Quick Synopsis

The viral TikTok friends-to-lovers dark romantic comedy full of murder, chaos, and sizzling chemistry―unlike anything you’ve read before.

Publisher’s Synopsis

When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, they find something elusive―the friendship of two like-minded, pitch-black souls who just happen to enjoy killing other serial killers.

From small-town West Virginia to upscale California, and from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.

But as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love.

Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves?
Or have they finally met their match?

Book Review

Butcher & Blackbird was not a (BOTM) book on my radar until it became a Book of the Month add-on. Because it was a BOTM selection, I had a few expectations going in. So you can only imagine my surprise reading accidental cannibalism and 🍑 sex among the trigger warnings.

Butcher & Blackbird is a dark romance novel about two serial killers who kill other serials. When the duo have an unlikely meeting, an annual competition of sorts is proposed. But things turn more than platonic. After all, who can understand a serial killer more than another serial killer?

I was excited to read a novel that combined romance and murder, two things I really enjoy reading about. Sadly, these two serial killers killed very little over the book’s course. Brynne Weaver packed the pages with spice but failed to deliver any romance. Essentially, Butcher & Blackbird is weakly plotted and poorly written. Yet, it is funny and entertaining.

Weaver tried a bit too hard to make Butcher & Blackbird cute & gratuitous. And why? At its most basic, it is romance that occurs over the course of a multi-year murder game. Trying to make it endearing & quirky is a stretch to begin with. As result of these aims, the book ends up being underdeveloped & having little plot, which lends the pacing to feeling disjointed. What little plot there is suffers from holes & leads to confusion, especially at the end. I hoped for a mix of thrilling murder & romance but found almost exclusively romance.

The romance part of this book was very unconvincing, as was the characters’ chemistry. Immediately after starting the book, it was apparent that the characters are incredibly immature. Thanks to the inconsistency in character development, this is not bothersome throughout the novel. Other than shallow characters, Butcher & Blackbird suffers from instalove that isn’t instant. Seemingly, most of their romance developed off the page over 4 years of texts & calls. Consequently, I felt like their attraction came from no where. Add in out dated gender norms & a damsel in distress (who yet manages to be a successful murderer), and I was just not feeling this book or its unhealthy relationship.

Since this is my first dark romance novel, I need someone to qualify it for me. I cannot judge if it was tame or on the more extreme end. Either way, it was a lot of smut and not the vanilla kind.

Also, both of the protagonists have people in their lives that are aware that they are serial killers. However, how that came to be was never disclosed. It was definitely bothersome, but I think plot and availability was an afterthought for this novel.

Overall, Butcher & Blackbird is an entertaining novel full of sex scenes but short on plot, romance, and murder. I think this is a book people will either absolutely love or dislike. I do not see a many opinions falling in the grey. I am not going to recommend it unless you are all for smut and can overlook the objectively poor quality of plot and writing.

Rating

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Writing

Plot

Character Development