Book Review
Title: Wicked (A Wicked Trilogy Book 1) by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Rating: 4.75
I have to say I wasn’t expected much from Wicked but the opening was surprisingly interesting. We are introduced to Ivy Morgan, who is a member of the Order. The Order is there to deal with paranormal activity in New Orleans, specifically fae. Their mission is to send the fae back to the Otherworld or to kill them and Ivy seems to be one of the best along with her best friend, Val. However, one day when she is tracking and dispatching a fae, she is attacked by another but this one isn’t a normal fae. This fae has no need for a glamour like the other and conjures a gun out of thin air shooting Ivy in the stomach and even when she throws her iron stake at it, it does nothing to the fae at all. Ivy manages to escape with her life and this is where she meets Ren Owens as he finds her and gets her help for her injury. Early on we also learn that Ivy lost both her birth parents and her adoptive parents to the fae along with her boyfriend three years age.
Ivy is benched because of her injuries for several days and is warned by the Order leader, David not to say anything about the fae mysterious fae, known as an Ancient until they can confirm it really was an Ancient and not something else. However, when she is riled up by another member, Trent she ends up saying things she shouldn’t which causes some panic within the Order, as some believe Ivy and others believe she is just crazy. Ivy is also breaking more rules as she is living with a Brownie, a fairy like creature she nursed back to health and named Tink despite knowing she should have killed him. Ivy unable to sit still tries to track down the Ancient and she succeeds but she is preventing from confronting it by Ren. Ren explains that he is a member of the Elite, a sect within the Order that is kept secret for many reasons. He has been tasked with tracking and destroying the Ancient because the one that shot Ivy isn’t the only one wandering their world. Ivy doesn’t really accept this story because she doesn’t know anything about the Elite but she does agree that the Ancient is going to be a problem since their normal methods for dealing with the fae don’t work against it. The banter and sexual tension between the pair is also amazing and their personality work together really nicely so I won’t be opposed to a romance between them although they will have to work through Ivy’s feelings of guilt and grief over her previous boyfriend’s death.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Ivy is trying to come to terms with the feelings she is developing for Ren which mainly sits in arousal right now but I can see it turning into love given the right circumstances. Ren explains how he came to be one of the Elite and what they do, he tells her before they can deal with the Ancients he needs to figure out what they are here for. Ren and Ivy believe it has something to do with the gates to the Otherworld which are weakened during the solstice and the equinox. Ivy doesn’t know much about the gates and the people that guard them but she knows someone that does and decides to pay Merle a visit. We don’t get a lot of action during this portion of the novel but we do get some development on the relationship between Ren and Ivy but I am waiting for something to happen. I think since there was a lot of action in the first portion of the novel, slowing that down now as we move towards the halfway mark isn’t a good choice because it feels like nothing is happening and we are waiting for it but I have a sinking feeling this might continue for the rest of the novel since it is the first book in a series.
As the continue to patrol together, since Ivy still hasn’t been cleared to return to her duty after being shot, she and Ren are tracking the Ancients and realises that the one that shot Ivy is meeting up with one that is very well known by the mortals. They also learn they regularly meet at a new club in the city and they seem to be targeting Order members which they have never done in the past. The trio of Fae are stopped as they are trying to take away a human man and obviously engage Ren and Ivy. Ivy is good at what she does but she doesn’t hold a candle to what Ren can do and the pair quickly dispatch the trio but Ren would have liked to question them about their recent actions. Afterwards, they get an alert from the Order calling a code red which means someone has died. They learn that it is Trent who no one really liked but he was good at hunting and he makes the fourth death in less than five months which isn’t good for anyone. The head of the branch, David does make some changes ruling that no one is to hunt alone and they are to go in pairs and Ivy is left with Ren. They theorise that the fae are torturing people that might have information about the gates which could also explain why they are targeting Order members now when they haven’t before.
Ren and Ivy decide to visit Flux to see if they can gather more information on what the Fae are up to, they deliberately wait for a night when they believe that the Ancient that shot Ivy won’t be present. However, they get a few surprises when they arrive as the club is more of a sex club than a dance club and we get to see a hot scene between Ivy and Ren as they try to fit in but this is made worse when the Ancient that shot Ivy arrives and they have to fight to stay unrecognised. It is also interesting to note before they head out for the club that Ren might be aware of Tink’s existence and says nothing about it. Ivy manages to get some information that the fae have been targeting those guarding the gates and they seem to have to locations of the gates. Ren doesn’t trust anyone within the order expect Ivy and tells her she shouldn’t either but he doesn’t provide any context on this right now. After this Ren and Ivy decide to see where the feelings between them are going to go but they don’t put a label on it right now but I hope to see more of these as the book and series progresses. Ivy decides since she trusts Ren now that she is going to take him to visit Merle with her since she is told by Brighton that she is having a good day.
Merle explains to them that she used to be a guardian of the gates before her brain essentially got scrambled by having a fae feed off her. She seems to know exactly who Ren is and why he is in New Orleans without him having to explain his mission to her, she is also well aware of the existence of the Elite since she knows Ren’s parents. This surprises Ivy and she realises that there is a lot that Ren hasn’t told her. Merle tells them that there are two gates within the city which is completely unheard of and gives them riddles to their locations since it seems like she can’t say it openly. She tells Ren that in order to prevent the fae from accessing the gates, they need to find the halfing. The halfings are people that are born between a fae and a human, most don’t know what they are but they can be used to completely destroy the spells binding the gates. Ren takes Ivy back to his place and explains all this and that the Elite are also charged with killing the halfings as well as the fae since they are just as dangerous in a different way. We also get to see Ren and Ivy’s first sexual encounter which was well written and enjoyable to read and gives the novel a more adult and serious tone. Afterwards Ivy asks Tink for information about the gates and the halflings, he explains that he and some others have been destroying the gates from the inside of the Otherworld and he thought the one he was pulled through was the last one. He wasn’t aware of the existence of the second gate and encourages Ivy to destroy it before they fae can use it because that won’t be good for anyone.
There is a ton of stuff that goes on and is revealed during the final section of the novel so I am not going to talk about it much. However, we do get several in-depth sex scenes between Ren and Ivy but only after Ivy has a complete meltdown about losing Ren because she has lost so much in her life already. When he forces her to sit down and talk about it instead of running away she reveals the truth about how her adoptive parents and Shaun were really killed and the part she had to play in that but he tells her to live in the here and now rather than in what if territory and she heeds this advice. By the time the final showdown at the gate happens we get a traitor reveal within the Order and didn’t see this coming and something is also revealed about Ivy and I can’t wait to see how this plays out in the rest of the series which I will definitely be reading this year at some point. My only downside was that it took a long time to get into the meat of the novel but this slow period does set up the character relationships and dynamics really well. I am hoping the rest of trilogy will be more fast paced and be filled with the smutty goodness we got towards the end of this novel.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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