This book is a rough one. Like, I love the characters but this story just didn't work for me at all, and I acknowledge this is a totally ME problem and not really anything necessarily to do with the book? 1.) I don't do pregnancy storylines, and 2) deeply religious stories just take me out of the book. I read Heart Ripper before this book (book 9 in this series) and that book does get into religion, but it was less about David's conviction in religion and more about what's caused him to move away from it. This book is about Asty's dedication to her religion and what that means for her and her family. It's just a lot, and I wasn't a fan.
Content notes includes homomisia, violence, death, mention of a family member dying of cancer, satanic/religious rituals, pregnancy, abandonment, pet death, blood letting, cutting, torture, having sex with more than just the love interest, unprotected sex, sexual assault, and contemplating suicide.
This book is about Astaroth, also known as Asty. She is the Coffin Nails MC Detroit chapter president's daughter. We first met her in book 2 in Tooth and Lucky's book, The Devil's Ride, and she was younger then. I thought she was innocent and sweet - a younger sister. But a lot has changed for her since. Her older brother Bell died, and then shorter after, her mother. On her deathbed, her mother left Asty her journals, and in them, they contained writing about how to bring back Bell. Asty takes this to heart, and starts to follow the rituals her mother wrote down. The thing is, Astraroth and her family (well, besides Lucky) are Satanists. But Asty and her mother believed it more so than Priest, her dad. Asty found something to cling onto in the wake up her mother's death, and when the start of the ritual is about her having to get pregnant, fate brings her Hunter and his cousin Ray.
Hunter and Ray were first introduced to readers in book 4, No Matter What. They were part of a rival motorcycle club called the Rabid Hogs, and the events at the end of the book led to the MC patching over to the Coffin Nails and Hunter and Ray given over to stay at the Coffin Nails club as collateral. Ray was the Rabid Hogs's president's son, and the president had been Hunter's uncle who had taken him in after he ran away from his ultra conservative religious family.
Anyways, this book starts off with a Satanic ritual and Asty losing her virginity in a church to the cousins. It's WEIRD. It's Halloween and Asty doesn't recognize Hunter and Ray through all the makeup, and they don't recognize her either. There is a whole ick factor simply because Hunter and Ray are cousins? And because Asty does have sex with both of them later on in the book, for the sake of the ritual once she IS pregnant. If Ray had been a one and done at the beginning, that would've been something but there's one more scene afterwards that's very uncomfortable to read, and I could've done without all of it.
Then there's the part where Priest loses all sense when he finds out Hunter is the father of the baby (they hide the part about Ray and presume it's Hunter's) but it's ridiculous. Hunter can't catch a break. I know he loves Asty, but would it have been weird if he ran? No. The whole thing was over the top, and not in a fun way. I feel bad for Hunter, and I think Priest could've been a bit more chill about it all. And then we get a showdown at the 94% mark? That's...so late in the book? Overall, this book is just super weird for me and I did not have a good time.
I love Asty and Hunter, but maybe more so in other people's books and not their own. I loved what they do for Hunter's little brother David in Heart Ripper, when he needs a place to stay and essentially runs away from their parents. I liked that we see some of David here in this book, even if it means seeing Hunter and David's parents again.
It was fun to read the easter egg mention about Ghost, even though it really is like he's a ghost because the series never really mentions what happened to him and Luca after they had to skip town at the end of book 4. Don (Ghost's dad and one of the oldest members of the Detroit chapter) is mentioned a little bit here, but not a lot. So that was kind of weird after seeing how much he shows up in book 4.
And weird tidbit is that I think it's strange how many characters are named Mark in the authors's books? This series ties in a lot with the Guns n' Boys series, which makes it even weirder, but now we've had Mark (who is Hunter and David's dad), Mark (in book 10 in the Smoke Valley MC who is a prospect's friend), and then Mark in the GNB series (who is quite literally a main character). Have there been more Marks in the authors' book and I've just never noticed??? It might just be a favorite name for the authors to re-use, but now I'm wondering if I've missed a mention fo a Mark character in every single book they've written.
One of my major dislikes for this book is the pregnancy and it does take up the entire book. Asty doesn't have the baby until the epilogue, and it really does feel like the pregnancy is never-ending because I was so done with it. The ritual relied so much on her having the baby and what she was going to do with it and how that played a role into getting Bell back, and it was just super, super not my thing. I liked Stripped Raw, which is another m/f book by the authors, but this was a miss for me.