopaths as I can say.
The book’s female main character is Blakely, tied to this society’s life and school, and she has a boyfriend whom she is planning to spend the rest of her life with. And then we have our Ryat, the main character and one of the most… annoying characters I have read in dark romance history. I do not know what I feel about him and although sometimes he made my toes curl, in general, he is just an ass with a big ego and protective instincts towards whom he considers as his “woman”. He knows that he shouldn’t have Blakely, he knows that he is not worth it but when you hear something from a high lord, what can you do?
In terms of the plot, it wasn’t very much existing throughout the book. It was a good smut with lots of kinks and plays and to be fair, I do not expect much from the rest of the series besides the hot scenes. The tests and the society’s rituals were interesting to read, however, they were not the most unique things and some scenes were underwhelming, I felt like certain points had more potential and brought some sense to the plot but the author did not like that at all.
If you enjoy dark romances (on the darker side at certain points) and do not expect much like a greater plot moving onto different books, do give this one a try. The ending might be the sweetest part of the book for me. Until I see you in the next post, take care friends! 🌸
Luster of Books 