Reading With Tyler

Name: Taming 7
Series: Boys of Tommen #5
Author: Chloe Walsh
Publisher: Piatkus
Format: Kindle
Genres: Upper YA, Contemporary, Sports Romance 
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Review:

Taming 7 is the fifth book in Chloe Walsh’ Boys of Tommen Series. There are a lot of rough topics discussed and suggested meaning the author recommends this for an audience of 18+ despite it being marketed as YA. I have put Upper YA for that reason. Please read the authors warnings before going into this book / series. And as always, spoilers for Taming 7 would be hidden, but there may be spoilers for the previous books in the series.

Gibsie is hands down my favourite Tommen character, I think. He’s the one who is always okay, he is goofy but loyal and he is a big teddy bear who will go to town and fight for you if it’s needed. So, when I saw that Taming 7 was his and Clarie’s story I was pretty excited for it but scared… Because Gibsie is always okay and I got this dreadful feeling that he was hiding trauma of his own, other than the already awful drowning of his father and baby sister.

Claire is our FMC, she’s Shannon’s best friend from primary and now they’re reunited at Tommen their friendship picked right back up. I didn’t particularly love Claire, but I did adore her friendships with Gibsie and Shannon. I also appreciated how she, much like Gibsie, was loyal to those she dubbed her friend as well!

Taming 7, for the majority of the book is actually taking place after Redeeming 6 with a new year beginning at Tommen! And based on the previous books I was expecting trauma and pain, and Chloe delivered!! The only downside – aside obviously from what the trauma itself – was that this story did feel so very rushed… Partially down to the fact that a lot of this book did focus on Lizzie Young (Shannon & Claire’s other best friend).

Now that I have finished Taming 7 I understand why Lizzie was so heavily involved, and even though I don’t love her I am intrigued to read her story. I’m also very scared of it because I saw the trigger warnings on Chloe’s website… All that is to say, I won’t be rushing into Releasing 10 even though I really want to.

As Claire & Gibsie only get one book I was pretty let down by how much time was dedicated to Lizzie. And that along with the fact that some of it felt rushed is why I couldn’t give this the 4.5 star rating that I expected to give (of course I hoped for a 5 star rating, but the Lizzie thing told me pretty early on it couldn’t be a 5 star!).

I am loving this series and I am so glad I finally made the decision to pick it up! I absolutely did not expect to read almost the entire (out now, at the time of writing this review) in one month! That is absolutely not my usual style anymore, though I wish it was. I know Chloe’s books are hard to read because of the triggers within them, but the characters and the Tommen family I know are going to stick with me forever. This series may not be getting 5 stars all round, but I still do think this will be up there as a God Tier series for me because of what these characters mean to me.

[…] this boy had always been my favorite boy. My favorite friend, person, human, everything.