Kings Oil Series by Marie Johnston

Stars: 5/5
Steam: 4/5
Tropes: age gap; fake Relationship; enemies-to-lovers; damaged heroes; damaged heroines; hidden identity; marriage in crisis; instant connections; family
Series: King’s Oil Series
POV: Dual 1st Person

This is my first series by Marie Johnston, but it will not be my last. I discovered this series because of a possible ARC opportunity and thought that it sounded pretty good. I was not disappointed and pretty good turned out to be pretty awesome. This is a family series that goes through each of the 5 males in the family. The family lost the mother early on in life, and there was a downward spiral of chaos in the patriarch of the family. His actions let to the sons different behaviors and we get 5 amazing books about life, healing, love, loss, and crisis. Each book stands alone on it’s own, and while you will not be lost not reading the entire series, you are doing yourself a disservice by not reading each and every book. Mainly because this series ends with a bang. You get pieces of Aiden and Kate throughout the series, but until you get to their book, you really don’t know anything.

There are moments throughout this series that make you want to cry, there are moments that make you want to scream, there are moments when you want to junk punk the hero, and slap the heroines. However, each of those moments lead to ever bigger and more amazing outcomes in their stories. There is love and hate. Mistakes and corrections. Missteps and wrong turns. But that is one of the best things about this series, you see a family etched in grief and how each and every one of them including Grams, who is a major factor in each book, takes that grief and creates a life that isn’t quite whole. These books show you how to overcome being lost in that grief. While never being healed because you truly can’t be healed from your grief, it becomes a part of you. These books show the King family just how to channel that grief in different ways.