Recently I’ve been feeling a little unmotivated to read mainly because I’ve been picking some average or below average titles. The algorithms that be decided that Unhinged, the first in the Necessary Evils series by Onley James, was something that needed to be in my life. I’ll admit, I was a sucker for the premise, so I borrowed it from my digital library.
While I did not hate this book, it was basically almost all smut. I’d say more than half of the pages were dedicated to it, while the other half did weave a semi-interesting if equally messed up storyline. It’s nice to know there are several other novels in this series, because there were a lot of characters introduced and almost no real characterization of them besides the most basic level. I don’t know that I’ll be jumping to read the rest of these anytime soon, but they could be a nice filler here and there throughout the year.
The premise of the series is this, Thomas Mulvaney is an insanely rich man who made it his mission to find a family of kids who no one wanted because they were either psychopaths or sociopaths. A lot of that had to do with their terrible upbringings, but Thomas brought them in and made it his mission to train them to destroy monsters instead of becoming them themselves. They are the perfect people for the job because they lack human emotion. Of course, that means Thomas will never be loved as a father, but trust is a fine substitute for the situation.
The first novel focuses on the youngest Mulvaney, Adam. He considers himself more of a soldier for carrying out his family’s plans, but he’s efficient and good at what he does. At least, he thought so. Turns out, one of his first kills when he was still a teenager left behind some collateral damage. Yes, he took out a disgusting pedophile, but his son, Noah, was left behind. After struggling through the foster care system, he came out with vengeance on his mind. He was able to track Adam down, but he was too scared or curious to pull the trigger. Instead, he wanted to know why Adam killed his father, but the truth was a really hard pill to swallow.
After learning he was the victim of endless abuse, Noah tries to drown out his nightmares with booze and drugs until Adam couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been watching Noah since their encounter and decided that Noah was perfect. In just a matter of days these two became each others’ everything. While Adam might not be capable of conventional love, he sure feels like he’s experiencing it. Noah is his and he thinks he’d be gutted if anything were to happen to him or if he were to leave him. Despite his better judgement, Noah already feels strongly towards Adam, but the copious amounts of sex they have probably doesn’t hurt either.
As I said, in between all of the smut, there was actually a bit of a plot. Once Noah knew the truth about his childhood, he knew more people were involved with his father’s sick proclivities, so he asked Adam if he and his family could help take them all down. Though I have never actually had any involvement with The Umbrella Academy, I do know the high level premise and there are definitely similarities there. Only with assassins. It also reminded me a little bit of Criminal Minds, which was cool, too. I’m sure I’ll be checking out the rest of this series at some point, but this wasn’t quite the choice to get me feeling reinvigorated about what I’ve been reading. Hopefully the next can deliver.