The Neurospicy After dark archive

Ace & Ember: A Novel (The Mavericks, 2)

Author: Kate Crew

Publication Date: July 14^th 2026

Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐️

Spice: 4/5 🌶️

Tropes:

• Brother’s Best Friend
• Enemies to Lovers
• Forbidden Love
• Morally Grey MMC
• Extra Spice

Equal parts “I shouldn’t want this” and “too late, I’m already obsessed with feral, unhinged chemistry. I could not put it down, I loved it more than the first book in the interconnected standalone series, “Rook & Rebel.”

Quick Summary:

Book 2 centers around FMC, Evie Emberson, who is fearless hacker, sister to Rook (from Book #1) and am unhinged talent for finding trouble and psychotic thoughts. This becomes especially true in relation to Aiden “Ace” Hayes, her brother’s off-limits best friend, who struggles throughout the book battling against his “one-rule” that Evie is off-limits. As secrets surface, rules are broken and enemies close in, Evie’s past puts her directly in harm’s way with revelations that leave her shaken to her core.

What worked for me:

The romantic tension absolutely carried with the top-tier forbidden, “we shouldn’t but we will” energy that stayed almost soul-crushing to the reader aka me. Evie is a chaos gremlin with psychotic tendencies that I absolutely fell in love with, it made me laugh. The banter not only between FMC and MMC but between supporting cast was top of the line the entire story and quite honestly, I like this book a tad more than Rook and Rebel.

What didn’t work for me:

Very little didn’t work for me in this book. I did get slightly frustrated with the back and forth will they won’t they. Sometimes I had thoughts of let’s get this, but then nope something got in the way usually the internal doubt of either FMC or MMC. It felt a bit repetitive but the spice in my opinion made up for it…two words…knife handle…think Lights Out…winky face.

Read this book if you like:

• Stabby, psychotic, chaos gremlin FMC
• Loyal, morally grey MMC
• Brother’s best friend
• Push-pull tension
• Motorcycles

Overall: I am buying a hardcopy as soon as this is published. You need to read this book.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review—no sugarcoating, no holding back, questionable grammar and dialogue all mine. All thoughts entirely my own.

***I’ll post a review to Amazon on the day of publication***

Publication Date: July 14^th 2026