Between Wrath and Mercy by Jess Wisecup
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Plot: 📚📚📚📚📚
Format: 📖
POV: First Person


🕊️ ➞ Tropes:

⚔️❤️‍🔥Enemies to Lovers❤️‍🔥⚔️
💃🏻 Strong FMC 💃🏻
🔪💀 Touch Her, You Die 💀🔪
👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻 Second chance 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻
🔮 Soulmates 🔮
📜 Prophecy 📜
🧿 Chosen One 🧿
🐌❤️‍🔥Slow Burn ❤️‍🔥🐌


🕊️ ➞ Progress Notes & Initial Thoughts:

I received this book for The Bookish Box’s December box. Here are a few photos (not mine) of this beautiful edition!





🕊️ ➞ Summary Breakdown & Commentary:

Between Wrath and Mercy takes place in a fictitious realm where the setting is the kingdom of Vesta. Vesta is accompanied by two other kingdoms – Folterra and Nythyr – one is neutral while the other is vicious. In this realm (or world?), there are Mortals and Conduits. Conduits are mortals gifted and blessed with a varying range of powers from the Gods. Among the Conduits, there is the prophesied Chosen One known as the Beloved. The Beloved is fated to be the strongest Conduit as well as being blessed by four Gods. They are prophesied to bring peace amongst the three kingdoms, but of course, there’s one kingdom that doesn’t want peace. *cough cough* Folterra *cough cough*




🕊️ ➞ Character Thoughts:

🐦‍⬛ ↳ Emmeline Highclere:

Our MFC is Emmeline Highclere or Emma. Emma is the twin sister to the prior Beloved, Lucia, who was killed before she could fulfill the prophecy. Before the events that killed Lucia, she was betrothed to Crowned Prince Rainier as a marriage of alliance. The girls began spending time at the palace when they were young teens. This is where the love between Emma and Rainier blossomed, though they tried to fight it.



After her sister’s death, she is quickly married off to a different man, Faxon, and starts a family. She gives birth to a daughter, Elora, who shows signs of being the next Beloved so she goes into hiding. 16 years later have passed and Elora is kidnapped while accompanying Faxon on a business trip. After rushing to her family’s estate, she enlists the help of Rainier – as well as her former friends – in hopes they’ll help her get her daughter back before the Bone King takes another member of her family.

Personally, I loved Emma. Was she perfect? No. But I think the inner circle gave her a lot of shit for the choices she made after her sister’s death. Most of which were out of Emma’s control. I found Emma very empowering. She is a plus-sized mother in her early thirties who gains her sense of sexuality and femininity throughout the story. She also heals a lot through the novel, which I love. She is witty, smart, brutal, and ruthless. I think she was also a bit prideful but considering the circumstances I don’t believe it was horribly misplaced.

“Do you think you would’ve understood? I barely understood. I knew I wanted you and shouldn’t and that was it. By the time I—I didn’t truly understand until it was too late. I never thought you would have gone through with the marriage. You’d do what you always do, and you’d talk or fight your way out of it — you wouldn’t accept it. But I was wrong.” – Rainier, Chapter 21

Like what the actual f@#k. Give a woman some slack and understanding. Jesus.


🐦‍⬛ ↳ Rainier:

Prince Rainier is my new book boyfriend.



But besides that, he is your basic morally grey MMC but also.. *pause for gasp*… emotionally available and intelligent. Shocking! ….Well, to a degree. He held resentment for Emma leaving him and actually getting married after she begged him to offer her another option than Faxon. She was a woman during times when they really couldn’t say no to a marriage union. Besides his past misplaced sense of duty, Rainier stole my heart. I loved the way he never shamed Emma for the way her body changed after becoming a mother, and spent most of the book trying to make up for the past.

“Your stretch marks are scars, proof you grew life and nourished it. I wish I was there to see it. To see you swell with a baby and coo over an infant.”… “Preferably my babe, not Faxon’s. But it would have been beautiful to see, all the same.”

– Rainier, Chapter 38

“You got harder, and I got softer.“I gave a nervous laugh as I deflected, squeezing his biceps to illustrate my point. He studied me for a moment before he started kissing my stomach, dragging his tongue over me between kisses.”I love your soft.” Another kiss. “You don’t have any idea how much I fucking needed your soft.“

– Rainier, Chapter 29

🕊️ ➞ My Favorite Quotes:

“I love you, Emmeline. I have loved you from the start, and I will love you until we are both just a whisper in the wind. It’s your eyes I see when I close mine, your heart I want to hold, and I’d set this whole damn world on fire if you wanted to watch it burn.”

– Rainier, Chapter 33

“You have held my heart in your hands since the moment I met you, Emmeline. Every beat and every skip you have possessed. Every thought and every dream, every secret, and every fear has belonged to you. You ignited a flame in me which has burned and sputtered and raged. Ours is a fire that will never go out. Ours is a fire that will swallow us whole, and I’d rather burn with you than live in the dark.”

– Rainier, Chapter 43

“The sun itself could not shine as brightly as you.”

– Rainier, Chapter 42

🕊️ ➞ Closing Thoughts:

This is probably one of my favorite Romantasy novels as an adult. While it is a long read, I was captivated by the plot and the world-building. Jess Wisecup keeps you engaged by not revealing the character’s past all at once, you get snippets of it throughout the story. Now if you’re wondering about Emma’s husband, based on this trope was are 3 possibilities… He’s dead, He’s part of it, or He fled when he lost Elora. Guess you’ll have to read to find out. 😏


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