Inked Beasts

Apparently, returning to Las Vegas for your father’s wedding is a little dangerous when the three boys you grew up with have spent the last fifteen years turning into very large, very tattooed men who are all interested in you. Honestly, Lexy should have known she was in trouble the minute Kai, Gage, and Thorn walked back into her life. I certainly did. 😂

Inked Beasts starts with a setup I am almost incapable of resisting: childhood best friends reconnecting as adults, except now there are three of them and nobody seems particularly interested in making Lexy choose. Add tattoos, protective men, found family, and a Why Choose relationship, and my BookDragon was already nuzzling up for the binge read. 😂

Lexy grew up with Kai, Gage, and Thorn before circumstances took her away from Las Vegas, and when she returns fifteen years later, the boys she remembers are definitely gone. What I liked immediately was that their childhood friendship gave everything happening between them as adults an actual foundation. These aren’t three random men who meet Lexy and collectively decide she belongs to them five minutes later. There is history between all four of them, and reconnecting brings back a part of Lexy that she seems to have lost somewhere along the way.

Lexy has grown into someone who plans everything because planning makes her feel secure. She has built a stable life and convinced herself that she knows exactly what she wants from her future. Then she goes home, reconnects with these three men, and suddenly that carefully planned future doesn’t look quite as appealing as it once did. I liked watching her start questioning whether the life that looked right on paper was actually the life that made her happy.

Of course, a Why Choose romance really depends on whether I actually want the woman to end up with all of the men, and thankfully, Kai, Gage, and Thorn each gave me a reason to keep them. They have different personalities, different relationships with Lexy, and enough individuality that I never felt like I was reading the same MMC three times with different names.

Kai is probably the most impulsive and intense. He feels everything at full volume and doesn’t have much interest in hiding how badly he wants Lexy. Gage is calmer and more grounded, with a quieter confidence that balances Kai really well. Thorn brings more of the playful energy, but his relationship with Lexy never feels less important than the others. I may have had a favorite from time to time, but then one of the others would do something and apparently my loyalty would immediately become questionable. This is exactly why I read Why Choose. I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life. 😂

I also really liked the relationship between the men themselves. Kai, Gage, and Thorn aren’t three strangers reluctantly putting up with each other because they all want the same woman. They already love each other like family, and Lexy was once part of that little family too. That made their relationship feel more natural to me because, in a way, they aren’t creating something completely from scratch. They are finding their way back to each other and figuring out what that connection looks like now that they’re adults.

The found-family aspect ended up being one of my favorite parts of the book. There are little things throughout the story that show how much their childhood together still means to them, even after Lexy has been gone for fifteen years. I liked those quieter moments because they gave me a reason to care about these four beyond the attraction and sex.

Speaking of sex, Inked Beasts definitely earns its 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ 4/5 peppers. Once Lexy starts exploring what she wants with these men, nobody is particularly shy about it. 😂 There is plenty of spice, but thankfully, I never felt like the story disappeared underneath it. We still get time with the characters outside the bedroom. They reconnect, spend time together, deal with their families and careers, talk about the years they missed, and actually build a relationship.

You guys already know that is the balance I want. I like spice. I am absolutely not asking these people to keep their clothes on for my benefit. But eventually, somebody needs to put their pants back on and give me an actual storyline. 😂 Inked Beasts gave me enough of both that the sexual side of their relationship never became the only reason I was reading.

Where the book lost me a little was Lexy’s constant worrying about whether a relationship with three men could actually work. Her concerns made sense. She has to think about their families, careers, other people’s opinions, and what this relationship would look like outside the privacy of their homes. I understood why she was hesitant, especially when this is so far outside the future she had planned for herself. After a while, though, I felt like we were circling the same question over and over again. There came a point when I wanted her to stop asking whether it could work and start figuring out how they were going to make it work.

I also would have liked a little more emotional depth in a few places. These four share an entire childhood, spend fifteen years apart, and then suddenly find themselves back in each other’s lives under completely different circumstances. There was a lot of history there that I would have happily spent more time exploring. The connection between them was believable, but digging a little deeper into those missing years and what finding each other again meant to each of them could have pushed the story even higher for me.

I did really enjoy getting all four perspectives. Being inside Kai, Gage, and Thorn’s heads made it clear that Lexy wasn’t some temporary adventure for them, and it helped each man feel like his own character. It was also slightly entertaining that the men seemed to accept where this relationship was heading considerably faster than Lexy did. She was still trying to determine whether this whole thing was even possible while those three were basically mentally rearranging the furniture to make room for her. 😂

The supporting characters and families also helped make the story feel bigger than just Lexy and her three men. Since this is the beginning of the Sin City Beasts series, there are definitely characters wandering around who made me curious about whose story we might be getting next. That is always a good sign because it means I finished one book already interested in spending more time in this world.

Overall, Inked Beasts earns ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5 stars from me. It gave me a fun, spicy Why Choose romance with childhood friends, three MMCs who actually felt like three different men, plenty of protective energy, a strong found-family element, and enough story outside the bedroom to keep me invested.

What kept it from five stars was mostly that I wanted a little more emotional depth and a little less time spent circling Lexy’s fears about whether their relationship could work. There was so much history between these four that I would have loved to dig further into it. Still, I enjoyed their relationship, I cared about them together, and most importantly, I never reached a point where I thought Lexy should choose one of the men and send the others packing.

Frankly, after an entire book proving that Kai, Gage, and Thorn work better as a set, choosing only one would have been downright wasteful, and my BookDragon does not support waste. 😂🖤

Review By: SASSY
Owner • Creator • Queen of the Chaos
SassyReviews.com
Read, Reviewed, & BookDragon Approved… or Not.