The Ravenhood Trilogy by Kate Stewart is a contemporary romance retelling of Robin Hood that was a viral TikTok sensation back when it was first published in 2020. I thought I had never read it, so it seemed a great time to return and find out what I missed.
Cecelia Horner goes to live with her father in a small town called Triple Falls as a resentful nineteen-year-old. She didn’t want to uproot her life to spend a year in Triple Falls, but circumstances gave her no choice. Her access to her trust fund is contingent on working in her father’s plant—and she needs that money to care for her mother.
In Triple Falls, she meets Sean and his best friend Dominic. She quickly falls into a relationship with Sean, her charming supervisor, and has a charged but contentious rivalry with Dominic. The two men open her eyes to a new way of seeing the world, but the secrets they’re keeping may prove to be too much for Cecelia to handle.
Cecilia’s story is told in two timelines, then and now. The “past” timeline follows Cecelia’s year working at the plant at nineteen, and the present picks her story up seven years later, halfway through the second book, returning to Triple Falls to settle some unfinished business. The story is told from Cecelia’s perspective for the first two books until the third book, which adds an additional perspective into the mix.
While reading the first book in the series, Flock, I had the nagging feeling that I’d read it before, but it wasn’t in any of my records, which could only mean one thing. I must have read the first half and abandoned it halfway through. While I’m glad I finally made it to the end of this series, I had good reason for giving up on this story the first time.
There is not a lot of action in this series, except for bursts of intense plot movement in the third act of each. Instead, there is a great deal of introspection and thoughts from each of the main characters about their personalities and motivations. The action picks up in Exodus, a little, and I became significantly more invested in the heartbreaking twists in this story. It almost felt like a new story in tone, and then the third book changed feelings entirely once again.
Some of the upside of this excessive ruminating on the state of the world around these characters is the exploration of class differences and issues that fuel the entire plot of this series. Even when it felt a little preachy, or repetitive, I could very much respect the deeper point this author was making with these characters and their goals.
Cecelia is a quintessential good girl who gets rather in over her head and spends a great deal of the series in conflict with herself, or completely heartbroken.
In Flock, I strongly disliked Sean as a potential love interest. He came off as preachy and sanctimonious, as well as annoyingly vague, which I understand the author was using to build suspense and mystery. He does redeem himself in later books, but it was hard to get through at times. Dominic, on the other hand, is grumpy and a little cruel. He’s quiet and hot in a mildly threatening kind of way.
Exodus introduces a new layer and a new character who is hard to discuss without spoilers but is absolutely integral to this series. He’s a third, unnamed at first, potential love interest. I am being purposely vague to avoid spoilers — but every relationship Cecelia has in Triple Falls is a toxic mess, and only one of them is hot and passionate enough to justify it. Throughout the series, the layers of mess kept building, creating precarious stacks of devastating feelings, that inevitably crashed. This emotional drama is truly the high point of this series.
The spice in this series is fine. It’s spicy, but there’s nothing truly remarkable about it. There are some MFM elements to this story, but it is not your typical polyamorous or love triangle situation. There is a lot of passion, and a lot of steamy scenes, but maybe due to my issues with the characters, I didn’t connect with many of them in the way I normally would, especially in the first book.
I am so deeply torn about this series. It’s somehow both spectacular and an utter train wreck. I actively hated the first book in the series, but the second and third redeemed most of my issues with it. These characters fought fierce battles through deep quicksand to get this happily ever after. There was a very sweet and moving ending that made all of the frustrating pages worth it, for the most part.
Writing: 3
Spice: 3.5
Flock:
Kindle: $8.54 or free with Kindle Unlimited
Paperback: $9.48
Exodus:
Kindle: $8.54 or free with Kindle Unlimited
Paperback: $14.22
The Finish Line:
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