Finally! Finally we’re fully in Project Watchtower for The Watch series, the second Necessary Evils spin-off series by the genius Onley James (the first spin-off series being Jericho’s Boys). We’re starting off with The Bone Collector, which considering that’s the notorious name one of the project’s instructors, Park, went by when he was still active in the field (and the second book is going to be called The Sin Eater, which was the field operative name of the head of the project), it seems that all the books in The Watch series are going to be titled after field operative names. I’m down.

I’m not going to go over the whole synopsis with you. That’s just blase. Let’s go over the tropes you know, and then I’ll go over what I found of interest that doesn’t come across in the blurb, shall we?

*Age-Gap Romance (oh yeah, it’s a good gap, too!)
*Teacher/Student (this one’s a little loosely interpreted, since Park, one of our MMCs, doesn’t teach much in this book because Gift, our other MMC, isn’t one of the students learning his speciality)

Tropes that the blurb doesn’t mention:

*Older brother/younger brother dynamic (they aren’t brothers, but Park insists on Gift using the honorifics for those roles)
*Daddy k!nk (Ohhhhhh yes. Our Park is a Daddy Dom and our Gift is his sweet baby boy (no ageplay))
*Semi-public k!nk, virginity k!nk, slight degradation k!nk, edging, impact play, filthy talk
*Touch him and you die
*Gift is manipulative, secretive, touch-starved, and needy
*Park is a possessive mofo
*Park is essentially Gift’s legal guardian and full-time bodyguard

Besides the extremely high heat rating of this book (it is super dooper freaking hot, you guys) and how well-written that spice is (good lord, Onley is trying to kill us all, ffs), it needs to be known this book is FUN. It’s hilarious. It’s like “Necessary Evils: High School Edition”. Imagine if the Mulvaneys, Jericho’s Boys, The Feelings Faction (IYKYK), and Elite Protection Services ALL went to the same boarding school. Some are there on merit via scholarship and some are there because they have connections. Some are there because they have both money and merit. There’s all genders, all walks of life, neurotypicals, neuroatypicals, geniuses, people of average intelligence…you get the picture. The point of the place is for the neuroatypicals to be matched with an emotional support human to keep them tethered to their humanity. It’s brilliant. It’s volatile. It’s going to either be wildly successful or they’re going to burn the world down. Either way, I’m going to have a wild-ass and fun time reading to see what they do while they screw each other into every available surface and torture the bad guys along the way.

Please be mindful of your own mental health before attempting to read this book and read the list of CW/TWs before you start. I don’t ever need them but you might. Take care of you.