Blackthorn Review ⭐⭐½ – Demons, Witches, Billionaires, and My Growing Desire to Escape Solstice
👻📚 Author: J.T. Geissinger
💕 Genre: Dark Romance / Paranormal Romance / Gothic Romance
⭐ Rating: 2.5 Stars
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
Graphic violence
Sexual content and explicit scenes
Sexual assault references
Rape
Bullying
Child abuse
Child death
Pregnancy
Abortion discussion
Death of a parent
Missing persons
Emotional manipulation
Gaslighting
Blood and gore
Witchcraft
Human sacrifice
🚨 Spoiler Warning 🚨
This review contains FULL spoilers, including the ending, major reveals, and all the things that made me stare blankly at my Kindle wondering what in the supernatural soap opera was happening.
Proceed at your own risk. 😅
🖤 Blackthorn by J.T. Geissinger Review
I absolutely loved Pen Pal and really enjoyed Ruthless Creatures, so I went into Blackthorn with ridiculously high expectations.
Unfortunately…
This one just didn't work for me.
Was the spice spicy? 🌶️
Oh yes.
J.T. Geissinger could probably write a grocery list and somehow make it scandalous.
But everything surrounding the romance and plot left me increasingly frustrated as the book went on.
Oddly enough, I actually thought the first half was pretty good. There was mystery, creepy Gothic atmosphere, strange family secrets, ravens attacking people, disappearing bodies…
I was intrigued.
Then the second half happened.
And things slowly descended into what felt like several different books fighting each other for dominance.
By the last 20%, I was mentally packing my bags and leaving Solstice, Vermont.
🌙 What Is Blackthorn About?
Maven Blackthorn returns to her hometown of Solstice, Vermont, after twelve years away to attend her grandmother's funeral.
She brings along her young daughter, Bea, and immediately finds herself face-to-face with her former love, Ronan Croft.
The Blackthorn and Croft families have hated each other for generations, although exactly why takes forever to become clear.
Maven and Ronan have a complicated history. They secretly hooked up as teenagers while he publicly bullied her, and things ended disastrously when she became pregnant.
Now they're reunited, old feelings resurface, and strange events begin occurring throughout the town.
Bodies disappear.
People go missing.
Memories become unreliable.
And reality itself starts feeling… questionable.
📖 Full Plot Summary (With Ending)
👻 Maven arrives at Blackthorn Manor with her daughter Bea after her grandmother Lorinda dies.
At the viewing, tensions explode between the Blackthorn family and the wealthy Croft family, who have supposedly been enemies for centuries.
Then things get weird.
Lorinda's body disappears from the funeral home.
No signs of a break-in.
No explanations.
Just… poof.
Gone.
Meanwhile, Ronan immediately suspects Bea is his daughter.
Maven lies and says she miscarried his baby years ago and claims Bea belongs to another man.
Nobody with functioning eyeballs believes this because Bea has Ronan's identical icy blue eyes. 😂
As Maven investigates her family history, she learns that generations of Blackthorn women have died under mysterious circumstances and that all of their coffins are empty.
A private investigator reveals that Solstice has one of the highest missing persons rates in the country.
Totally normal small-town behavior.
Nothing suspicious there.
😬
Meanwhile, Maven and Ronan resume their toxic push-pull relationship.
And when I say push-pull…
I mean:
Maven: "Never speak to me again!"
Also Maven five pages later:
"Anyway, let's have hate sex."
🙃
This cycle repeats approximately 47 times.
Ronan eventually becomes convinced they might be half-siblings because he believes his father had an affair with Maven's mother.
Instead of simply asking questions like a normal person, he tells her a weird hypothetical story about "a friend."
Communication skills: zero stars.
As Halloween approaches, Maven becomes convinced that the Crofts are conducting horrific genetic experiments on missing townspeople.
Which honestly sounded like a pretty interesting plot.
But no.
That's not where we're going.
Instead, the story suddenly swerves hard into paranormal territory.
Maven discovers a cavern filled with the skulls of male Blackthorn infants.
Her Aunt Davina reveals that the women of the Blackthorn family are witches descended from Megaera Blackthorn, whose curse transformed the Croft men into monsters. She also explains that deceased Blackthorn women are reincarnated as animals.
Then things somehow become even more unhinged.
Maven's boyfriend, Ezra, arrives in Solstice hoping to rekindle their relationship. But Davina, Aunt Esme, and Q—the Blackthorn family's mysterious, mostly silent caretaker—are secretly members of the coven and ritualistically sacrifice Ezra as they prepare to force Maven into joining them.
Poor Ezra.
The man showed up expecting romance and accidentally enrolled in a demon-and-witch elective.
🐑
Then comes the moment that made me stop and blink several times.
Ronan transforms into a giant horned winged demon.
Yes.
An actual demon.
Not metaphorically.
Not emotionally.
Physically.
Complete with wings.
And everyone just sort of accepts this information at warp speed.
😂
Ronan rescues Maven in his demonic form and carries her to safety.
Maven and Bea later wake up in the hospital, where Ronan has remained by their side. Bea happily accepts him as her father, and the family begins moving toward their happily-ever-after.
While recovering, they are visited by Silas Hawthorne, a former Croft groundskeeper who had once been close to Maven's mother, Elspeth.
Silas reveals that he is actually Maven's biological father. He also explains that Elspeth's death wasn't a murder after all, but a tragic accident after she fell from the church roof.
Most importantly, this revelation confirms that Ronan and Maven are not half-siblings, eliminating Ronan's fears and allowing the two to finally reunite.
In the epilogue, private investigator Cole Walker, whom Maven hired earlier to investigate her grandmother's disappearance and the strange events in Solstice, questions what really happened. Authorities suggest that carbon monoxide poisoning from Blackthorn Manor caused hallucinations and distorted memories.
However, as Cole leaves the ruins of the estate, he catches sight of a winged creature flying overhead, leaving the supernatural explanation tantalizingly unresolved.
😩 My Biggest Problems With Blackthorn
💔 I Couldn't Root for the Romance
This was the biggest issue.
I simply didn't understand why these two people loved each other.
We're constantly reminded that Ronan bullied Maven throughout high school.
Yet they were secretly sleeping together at the same time.
And somehow this is treated as deeply romantic?
I kept asking myself:
"If he's tormenting you, why are you sneaking around with him?"
And unfortunately, the book never really answered that.
🙄 Maven Drove Me Nuts
I hate saying this because I wanted to like her.
But she constantly told herself—and Ronan—that she never wanted to see him again.
Then she would immediately seek him out.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Many of their encounters are initiated by HER.
Including one memorable hate-sex scene because she couldn't stop thinking about him.
Ma'am.
You are the one ringing the doorbell.
At some point, we have to stop pretending this man is chasing you.
😂
😒 The Banter Became Exhausting
The dialogue just didn't work for me.
Every conversation felt like sarcastic sniping.
And after the fiftieth round of:
"I hate you."
"No, I hate YOU."
"But you're hot."
"No, YOU'RE hot."
I wanted everyone involved to attend therapy and maybe a communication seminar.
These are adults.
Supposedly.
🤦 Ronan's Pregnancy Reaction Made Me Furious
As teenagers, Maven became pregnant.
Ronan wanted an abortion.
She didn't.
They broke up.
Honestly?
This was probably the most understandable part of the entire book.
But years later, his explanation basically boils down to:
"I was only seventeen."
Buddy.
SHE WAS SEVENTEEN TOO.
🙄
His excuses did absolutely nothing for me.
🕳️ The Plot Was Full of Holes
There are so many questions.
Why can billionaire Ronan apparently track phones, monitor everything, and wield unlimited resources…
…but somehow couldn't find Maven for TEN YEARS?
She was teaching at a public university in New York City.
Not hiding in Narnia.
😂
And don't even get me started on how abruptly the ending wraps everything up.
🌶️ The Spice Was Still Excellent
One thing I will absolutely give J.T. Geissinger:
The woman knows how to write chemistry.
The spicy scenes are fantastic.
No complaints there.
None.
Zero.
She's still one of my favorite authors when it comes to steam.
Unfortunately, spice alone couldn't save a romance where I didn't believe the couple should be together.
⭐ Final Thoughts
I wanted to love Blackthorn.
I really did.
The Gothic atmosphere, creepy manor, family secrets, and paranormal elements had so much potential.
But the romance never convinced me, the banter became repetitive, the heroine frustrated me, and the story became increasingly bizarre and messy as it went on.
By the end, I honestly didn't care whether the demon was real or not.
I was just ready for the book to be over.
Which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say about a J.T. Geissinger novel.
⭐ 2.5 stars
📚 Books I'd Recommend Instead
If you're looking for romances with stronger emotional connections or better execution, I'd recommend:
💕 Pen Pal by J.T. Geissinger
💕 Ruthless Creatures by J.T. Geissinger
💕 The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
💕 Still Beating by Jennifer Hartmann
💕 Phantom by Greer Rivers
💕 The Ravenhood Trilogy by Kate Stewart
💕 Nocticadia by Keri Lake
💕 Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver
These delivered much stronger character relationships and kept me emotionally invested from beginning to end. ❤️📚
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