Leather & Lark by Brynne Weaver
Contract killer Lachlan Kane wants a quiet life working in his leather studio and forgetting all about his traumatic past. But when he botches a job for his boss’s biggest client, Lachlan knows he’ll never claw his way out of the underworld. At least, not until songbird Lark Montague offers him a deal: use his skills to hunt down a killer and she’ll find a way to secure his freedom. The catch? He has to marry her first. And they can’t stand each other.
Indie singer-songwriter Lark is the sunshine and glitter that burns through every cloud and clings to every crevice that Lachlan Kane tries to hide inside. The sulry older brother of her best friend’s soulmate, Lackhlan thinks she’s just a privileged princess, but Lark has plenty of secrets hiding in the shadows of her bright light. With her formidable family in a tailspin and her best friend’s happiness on the line, she’s willing to make a vow to the man she’s determined to hate, no matter how tempting the broody assassin might be.
As Lachlan and Lark navigate the dark world that binds them together, it becomes impossible to discern their fake marriage from a real one. But it’s not just familiar dangers that haunt them. There’s another phantom lurking on their doorstep. And this one has come for blood.
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The highly anticipated follow-up to everyone’s favourite read of 2023, Butcher and Blackbird, Leather and Lark unfortunately fell short for me. The thing I loved about the first book, the instant attraction, the top tier banter, the absolute insanity shared between our two leads, and the constant moving plot where most of it was intense and humorous and the slow sweet moments were breaks in between. That wasn’t present in this book. The pace felt sloppy, the plot seemed uncertain, and the character relationships felt largely developed off-page, away from the reader, making it a little hard to connect with. I did still have a good time reading it, and there was quite a bit of amazing dark humour, but there are a lot of things I had a problem with. Let’s dive in:
We start off in a muddle of timelines. We get a prologue that gives us insight into Lark’s character that, by the way, was NEVER well alluded to in the previous book. This prologue, besides showing us Lark is a “multiple deleter”, had no real purpose to the plot of the book. Then we go back in time and jump forward and backwards a bit between current events post B&B and then to events taking place in between the end chapters of B&B. Lark has a best friend. And surprise of surprises, it’s not her CHOSEN SISTER from the previous book, Sloane, but a girl named Rose who BARELY interacted with Lark in the last book, and had more of a relationship with Sloane as well. So a majority of this “best friendship” was developed off page. Not only that but the clear LACK of Sloane in Lark’s life during such a volatile time was so out of character for both of these leads and it was an immediate turn off for me. If you want me to believe a relationship, show me how it grew! Show me the foundations. Or no dice. Lachlan is also quite bland in comparison to his younger brother Rowan. His characterization was quite timid despite his job as a contract killer and he felt more like a prop to move forward Lark’s “baddassery” than a character in of himself. We also didn’t get nearly as much of his POV as we did Sloane’s so it didn’t feel as balanced as the first book either.
I found the plot had a lot of weak spots as well. A marriage of convenience between a secret serial killer and a contract killer who hate each other and are also being hunted by a man with a vendetta is ENOUGH for a good plot. We don’t need to include an entire useless side plot of family hierarchies in the mob and a fight for power when the matriarch is dying. It was too much and it felt rather pointless. I also don’t understand how those two main dangers to this couple were meant to coincide/work together but to me, they really didn’t.
Lark was very similar to Sloane in characterization but I found her a lot less relatable. She felt a lot colder and a lot more vindictive than Sloane and us not being able to see how she built her relationships with her found family in this book made it really hard to see her as a relatable character. She had so much promise to be so interesting but most of the time I felt like I hardly knew her. Lachlan as well had an entire personality built around hating Lark then making up his hateful actions to Lark. There wasn’t much humour or personal intention to his character and he felt more like an object than a person.
Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first one and believe that first one should have been a standalone. I was disappointed that this didn’t manage to measure up to the great debut Weaver took over the world with. However, it’s still an entertaining enough read that I’d still recommend it if you loved the first one. It didn’t turn me off of the series altogether, but I’m thinking it might end up being my least favourite of all three.