Review: Wrath (The Tempests Series Book 1) by Cee Bowerman

Wrath by Cee Bowerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Texas Kings MC Spin-Off

This book is the first in a new series created as a spin-off from Texas Kings MC, by the same author. Fain (Texas Kings MC Series Book 12) introduced us to the Tempests and gives us their backstory. Reading this book before starting this new series would probably make the story more comprehensible.

The Tempests are a large family, that used to be larger before their father killed several people. Their father was a leader of a cult and had several ‘wives’ so not all the siblings have the same mother, but they all had the same father. Their father is now dead and his cult scattered, but the Tempests have stayed fairly local and now own some buildings and businesses. Wrath owns a tattoo studio.

Val is writing a doctoral thesis on cults and wants to interview the Tempests. She wants to know why people get sucked into cults and how they escape them. She has tried writing to them several times but when she just shows up Wrath hits the roof. As the eldest, he feels responsible for looking after the rest of his family and refuses to let someone dig up painful memories for no good reason. Val manages to talk the other siblings into coming to her home to meet her and talk to her about what she wants to interview them about and Wrath finds himself wanting to date her. When the problems from Val’s past come back to haunt her, Wrath can’t do anything but help her, even if she doesn’t know he’s doing it.

It’s quite a while since I read Fain, and I think I should have re-read it before diving into this book, as a quick refresher. Because I didn’t refresh my memory I think that there were things that were lacking in this book. If you start with this book without the background I think you miss out on a lot of the world-building and character development. A lot of information about the Tempests isn’t included in this book because it was included in the other one and without that information, you don’t really understand who the characters are.

Despite that lack of background, I enjoyed the book. The characters were interesting with both families being unique in their structure. I felt we got to know Val a little more than Wrath, which isn’t surprising as we were coming into learning about her character cold, whereas we had met Wrath before. I’m sure as the series develops we will get to know Val and her family well, as that is the case in the other Cee Bowerman series, the characters are always popping up in the later books.

I will say this about Val though, for a woman who was seeing clients for counselling, she wasn’t very good at avoiding her own triggers, so she wouldn’t go off the deep end when placed under pressure.

I felt the plot was a little simplistic for a very complex situation and that the author had squashed a lot of the plot down into a simpler form in order to get the book written in a timely fashion. This could have been a much longer book if the author had wanted it to be because it would have been very easy to expand a little on the characters and the plot.

I don’t feel this was one of this author’s stronger books, but it was still enjoyable and I look forward to seeing how this series develops.

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