Review: From Blood to Roses by Laurin Kelly

Rob's latest job is a simple one—kill the target, make sure it doesn’t look like murder, break into the safe and take the goods back to his client. A second hitman who gets the drop on him definitely puts a dent in his plans.

When they cross paths again, Rob doesn't know if he wants to kill the man or screw him. Unfortunately, someone else wants both him and Kelan dead, and if they're going to survive two men used to working alone are going to have to learn fast how to work together. Safely ensconced temporarily at a safe house in the middle of nowhere, Rob and Kelan team up to defeat their common enemy... and perhaps win each other's hearts along the way.




I was positive this would be a win because I read and LOVED the author's previous work, Under the Knife, and I love me some assassins. Unfortunately... this was dull. It reads like a novel in parts with an inordinate amount of details that took up valuable page time within the confines of a novella.

Rob tells the story of how he and Kelan, two hitmen, keep getting hired for the same jobs. The rationale behind this still alludes me. Granted, I don't have half a mil in disposable income lying around but why pay that out twice? #dumb The first time Kelan bests Rob which I liked since there is a size difference between them with Kelan being on the twink side of the size scale in his cute teal teeny tiny boy shorts.

The second time they meet is on a different job locating a secret will that lands them both in a strip club and in possession of some potentially damaging pictures of a probable presidential candidate.

Then it turned into a snoozefest.

They decide to join forces after they're both targeted by some other hitmen who think they have the pics (they don't) which leads them straight into domesticity in suburbia, complete with eggs benedict and coq au vin.


The primary reason I chose the book in the first place, the assassining, flew South for the winter. These two living in domestic bliss and lounging around a safehouse dancing the slow burn dance of eternity with very little movement on their "case" bored me and tanked by enthusiasm. Then I was irked by all the dangling threads that never tied up.

I think if I had bought into their coupletry things would've been different, but I didn't. Their relationship felt clunky, forced and awkward. I can buy into the fact that they're attracted to each other and maybe some of that is the danger involved, but there's a vast difference between attraction and love and forever.

It needed either some comedy or an abundance of filthy sex to jazz it up, because what's here simply isn't very entertaining. It feels rushed and some of their actions with regard to the hitmanning were TSTL.

The sex isn't bad but it wasn't enough to pull up my rating. I will try something else by this author, and I would recommend her novel but this kind of felt like an attempt to get outside of a comfort zone and it backfired, IMO.





An ARC was provided by NetGalley.


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