Elodie Harper

TW/CW: Sex, sex work, sexual assault, slavery, murder, assault

RATING: 3.5/5

REVIEW: The Wolf Den is the story of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been sold into slavery as a prostitute in ancient Pompeii.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The subject matter is pretty serious, and so is the story, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What did get to me is that this book is very slow going. It’s more about the daily lives of the sex workers than about any plot. While it’s well written and I didn’t necessarily get bored, I did keep looking for the plot and not finding it. A little bit of action happened at the very end, but I wish it would have been spread throughout the book a little bit more.

I enjoyed it enough that I will give the second book (I think it’s a trilogy) a chance, but I do hope that more happens.… (mere)

I have a feeling this poor author got signed onto a trilogy and had no idea how to end it. I loved the first novel so much, the second one was still pretty entertaining... but man...

The Temple of Fortuna ends not with a bang but with an overwrought, rushed, and meandering whimper. The story was either a few hundred pages too short or ludicrously overwritten, I just can't tell. I understand that the framing of Vesuvius would impact a lot of the story from the beginning, and as with any disaster, rend a lot of the previous drama into something "smaller" for our characters—but not by this much! Ultimately, Harper's decisions have left me wondering why I would even recommend this series to others, and certainly not without the caveat that maybe it's worth just reading the first or second one. As others have written in their reviews, the first 2/3 of the novel simply waste away in the last 1/3; they have so little impact on the rest of the story I'm just at a loss as to why I even read it. Also, the last 30 pages were just so, so unnecessary. I was so bored. I missed my thick 500-page novel I could get lost in and where everything felt driving towards something amazing.

Anyway, this was a sadly disappointing end for one of my favorite contemporary stories and I have decided to rewrite the ending in my head for myself to get over it. I've never been one for sappy romantic novels so the romance of this entire series has always been a bit grating, and it's turned up to 100 in this one. The stakes I always felt in the first two novels seemed to waver and finally die in this one, in service to some grand romantic story I never signed up for to begin with.

If you're looking for a gritty, realistic portrayal of Roman life in sex slavery, just stick to Sparrow.… (mere)