Quick note: The Mindf*ck Series is technically a series of 5 separate books, but I’ll be reviewing the series as one book. All 5 books are really just one story, so I can’t separate them in my head. 😭 All I can remember is that books 3-4 (I think) were the best of the 5.

**Bonus note: This review may contain minor spoilers. There are no spoilers for the mystery aspect though.

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I expected a trashy romantic thriller, and I got a trashy romantic thriller.

I was once again failed by my intense FOMO. In all honesty, I was expecting to absolutely hate this series. 😂 The FBI agent x serial killer romance sounded so bizarre and nonsensical to me… but I read it anyway. Everyone and their mothers love this, so I gave it a shot.

Quality and execution-wise, I’d say I pretty much got what I was expecting. This series is self-published, so I wasn’t surprised that the writing was choppy and that the storyline was poorly edited. The plot had potential. It needed better dialogue, deeper characters, and a smoother narrative. I’ll get into all of these things individually.

The Mindf*ck Series read a bit more like fanfiction more than a refined story.

I don’t really watch shows like Criminal Minds or the likes, which I saw mentioned in a handful of other reviews, but I like to listen to true crime podcasts… So maybe that’s why I was kind of cynical about this one. It did feel a bit like the author got familiar with those types of stories and just took the most interesting bits and shoved them all into one book. (Again, I feel like this could have been refined so much more!)

Lana and Logan were very one-dimensional characters. The romance was decent though.

They had zero personality aside from being A Serial Killer and An FBI Agent. They were both “perfect” characters — Lana in the sense that she was the perfect untouchable killer, and Logan in the sense that he was just so fundamentally good.

Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like them! I did (Lana a lot less), but I just felt like they were very flat.

HOWEVER, I did appreciate some things about their relationship. It was hard to get into them at first, because the attraction was absolutely instant, but I appreciated that they actually flirted with each other outright and were very clear with their intentions. We’re all so used to romances where the MCs have to beat around the bush for half the book, but that definitely wasn’t the case with Lana and Logan.

Characterization in general just lacked consistency.

Whether with the main characters or the side characters, it seems like the author didn’t flesh them out all too well. Every now and then (especially towards the end), characters would do things that didn’t really make sense with their personalities and would completely throw me off.

Which is a shame, considering we had a few interesting characters. I’d love to know more about Jacob or Hadley (though I did not appreciate them as a couple… which I will touch on later). 🤷‍♀️

Can I pretend the ending didn’t happen?

I was honestly going to give this series 3 stars after the third book because I was finally getting into it, and I was genuinely excited to finish the series. BUT THIS ENDING. It took me a while to process the ending, but I have come up with the conclusion that it was really bad.

First of all, the big reveal for the “Original Killer” was smart(?) and shocking but also came out of nowhere. There could have been better foreshadowing for it. I could feel the question marks floating above my head when their identity was revealed.

Second, let’s talk about the way the author portrayed Jacob and Hadley. [Minor spoiler alert!] Their relationship made no sense and it sucks that the two “bi” (I’m putting this in air quotes because I don’t remember if they themselves identified as bi in the book) characters were, of course, into threesomes. I’m not bi, and I can’t speak for this community, but it made me feel so uncomfortable that this book was just perpetuating this misconception about them.

Lastly, if you’ve read the epilogue… What the heck happened to Logan? 💀 Do with that question what you will. If you’ve read this book, please tell me if I’m the only one who thought that his character at the end was unhinged.

This wasn’t the best book I could have started my Dark Romance journey with, but it did spark my curiosity for the genre.

While I didn’t particularly enjoy this story from a craft perspective, it did make the gears in my brain work really hard. I questioned my own morals quite a bit while reading (and am still thinking about them after I’ve finished the series), so you could say this is going to lead me to exploring this genre even more. If you have some recomendations, shoot them my way! 😊

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Let’s chat!

Have you read this series? Are you on the dark romance train at all? If you are, share some recs, please!

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