I’d heard about Viciously Yours by Jamie Applegate Hunter off of booktok, but all the talk had been derisive and I didn’t know why. I’ve read plenty of booktok recs that were loved on there but I hated. So, when I was in the mood to read something with an MMC obsessively in love with his mate, I thought I’d give this a try. I am WILDLY happy that I did! This was such a great, quick read that was steamy, sweet, dark, and just filled everything I was looking for at the time.
When you pick up Viciously Yours, you need to do so because you’re looking for a romance. If you’re looking for some a fantasy with romance, look elsewhere. The author lets you know at the very beginning that this is a romance and that is where the focus is. We get initial ground rules at the start – fae and humans exist, they exist separately, some fae have mates, humans don’t, etc. Then, we get straight to the good stuff. Rennick learns the name of his mate when he is 13 – Amelia. His family search for her and realize she’s living in the mortal lands and is a human. Rennick can’t leave to see her so he writes to her and has his friend deliver the later anonymously. Rennick is simply trying to do his duty at first, not madly in love with but knowing he’ll need to marry her eventually. Slowly, however, that changes despite Amelia never able to write back to him. He feels her emotions, he builds a connection himself to Amelia and falls desperately in love with her. And she falls for him as well.
I wish we’d gotten more letter writing. It would’ve been nice to have it be longer but considering the attention span of some readers, maybe it wouldn’t have gone over en masse. But I would’ve taken an entire book of him writing to her and being obsessive about it. Now, as a dark romance reader, I don’t consider this dark, but for someone that is used to very vanilla romance, this might have darker tendencies? There is at least one murder. There is one act of self maiming, and, maybe I’m sick, but I swooned at that. Oh to be told what was told when it happened (in a fake fantasy romance world at least.) The spice scenes were good, the romance I loved, the only place this faltered a bit was at the ending. I think it was the epilogue but I really didn’t need it since I would’ve preferred to learn everything from the coming sequels themselves instead of a brief summary crammed at the end. Especially since I came to really enjoy the side characters and want to see and experience their stories as well (though I think there’s something uniquely special about Rennick’s and Amelia’s due to the letter writing.)
I absolutely definitely recommend Viciously Yours by Jamie Applegate Hunter. If you want romance with a slight fantasy flare, but don’t want to bogged down by any intricacies, this is perfect. It is just the right amount of unhinged, spice, and romance with some fun third parties that’ll hopefully get their own expansions in the future.
