Audio book length: 12 hrs 15 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars
CBR16 Bingo: Bananas
Lark Montague and Lachlan Kane have an unfortunate first meeting, when Lark during Halloween has had an "accident" and needs a car and a body fished out of a lake. Lachlan is the man forced by his employer to come help her do this. Lachlan is in scuba gear, Lark is heavily made up in a Halloween costume. Lachlan chooses to force Lark into the car of his trunk to transport her unseen away from the incident site, not realising that Lark has intense claustrophobia. She breaks out of his trunk, and runs off. Lachlan's employer is NOT impressed, and any hopes Lachlan had of escaping his violent fixer jobs go up in smoke.
The two meet again when Lark's best friend Sloane and Lachlan's younger brother Rowan celebrate their engagement. They are initially very attracted to one another, but once Lark figures out exactly where she recognises Lachlan's voice from and confronts him about their previous encounter, any sexy time feelings they felt towards the other are as dead as one of Sloane and Rowan's serial killer victims. They try not to let their dislike show too much, as the people they care most about are about to get married, but the animosity between them is palpable.
Lark's dying aunt runs a very successful, but cut-throat cupcake empire. Apparently, someone (they suspect a business rival) is killing off some of their associates. Lark's parents suspect Lachlan is the man doing the hits, and Lark hears them threatening not only to take out Lachlan as a defensive measure but both of his brothers as well. Lark will not let anything get in the way of Sloane's happiness, and when her aunt points out that her parents won't threaten anyone considered family, she hatches a plan. She and Lachlan will have to get married, and convince her parents that they are actually in love.
Lark promises Lachlan that she will get him free of his capricious and demanding employer if he helps her figure out who is killing her family's business associates. As it turns out, the guilty party isn't a business rival at all, but someone who wants very bad things to happen to both Lachlan and Lark.
While not as wonderfully compelling as Butcher & Blackbird, the first book in the Ruinous Love trilogy, Leather & Lark was still a fun read (and listen), and I feel it fits into the "Bananas" square on the CBR16 Bingo card, because there is a leather working crime fixer, a cute folk singer who happens to have a side hustle murdering sexual predators, drugged cupcakes, serial killers getting married, murder victims being turned into crafts project, you name it. There is a long list of content warnings at the start of the book, although there's a lot less squicky stuff with eyeballs in this one.
Considering I was entirely unprepared for how much I adored the first book, this book was unlikely to live up to my expectations. It was still a fun read, but I found neither Lark, nor Lachlan as charming and interesting as Rowan or dorkily insecure as Sloane (loved their cameo appearances in this book, though). Lark's aunt was a lovely supporting character, however. I had no need to immediately re-read this one, and while I might not want to revisit it in the future, I'm still very much looking forward to the third book in the series, where we get Rose and Fhion's story.
Judging a book by its cover: I possibly like the turquoise and black better than the hot pink and black of the previous book, but the various objects representing the protagonists are less fun.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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