Review: The Ritual of the Broken by Seb L. Carter

Title: The Ritual of the Broken

Series: Ritual of the Broken: Book One

Author: Seb L. Carter

Length: 450 Pages

Category: Urban Fantasy

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: This book is rife with so much suspense that I had to smack down my anxiety every so often so I could keep reading. The tl;dr is I loved it.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: A solitary mage …

For years, Ollie has survived on the fringes of the magical community, the price he pays for a foolish ancestor who played around with dark magic. Now he just wants to run his mother’s magic shop in peace. But a vision from a ghost—of a dark entity pulling a man’s soul from his body—compels him to seek answers.

A lone werewolf with a grudge …

Homicide detective Adrian Keller is assigned to a case that stinks of magic. His last run-in with magic left him with deep scars—and an even deeper distrust of mages. So when Ollie shows up at his crime scene, Adrian is about to go fur and claws.

But this mage has answers, and though he doesn’t like it, Adrian knows he needs help untangling the dark energy surrounding his case.

A shaky alliance that makes sparks fly—and not just magically

As the body count rises, their uneasy partnership is tested. This is more than a serial killer hunting souls; something much darker is happening in Chicago. If they don’t find a way to stop it, the soul of the world could be the biggest casualty.

Ollie and Adrian are forced to confront the specter of their pasts—and a vast conspiracy within the magic community—even as they grapple with the undeniable attraction between them.

The Ritual of the Broken could break them both—and take the world with it.

Review: I had more hopes than expectations heading into Seb L. Carter’s The Ritual of the Broken. The tl;dr is I loved it. This book has so much going for it, from a Chicago steeped in magic and murder to its unlikely romantic duo in Ollie Hartley and Adrian Keller.

This book isn’t quite enemies-to-lovers, although an enemy is certainly how Adrian sees Ollie upon their first encounter at the scene of a murder, a murder Adrian is investigating and Ollie has witnessed in a vision foisted on him by a ghost who’s been visiting him since his mother’s death. Distrust is the least of the things Adrian feels towards Ollie. Hate might be the more prominent emotion. But it’s not long before Ollie convinces Adrian to let him help try to solve the case. From there it’s a lot of forced proximity, some unburdening of the past, some anger and friction, some lust and attraction, and several more murders. Murders that are tied to an ancestor whose shame Ollie still bears the brunt of centuries later. Dark magic is afoot, and the city and its residents may not survive.

As Ollie and Adrian fight their “who’s been hurt worse” battle—to be fair, they both have deep, valid emotional scars—amidst the unravelling and revelation of a monstrous plot and heinous betrayal, it all leads to some fantastic eleventh hour suspense. This and all the tension that came before it is going to carry right over into the next book because the darkness has not been contained, only delayed, and, as Ollie says, “The world is full of hidden dangers.”

This book is rife with so much suspense that I had to smack down my anxiety every so often so I could keep reading. Finding out in small doses what the Ritual of the Broken is and how it will affect Ollie, in particular, while Adrian is in a world of danger all his own was worth every moment of feeling my heart in my throat.