The second book in the Ruinous Love Trilogy, Leather & Lark, hinges on a marriage of convenience trope, but that kind of undersells the stakes, this is a marriage of safety and sacrifice. Sure, it’s convenient to keep Lachlan and Rowan alive… but there’s more happening here. This book is way more character driven than its predecessor, but not because the characters are necessarily super strongly developed, but because the plot kind of disappears for a while. Action picks up about two years before the end of Butcher & Blackbird with Lachlan and Lark’s first meeting, except they don’t know who they are. She’s killed a man and needs a cleaner, he’s who is dispatched by the company Lark’s stepfather has a contract with. There’s misunderstandings and assumptions made and they part on bad terms which leads to Lachlan’s employer losing Lark’s stepfather’s contract. We then jump a year to the opening of Rowan’s second restaurant, and they meet for real and have an instant attraction, that quickly comes undone as Lark recognizes Lachlan from that night and their mutual distaste overrules their attraction.
Which would be fine, if someone wasn’t murdering members of Lark’s extended family and business circle and Lachlan (and by extension Rowan) is the prime suspect and the only way to keep them safe from her family is to marry him and make them off-limits, at least long enough to solve the mystery of who is actually after her family. Which… should be the heavy plot here – Lachlan and Lark working on figuring out what is going on (which would have mattered more if the big bad was in any way interesting or not noticeable from moment one), and it’s there, it just takes a backseat to a longform grovel by Lachlan that I loved but it affected the way the book was structured.
The first half of the book is just uneven in the way Lark and Lachlan are introduced, in the ways in which backstory are spooled out, in the pacing of plot moments (including the POV chapter from the big bad). In Butcher & Blackbird we clearly see the characters interactions building to something. In Leather & Lark it felt like Weaver was relying on our introductions of the characters in the first book to provide a jumpstart to character development, which didn’t work great for me even though I only read the first book four months ago. But once Lachlan recognizes why Lark hates him and embarks on his one-man crusade to make amends things come together in a way that reminded me positively of Butcher & Blackbird. I was, however, unprepared for how long a slow burn this one was, so let me tell you that it is in fact a slow burn. As with B&B I suggest this only to people who are cool with the long list of content warnings it comes with, and even though this one was about a full star less in my estimation than its predecessor I’m still very excited for the third book, Scythe & Sparrow which releases February 2025.
3.5 rounded up.
Bingo Square: Rings, for the aforementioned marriage of convenience plot and all its various fallout, including right up until the epilogue chapter.
