Antonia Bernardin

The Bonds that tie series by J.Bree was the 69th-74th books I read this year. I didn’t plan on committing to the whole series at the start of reading book one but they really sucked me in a totally ruined my holiday tbr plan!

A vague plot summary

In this world there are communities of ‘gifted’ people, capable of forming bonded groups. These bonds can be found through a blood test that looks for genetic markers that match you. There is always a central bond, who is the most powerful. Our main character, Oli, is the central bond to five powerful men and the book opens with her being dragged kicking and screaming back into their ‘custody’. She has been on the run from them (so they think) for five years but now they’ve found her again they are determined to let her out of their site. One of her bonds, North, is a powerful politician, who uses his connection to enrol her in college, with a curfew and constant security. What they don’t know is that she ran to protect them. All of her bonds resent her for running, not knowing she did it to save them, and Oli has to contend with that and their control over her life, all while her bond is reaching for them. The bond has to be completed through sex and it amplifies the power of those who bond, once everyone has bonded with their central, everyone is the most powerful they can be.

The books follow her growing relationships with her bonds, as they start to learn her reasons for running and what was done to her in order to protect them. As threats from the resistance grow and bonded groups are being kidnapped, they start to figure out who the real enemy is, all while discovering strange new depths to their gifts and how they are tied to a deeper game that goes beyond the resistance.

My review

Okay, let’s get ahead of the fact that this is reverse harm fantasy romance, it is not going to be world class fiction so just climb down off any high horses you may or may not be sitting on and we can get to the review.

These books are incredibly read-able, the relationships are oddly compelling, the world building and magic system is really different to other stuff I’ve read lately. There is a fair bit of plot alongside the smut, but don’t be mistaken, there is a lot of smut, involving multiple partners at times. So if that’s not your bag, these books just will not be for you.

The whole ‘we can’t be together’ thing isn’t too protracted (although the moment they go from resenting her to wanting to be with her is a bit swift for some of them to me). They also move the dilemma/ big bad on to the next thing without drawing it out too much but also without having a new one each book.

Only thing I will say is that one character definitely commits SA early in the series and no matter how they try to justify in the series it was not a consensual act and even with the character’s ‘tragic back-story’, I could not get past it and their relationship could’ve been such a fun part of the books if that hadn’t happened.