Name: Rage and Ruin
Series: The Harbinger #2
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publisher: Harlequin Audio
Format: Audio Book
Genres: YA, Paranormal Fantasy, Romance
Spice Rating: Open Door (🌶️🌶️🌶️)
Rating: (Actual: 4.75)
Synopsis: Goodreads
Forbidden alliances, forbidden love.
A half human, half angel and her bonded gargoyle protector must work with demons to stop the apocalypse while avoiding falling in love. The Harbinger is coming…but who or what is it? All of humankind may fall if Trinity and Zayne can’t win the race against time as dark forces gather.
As tensions rise, they must stay close together and patrol the DC streets at night, seeking signs of the Harbinger, an entity that is killing Wardens and demons with no seeming rhyme or reason.
Forbidden to be with each other, Zayne and Trinity fight their feelings and turn to unusual sources for help—the demon Roth and his cohorts. But as deaths pile up and they uncover a sinister plot involving the local high school and endangering someone dear to Zayne, Trin realizes she is being led…herded…played for some unknown end. As anger builds and feelings spiral out of control, it becomes clear that rage may be the ruin of them all.
Review:
Rage and Ruin is the second book in Jennifer Armentrout’s ‘The Harbinger’ trilogy. This means there may be spoilers for Storm and Fury (the first book) in my review for Rage and Ruin. I am trialing a new style of review where at the end of the review will be a full spoiler section. Please only click into that section if you have already read the book.
“You gave me stars, and that means this is…this is more.”
After Storm and Fury, I was beyond excited to start Rage and Ruin! The reveals of Mischa’s betrayal, Zayne’s original fate, and the mishap with Trinity and Layla… I was going into book 2 with questions more around what the hell The Harbinger wanted to do, but when I started Rage and Ruin I thought I at least had semi good theories about what was going on!
Then I got into Rage and Ruin… and I struggled for just a little bit. I’m starting to understand why I probably don’t like plain romance books… and that’s probably because I just can’t deal with couples having stupid fall outs and fights over ridiculous things that could have been solved with communication. And that was the singular cause of my struggling in Rage and Ruin.
That is to say, that I loved everything else, and that the audiobook narrator is continuing to do a great job and bringing these characters to life and I’ve been really enjoying her style. To the point where I opted to start listening on my commute to work which I have never done before!
It’s hard to talk about what happens in Rage and Ruin as it does carry spoilers, but what I will say is it didn’t feel like much was happening – as a lot of the book was more investigating to try and figure out what the hell the Harbinger is. We got a lot more Roth in this book, and I personally loved that. I loved Cayman’s involvement too as he was such a brilliant side character in The Dark Element’s trilogy!
That being said Zayne stole the show for me. And I absolutely cannot talk about this because it is a massive spoiler, but I don’t think I have ever felt the emotions I felt for Zayne for him before… and we’ve had him for four books at this point!! Those of you who have read this book will probably understand what I am talking about.
I wanted to start Grace and Glory immediately, but I do need to make a dent in my December TBR so I’m pausing on continuing this trilogy for now. But I am very pleased I decided to go back and pick this trilogy up! JLA’s backlog is not skippable guys! If you like her new stuff but are a bit fed up with the length, please go back and read her back log of paranormal fantasy romance! It’s worth it.
Time for the spoiler review, only read this section if you have read Rage and Ruin.
As I said, I got frustrated with the fighting that Trinity and Zayne did in this book – to the point where it slowed things down for me in terms of wanting to read this. But thankfully I didn’t give up because ohhhh where is this story going!? It was absolutely worth it, reading through the crap of their fights to get to their relationship and ultimately that ending!
I was listening to the last hour at work, and I messaged my friend saying I don’t think there is any good ending for this book because even the good one seems like it’s going to come with consequences that are bad… and then in the last two minutes of reading PLOT TWIST! One that somehow I simply did NOT see coming! I loved that.
“Rage and ruin had not corrupted me. They powered me.”
(Actual: 4.75)
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