Book Review: Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver
Genre: Dark Romance
Age: Adult
Format: Audiobook
I adored this one so much I immediately grabbed the next book in the series on audio. It’s dark, witty, and strangely, oddly romantic. For me, the best romances have me yelling “just kiss, idiots!” using idiots in the most affectionate way possible. It could be that the characters are smart in many, many ways, but for whatever reason they stumble and fumble through encounters with the person they love and struggle to articulate their feelings, and when it works, it works so, so well.
Sloane and Rowan are intelligent people – both serial killers, targeting very specific people, who cross each other’s paths and embark on a series of murder games. Once a year, they get a target, and whoever murders them first, wins. Charming, right? Somehow, Weaver makes it so. As charming as she makes our main characters. Of course, this book does deal with serial killers and there’s some great tongue-in-cheek violence, but I would definitely recommend checking out the trigger & content warnings before following Sloane and Rowan on their messy, complicated path to each other.
Along the way, we meet our supporting cast and presumably stars of following books, who are intriguing enough to make me want to read the rest of the series, but not so intriguing it distracts from our main couple. And what a couple they make. You can feel the tension between them, and Weaver build son this wonderfully, as Sloane and Rowan go from distrust, to uneasy friendship, to comfortable friendship, to lovers. Their interactions were a joy to listen to and I very much appreciated the narrators, both doing an excellent job with conveying the characters through their voice work.
The killers they target are all nods to fictional serial killers, and it’s fun identifying the references through the characters and locations. It also works brilliantly to give our couple something to do (when they’re not pining) as well as introduce some proper “hurt them and I’ll (literally) kill you” moments.
This honestly ticked all my boxes when it comes to romance, and the serial killer aspect adds a wonderful dark humour layer to it all. Absolutely recommend this one and I look forward to reading book 2 of The Ruinous Love Trilogy.
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
Bluesky: @elleturpitt.bsky.social
I purchased this audiobook via Audible.
