A review by jurnee_reads
The Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert

4.0

What I enjoyed about this book seems to be a lot of the things others didn’t enjoy. Weird, huh?

Thane was an ass in the beginning. He’s inconsiderate and tactless, uncaring. His inability to even consider the needs of Catalina is on another level, really. But for some reason I enjoyed this? I think his early actions really tells us a lot about his character and how he processes his emotions. Plainly, he doesn’t.

He’s still grieving over his deceased husband(bi king for the win) and this even further proves how much he’s unable to deal with his own emotions. Without someone there to kick his ass, he just ignores things he can’t process. Catalina is a damn good kick in the ass. Having someone to care for gives him reason to check himself. He needed to screw up to be able to see how his inability to deal with anything can really hurt others. Without Catalina he never would have learned this.

After he learns of his neglect, he’s a much better person, er, I mean kraken. Unfortunately we don’t get much time with that part of Thane… probably because the author didn’t want to write a book all about him being a sweetheart as that would be boring. What I would have enjoyed was Thane helping Catalina deal with her trauma. We get hints of it occasionally where she’s learned to advocate for herself and be honest instead of expecting to be harmed, but only a couple… and we don’t see the process of her healing. I’d like to see that process just so I could feel closer to her character.

Sex scenes were good and explored kinks that aren’t common in regular romance novels, so I liked that a lot. Consent was clear and heavily confirmed which I always enjoy.

So really… it’s the real life issues that were dealt with that I liked. Thane moving forward in the grieving process for his husband and growing as a person, Catalina learning to advocate for herself, how they handled the last main event, and the way these two sort of tripped over themselves to fall in love.

4 stars instead of 5 because it wasn’t long enough and Catalina’s trauma and healing wasn’t explored enough.