Wicked by Jennifer L. Armentrout | Book Review #104

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“Things are about to get Wicked in New Orleans.

Twenty-two year old Ivy Morgan isn’t your average college student. She, and others like her, know humans aren’t the only thing trolling the French Quarter for fun… and for food. Her duty to the Order is her life. After all, four years ago, she lost everything at the hands of the creatures she’d sworn to hunt, tearing her world and her heart apart.

Ren Owens is the last person Ivy expected to enter her rigidly controlled life. He’s six feet and three inches of temptation and swoon-inducing charm. With forest-green eyes and a smile that’s surely left a stream of broken hearts in its wake, he has an uncanny, almost unnatural ability to make her yearn for everything he has to offer. But letting him in is as dangerous as hunting the cold-blooded killers stalking the streets. Losing the boy she loved once before had nearly destroyed her, but the sparking tension that grows between them becomes impossible for Ivy to deny. Deep down, she wants… she needs more than what her duty demands of her, what her past has shaped for her.

But as Ivy grows closer to Ren, she realizes she’s not the only one carrying secrets that could shatter the frail bond between them. There’s something he’s not telling her, and one thing is for certain. She’s no longer sure what is more dangerous to her—the ancient beings threatening to take over the town or the man demanding to lay claim to her heart and her soul.”

First off, this cover is very misleading. I thought this book would be about mermaids; I actually heard somewhere that it was?? Anyway, Wicked is not about mermaids, but rather about the Fae. Which is totally fine.

To me, Wicked is a book about learning to opening your heart to love. With a huge side of badass-ness, and the duty to kill the Fae so they don’t take over and destroy the world. Life is busy within the Order, having to be in New Orleans; where I swear, New Orleans seems to be the authors hum for supernatural stories.

The Order is a secret vast group of people who are spread out all over the world. However, Wicked takes place in New Orleans, so we only get to see the New Orleans quarters. The Order is a group of people who were born into hunting the Fae to either kill, or send them back to their world. If you end up killing a Fae; to my knowledge, unless I missed something that said otherwise, they don’t get sent back to their world after death. In Wicked, The Order calls the Fae’s world, the Otherworld. And, to the best of my knowledge, you can’t technically “join” the Order. You’re literally born into it, much like hereditary genes.

Wicked also has a great array of characters. Within this story we meet Ivy, the main character, Ren who is the love interest, Val who is the best friend, and Tink, the adorable, sassy roommate. You can also get a feel of the characters that we don’t know about, like Ivy’s colleagues. I got a real sense of the atmosphere that surrounds Ivy. She really and truly trusts the people around her.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Tink?” “No.” He grinned. “You have Amazon Prime.”

Ivy is a character who wants to pay her duty to the Order. She believes that it’s her duty, among others in The Order, to protect humans from the Fae. Ivy is the type of character where she doesn’t let a lot of people get emotionally close to her. Ivy knows loss just as well as the back of her hand. Once you’re in Ivy’s inner circle though, you’re in, and she’ll love you forever. A thing that I really like about Ivy, is that in the beginning of the book, she said that she could attack like a ninja, and then she laughed at herself a little bit. I really loved that part because it showed that she can joke with herself.

Ren is a guy who knows a lot of things. He’s smart, and when he wants something, he knows to go out and get it. He’s good at his job, and he can get things spicy with Ivy pretty quick!!! — I love Ren and Ivy together!!! The SMUT in this book.

“You should’ve warned me,” Tink muttered crossly. “I’m the one who had to see his dong swinging around–“

Val is Ivy’s best characters, and I thought to myself when I first read this book, that all the bad guys in books wear bright colourful, expensive looking clothing. Val and Ivy seem to be really close friends, and they are. They’re best friends. Ivy would be there for Val when Val needed Ivy, and vice versa. Due to their lives though, I figure that they both keep a lot of things secret from each other.

Tink, let me tell you about this lil guy. He is ferocious, and funny, and omfg, he’s like, the best of the best. Truly, Tink and Ivy are better friends in my opinion than Ivy and Val are. OK, so, Tink. He can be sweet when he wants to. And also, Tink is a HUGE DORK AND I LOVE IT. He’s also very protective of Ivy, which I absolutely love. And vice versa for Ivy; she’s fiercely protective of Tink.

“When in doubt, get the fuck out.”

I really, really liked this story. I laughed so many times! All due to Tink, I assure you. There’s also some really good smut in this book, let me be honest about that. The story building in this book is awesome. There’s a fairly good amount of action in this book.

While I really liked this story, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about the story that couldn’t really make me fall in love with the story as much as I had wanted to. I found the ending and a few other moments of the book to be quite predicable.