Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all doing good today. It is time for my first book review of 2025, okay, I read this book in December but still.
Today I am giving you my book review for Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan, I first heard of this book from it being in an Illumicrate Afterlight box I believe, I didn’t get the box, I actually bought the book second hand on Vinted for not that much at all, which it turns out was a good decision.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Sparks fly when an occult expert and a disgraced archeologist become enemies-with-benefits in this steamy romance.
Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she’s pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival—until he tries to get her fired.
Fresh off a professional scandal, Clark Edgeware can’t allow a self-proclaimed “curse breaker” to threaten his last chance for redemption. After he fails to get Riley kicked off his survey site, he vows to avoid her. Unfortunately for him, she vows to get even.
Riley expects the curse to do her dirty work by driving Clark away, but instead, they keep finding themselves in close proximity. Too close. Turns out, the only thing they do better than fight is fool around. If they’re not careful, by the end of all this, more than the castle will end up in ruins.
My Review:
Scottish, isolated castle – check. Enemies to lovers – check. Tales and occurrences of ghosts – check. This is the list that attracted me to this book. I thought the idea of a woman turning up at a castle to help break a curse being thwarted at every turn by a grumpy academic man sounded like a great premise. The execution was not what I was hoping for. I will try to say as much as I can without spoiling anything but we will start with, there is a lot of miscommunication in this book from pretty early on and I know for my own reading tastes this is not something I enjoy. It kind of set the book on a bad road from the beginning for me.
Was this book a quick read, absolutely. Lovely pacing, lovely writing, the banter between the characters was nice. I felt that the way things with the curse were progressing and wrapping up was not what I wanted, it was too easy in my opinion and the characters took too long to get there. There was background conflicts that I enjoyed, from the characters own personal lives, particularly the male main character’s family/personal life is explored with great depth and emotion but I was disappointed that the main female character was not explored in the same way, there was definitely more emphasis on the man which although interesting felt too one sided to work for me.
I think overall I am happy I gave this book a go but it wasn’t one I plan on reading again.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
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