Review: Mangled Minds by B.C. Morgan

Mangled Minds by B.C. Morgan

Series: The Harkwright Trilogy #2

Publication date: September 24th, 2020

Pages: 512

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

My second year at the prestigious Harkwright Academy is about to begin. Within these walls I've faced many challenges and I can't help but wonder: can I survive this, and still be the same girl I was when I began?

This year I have even more trials to face; from attending the retreat after being claimed by Aeron, to seeing the infamous Harkwright Prince, with no more disguises in place.

The cards may not seem stacking against me right now, but can I stay in the Harkwrights good graces without losing myself?

Will I continue to see this place as nothing more than a means to an end, or will it offer me the things I never even knew I wanted?

One thing is certain, it's gonna take more than a batch of baked goods to get me through this!

This is a full length book that is part of a trilogy. It is a dark academy, which includes scenes of bullying. It is a why choose romance. Where the fmc will have more than one love interest.

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Review:

Just when Luna seemed to be getting the hang of life at Harkwright Academy she is thrown for loop after loop. Nobody seems to be genuine. The spoiled Harkwright boys seem to perpetually throw tantrums anytime she spurns them or doesn't do things the way they dictate she does. She suffers several bouts of verbal abuse from them and yet keeps holding old hope that they're not as bad as they seem. Luna wants to urge the boys to be the best versions of themselves, the versions of themselves that they show her on rare occasions. But a leopard can't change their spots in a day or even an entire school year. Add to that the fact that there is a deranged strangler on the campus that seems to be targeting the girls and Luna must look over her shoulder at every chance. The men in her life are dangerously close to capturing parts of her heart that she might not survive giving up. Can she make out alive and intact?

We saw a different version of Luna in this book. She was not as meek and skittish as she had been in the beginning. She developed a backbone and a lot of the guys seemed to enjoy watching her do so. Which is unusual since their entire school is honed in on having the women do exactly what the boys wanted without any option to say no. But not only is Luna saying no periodically, she is even sassing them and provoking them into action. She is harnessing her brat energy and they seem fascinated by it even if they keep trying to tamp it down and put her back in her place. Luna becomes more confident and even bold in her actions to the point where if she were not favored by the most prestigious of the boys she would have likely been kicked out of the school entirely. A fact that Luna realizes later and tries to rectify. The ebbing and flowing of her attitude was a good depiction of the strives she took to survive in the harsh environment she was thrown into.

I usually have one man who stands out in a harem that becomes my favorite. He is usually the smug broody one who is likely to kill someone for hurting the woman he is in love with if given half a chance. I only saw that aspect with one character and he wasn't entirely smug. He was also not one of the main men in the harem to which I am not sure if he will ever be really connected to Luna. I have to hope he will be but... I am prepared for disappointment. The others, I could take or leave, honestly. None of them really speak to me as a good fit for Luna. They always get pissed at her for this or that and then throw insults at her that would leave a lesser character crumpled in tears. There is a point where the bullying needs to end and I would have thought that'd have happened like it usually does in romance books: after the characters have sex. Not this one. Nope. The boys are still Assholes with a capital 'A'. I do hope this changes in either the novella between books 2 and 3 or in the final book.

There was one situation that boggled my mind and it soured my taste for the book a bit. Without presenting too many spoilers, they all went out as a group and seemed to get along really well as their would-be harem. A lot of them seemed accepting of the fact. There were some feathers to smooth but other than that, it seemed to go well. Then the next morning, all of a sudden, the one who had control over the situation decided that he was not as onboard as he had seemed the night before. He even became harsher with Luna as if he knew something had transpired and was pissed about it. But there was never any explanation for why he suddenly did a 180 and that bothered me. I wanted a reason. I wanted to know why they were so close to the dynamic they were meant for and then it was ripped away like it was. Maybe it was a teaser by the author but it would have made the story better if the person who put the breaks on actually had a reason for doing so other than just changing his mind.

Overall, I thought the book was a good sequel in the series and I look forward to devouring more in the coming days.