Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this book early.

I really wanted to love this book but it honestly fell flat. The author put all the trigger warnings in the front so I knew what I was getting into and none of those bothered me. However, the characters felt lacking and there was a massive disconnect on the romance. This read more as a Stockholm syndrome “romance” than an enemies to lovers.

DNF at 41%—that was as far as I could go before I had to put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for the eARC.

I went into this book with so much excitement. I absolutely adored The Daughter of the Pirate King series, and when I saw she was writing an adult romantasy, I couldn’t wait to dive in. The blurb completely hooked me. But what I found inside genuinely shocked me. The kingdom is built around a reversed society where women hold all the power—and the way that dynamic is explored felt deeply uncomfortable and, at times, disturbing. I honestly think the book would have been much better without the romance entirely. It just didn’t belong in the world that was created.
I really tried to give it a fair chance, but I couldn’t keep going. This one was a hard no for me.

What Fury Brings by Trisha Levenseller ( Release Date September 23, 2025)

I was already excited about this book, but then I read the author’s note and I was locked and loaded. Having a matriarchal society/kingdom was fascinating to read. To have the pains, struggles, and expectations of women throughout history then be swapped on to men was incredibly eye opening to say the least. I really enjoyed the world, politics, banter, relationships (both romantic and otherwise), as well as the organic growth of the characters. I honestly want everyone to read this just so I can see their reactions to this Matriarchal society compared to what history and current day has taught us about what it means to bear as a woman in a mans world.

**please, please read the trigger warnings as there are some dark themes throughout the book highlighting on previous atrocities committed against women of all ages.**


Feral Rating: 4/5 🦝🦝🦝🦝
Spice Rating: 3/5 🌶️🌶️🌶️

What you can find:
- Gender Bent History/Society
- Forced Proximity
- Enemies to Lovers
- Curvy Strong FMC
- Hidden Identity
- Hate to Love You
- Secrets
- Banter


Book Summary:

A warrior general who must kidnap and train a husband in order to take her rightful place as queen.
There's a shortage of men in the kingdom of Amarra. After a failed rebellion against the matriarchy, most noblemen in the country are dead. Now the women of Amarra must obtain their husbands (should they want one) by kidnapping them from other kingdoms. Olerra, a warrior princess vying for the throne, is determined to prove her worth by kidnapping a husband. And not just any husband. To outmaneuver her treacherous cousin, she needs the best. Fortunately, the second-born prince of their greatest enemy is widely known for both his looks and his sweet, docile temperament. He's the perfect choice to secure her claim to the throne. Sanos, heir to the Kingdom of Brutus, has nothing but contempt for the idea of a society run by women. Trained from birth to fight, lead, and follow in his father's overbearing footsteps, his path has always been set.
Until he takes his younger brother's place in a drunken prank and finds himself kidnapped, carted off to the Amarran Palace, and informed that he is to become the husband of Queen Potential Olerra. Sanos needs to escape before anyone learns his real identity, but the more he gets to know his captor, the less sure he is of what he truly wants.

A matriarchal society where men are only prized on looks and women hold ALL of the power? Sign me the f up instantly!
The feminine rage I felt while reading this has been unmatched. I devoured the political conflicts/ world building. I discovered how much I didnt know if needed a prince being captured trope. I am so glad this wasnt YA because the spice was on point.Olerra and Sanos have amazing banter and tension filled chapters.

First, I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an ARC of this book.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, where do I start? Oh, I know. We will start with the fact that I absolutely loved this book! I've read everything Tricia Levenseller has ever written, and I have loved all of her books. I was intrigued when I saw she was publishing her first novel for adults, so when the arc was presented to me, I jumped on it.

I think there has been a lot of speculation on this book for the people who've read it. Let me be as clear as the author has been. This is not a feminist novel. This is a novel about revenge. This is a novel full of the ugly that women have endured for hundreds of years, but showcased as if they were done to men. It was truly illuminating to see the perspectives of characters changed once they saw the truth of things. It's true what they say, unless people are affected first and foremost, they are unlikely to open their eyes to the truth. Tricia showcased that perfectly with this novel.

This novel was the perfect blend of the ugly in our world and the beauty in what can happen when people work together, with trust and love. It showed the true strength of the heart. This novel is not for the feint of heart. It will show you the harsh truths that most people ignore in our history

What a powerful and beautiful novel. Snaps for Tricia for always writing a novel I can sink my teeth into! I would give it a million stars if I was allowed.

3.5 stars. As with any Levenseller this book was first and foremost plain fun to read! While initially hesitant about the power dynamics of the main characters in this book, I found them to be so likeable and real, the power imbalance didn't quite matter the further on I read.

Thank you net galley for allowing me the opportunity to read this one. My opinions are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this eArc of What Fury Brings!

In a world where everything is the opposite of ours, women rule. Everything is gender bent in the realm of Amarra. The story follows Olerra, a warrior princess, who is the General of Amarra. In attempt to win the throne from her lecherous cousin, Olerra kidnaps herself a husband. In an unfortunate turn of events, Olerra accidentally (and unknowingly) kidnaps the enemy's heir to the throne, Sanos. The relationship that develops between Olerra and her captive unfolds delicately and filled with mistrust. But it eventually becomes something strong and beautiful.

I loved the way everything was turned on its head. Men are expected to be seen, not heard. Look beautiful, speak right, be submissive. They are there to sire children and raise them. Our FMC is curvy, tall, and strong. But our MMC, Sanos, was not raised in this culture. He was raised to be a king, with all the privileges of being man. Sanos has his own secrets he keeps from Olerra, some of which come around to bite him.

Filled with political intrigue, swoon worthy tension, delicious spice, and true villains. What Fury Brings is an ode to feminine rage, in the best way possible. This is a standalone, but other characters have been suspiciously left open. Please read the trigger warnings before diving in though.

Hot as hell, fresh, and full of feminine rage I love to see from female leads. I’ve loved all of Levenseller’s YA works, and her step into adult was mighty and incredible. Cannot wait for more from her next book 👀

This book completely snuck up on me—in the best way. What starts out as a fun, twisty take on gender politics quickly becomes this strangely tender, hilarious, and emotionally charged story about power, pride, and unexpected connection. no, it’s important to know. The author does say this is not feminism or feminine rage so please note that for going any further into this review.in addition this is her debut novel into adult romantsy, so check your triggers.

With that out of the way,Olerra is exactly the kind of FMC I love reading: intense, unapologetically ambitious, and sharp enough to make the people around her just a little nervous. Her mission to abduct a husband sounds like something out of a bard’s fever dream, but somehow, she makes it feel like the most reasonable strategy in the world. with issues on her own to deal with she still puts her family friends and needs of her country first,until she’s forced to look at things from a different perspective.

And Sanos? I honestly wasn’t prepared to care so much about him as I felt this was more a story of Olerra learning her way. However, watching this battle-hardened/ mentally and physically abused prince try to keep his dignity intact while being dragged across enemy lines—and then slowly start questioning everything he thought he knew—was surprisingly moving. The banter between him and Olerra? So good. Witty, yet awkward,
layered, and loaded with just the right amount of sexual tension and the newness of a fresh relationship.

Some parts of the world didn’t feel fully fleshed out, but I didn’t even mind. Because, the relationship dynamics were the real centerpiece here, and they were done with so much heart. Especially the time given to the sister/best friend, Ydra, who made you feel, like this book could be your life. Which made reading this not just, entertaining to me, but rather it made me think about how we define strength, and who gets to lead.

My only critique for this book is that when it’s published I hope the chapters get the main character names under them,or as the title so you know when you’re switching POVS a little more.

All in all, If you’re into forced proximity, strong heroines, grumpy/sunshine energy, and banter that sparkles like a dueling blade not just between main characters, add this to your list immediately.

Side note: I really hope we get a second book for Ydra.

Stars/ spice:
3⭐️
3🌶️

I unfortunately didn’t like this book and I really wanted to love it. I didn’t see any character growth for either the FMC or the MMC and didn’t find that the romance between was believable. Everything was surface level and very dry.

I really enjoyed this book. The concept was different than anything I have read, which was nice! I liked how strong the female lead was and the male lead didn’t wanna reduce that.

This adventurous romantacy novel is one I will never forget! I am extremely impressed by her first adult debut! The premise is what initially made me want to read it. The title of this book is exactly what it brings, which is fury! This is a medium paced, dark and tense book, that made me not want to put it down! I had to keep reading to see what was going to happen next in the story! This author really captures feminism rage and empowerment, as it flips gender traditional power dynamics!

This is not your typical novel, as it has a female dominated kingdom. These women have the strength to overpower men! They bring the fury! In this book, women are skilled craftswomen, leaders and protectors. It is both plot and character driven, contains lovable and unlovable characters, and comes with a diverse cast of characters! The men are valuable by how they are raising their children, their looks and keeping themselves busy with hobbies.

The world building of this story was well crafted, descriptive and felt realistic. The main characters were strongly developed, change and grew in the story and I even felt that the minor characters stood out! This is a story where the female main character is morally grey, a plus sized rep, and is a sassy lovable heroine! Her name is Olerra. Olerra is a warrior princess and is willing to do anything to prove her worth and power. This is a story that is easy to read, beautifully written, contains political intrigue and strong villians!

Now, let’s get into the romance aspect of the story! We have our female main character named Olerra. By proving her worth as a skilled warrior, she kidnaps a husband. Other women can do this as well, if they choose to! Olerra mistakenly kidnaps Sanos, who becomes the male main character in the story. Olerra and Sanos end up being in a relationship. The relationship is full of love and manipulation, as Olerra asserts her dominance. This is a spicy novel! As the story unravels between these two, we see the societal expectations and challenges that are faced with. Overall, I give this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating!

I think that anyone that is interested in a romance fantasy book, where there are swapped gender roles, would really enjoy reading this! Content warnings include abuse, war violence, sexual assault and explicit sexual content. This is definitely an adult read.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Tricia Levenseller and Macmillan | FEIWEL for this electronic arc in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

This book is expected to be published on September 23, 2025!

I spent the last half of this book on an emotional roller coaster of tears and smiles and tears and shirk and tension!!!! This book is so well written that I am praying that Ydra’s story comes next. I can’t not even find the words to express how shook I felt in the end of the book.
I had every emotion evoked. I want to tank Net tally for the amazing ARC read!

4.5 ⭐️ This is a big fuck the patriarchy in book form.

500 years ago, the goddess Amarra rewrote the rules. Women woke up with the gift of strength. Men could no longer overpower women. “From now on it would be a woman’s job to rule. It was a man’s job to endure... see how they liked it.”

Amarra is a territory ruled by women. Men are kept in chains and the women have the goddess gift of strength. “Men are to be seen but not heard unless expressly told otherwise.”

Olerra however wasn’t gifted with the goddess gift of strength so she spends a lot of her time building strength and becomes a warrior princess with her eyes set on the throne. She believes she can make Amarra a better place. Her evil cousin Glen is also trying to get the throne though. Olerra decides the best way to win the throne before her cousin is to prove her worth by kidnapping a prince from a neighboring kingdom who will then be her husband. But then she unknowingly kidnaps the wrong prince. True enemies to lovers and has some hilarious moments too. Absolutely loved it

Had such a blast with this book. Honestly, wasn’t super sure what to expect going into this. I knew it was going to make a statement, and the role reversal to make a point was fun. I loved that both characters were badass, thought I must admit there was some squicks from me about the romance having an uneven dynamic. I’m not a fan of it when the members of the relationship are uneven, but that’s a me thing. I understand what the point was being made, and so I’m not too bothered by it. I think this will awaken things like a sleeper agent with a certain demographic and that will be entertaining.

The plot was fun, I loved how there was villains on both side of the coin. Prevented it from being too preachy. I won’t say I wish it was handled with more tact as it’s a lesson that I feel like truly needs to be hammered in over and over for some people to get, and I hate that we’re at a point where it’s a lesson that needs to be taught. I hope this helps educate at least one person, then I feel like the author has done the job properly. Overall a solid standalone (or is it? There was some teasing in that epilogue) fantasy with clear messaging and some potentially tough imagery to work around for people, but I feel it’s worth it. Very happy to have gotten to read this. Thank you so much for the e-arc NetGalley MacMillan.

What Fury Brings is a wonderful,fast fantasy with some very nice spice. I absolutely enjoyed this book from start to finish. What a perfect start to a new series.

3⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for the eARC!

I have adored all of the authors previous work so I was excited to see her branch out into adult. The concept was really intriguing and innovative. The pacing was great and it was easy to fly through.

However, the writing seems to be cartoonish to me. The villains were over the top and there wasn't a lot of chemistry between the characters. It was a lot of tell not show which is unusual based on how much I've loved past works by the author.

Overall, this book wasn't really for me but I think the ideas were really neat and I'm glad they were explored.

This one is a 3.5 for me. I understood whats going on and get it I feel like there were a few things that could have been brought up to sort of tie the story that felt like it was explained or mentioned too late.

So this is very obviously set in a gender flipped world where in Amarra it's lead heavily by the matriarchy, women are strong, and lead the household and their men or consorts are kept protected , supported and cared for by them. Centuries ago the Goddess blessed the woman of this country with the strength to fight off any men, to protect themselves.
Other surrounding countries operate much the same way normal patriarchal countries run where women are subject to their father's and husbands whims. But its still not equality in any way.

And it's not to say that in Amarra the men are treated differently than women are in that time period anywhere else. The rules feel the same, when they talk of "breaking their men" so they are submissive to their wives.
The world built reminded me a little of what Ancient Rome or Greece would have felt like.

Sanos is the eldest son of the King of Brutus, he's cruel to his sons, wife and daughter, often beating them under the guise of training to keep them in line, Sanos lives on a knife edge of fear that his father won't die soon enough and will harm his mother and sister or 5 other younger brothers as a threat. He doesn't want to be his father or a king like him if he survives long enough to be crowned.

Olerra is an heir potential, and general of Amarra's army. And she has a major secret, she lacks the Goddess's gift to over power men, and she's tried very hard to make sure nobody ever finds out. So she's trained herself physically to be the best fighter she can possibly be. Her cousin the other heir potential, keeps trying to have her taken out, and in order to get ahead of her cousin's political scheming she's decided it's time for her to kidnap a husband. As to be considered heir, her husband must be from nobility and the country is quite short of nobles from an earlier coup where many of the male nobles were killed. Aiming to take Sanos's younger brother Andrastas who is known to be a polite poetry loving man, who to her, would make the perfect soft husband for her.

I liked some aspects of Amarra being very sex positive country, but all the other portions of how many of the men are treated was hard to read. I felt Olerra could have been better written if she felt her lack of gift made her more empathetic and dove into that a bit instead of her just talking about "making it better for men once she was queen" in a vague way. That felt like a miss to make the plot connection.
I did like Sanos and Olerra together once they got along. And Sanos has a lot of personal trauma, their situation allowed him to break away from how he'd been living.

But this truly did feel like a huge miss for me.
I understand what it was doing and where it was trying to go, but there were slight plot points that felt like they were missing.

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book and the premise of it. That being said it did not give me what I was anticipating.

If I look at this from just a Dark Romance stand point I really enjoyed this book. If I look at it as a Romantasy I can't really say I enjoyed it.

I went into this book thinking it'd be this interesting take on a society where the gender roles were reversed. I did not expect it to be something that made me unfulfilled for a vast majority of the book. The whole country of Amara having not progressed and just essentially doing what men had done 500 years prior did not sit well with me. I understand that it was said in the authors note at the beginning of the book, but the fact that a country full of women just did not evolve left me feeling icky. It also did not come off as a story of revenge. To me it got lost along the way. Add in Stockholm Syndrome with the male lead and I really just couldn't get behind the story.

I think this book would have benefited as a possible series where the reader could have seen progression in the lead characters along with a change in the societal norm for both Amara and Brutus and it may have appealed to me more.

I'm still confused about how I'm supposed to feel.

First of all, thank god for the Author's Note at the beginning, so I at least knew what to expect. It is very clear that What Fury Brings is supposed to flip our society and history, with women being the "head" and men playing a submissive/docile role. For example, in this world, men are the weaker sex, they should be seen and not heard, they cannot hold property, etc. I thought this was a really interesting premise, having the roles reversed, but it didn't make it feel any less gross.

This was a very easy read for me, only taking 5.5 hours, and the plot was pretty fast-paced. While the writing and prose didn't blow me away, it was definitely better than a lot of other books I've read recently. Unfortunately, that's about all of the praise I can give.

As a "romantasy," yikes... I hated it; however, from a satirical point of view, it was interesting enough to keep me reading. Which is why I'm so confused as to how I'm supposed to interpret the text; there were very serious and gruesome topics explored, but I didn't feel the weight of them due to the FMC's internal monologue explaining that all of it is "normal." The FMC kidnaps the MMC because she needs a husband, but she isn't intent on making him "suffer" like other women in her society might... except... I don't necessarily agree with that. You see, the FMC prides herself on giving the MMC a choice and consenting to everything that happens; however, she doesn't really give him a choice—only the illusion of choice. Dude is strapped to the bed spread-eagled and stripped naked (none of which was consented). The FMC then proceeds to pleasure herself right next to him, wanting him to watch (no consent). Now, from a "roles-reversed" POV this makes sense and is supposed to feel uneasy, BUT not when the FMC prides herself on giving him a "choice" and proceeds to do the opposite. The scene itself isn't what icked me out, it was how contradictory it all was while in the FMC's head. Was this done on purpose, or was this just a moment of terrible writing? By the very end, it just seemed like the MMC had a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, and it left me feeling really sad for him, even though it ended in a HEA. There was just no actual character progression or growth from both parties, so what was the point?

Also, the setup of the world, when you really think about it, doesn't make a lot of sense. Apparently, 500 years ago, the kingdom was oppressing women, and they were then given magic to be able to overpower men, so they just flipped the society—an eye for an eye. This just doesn't work, though. After 500 years, you would think there would be some move to a more "equal" society. Maybe after 50-100, I'd get it because it's still "fresh"... but 500??? The FMC's kingdom, Amarra, is an extremely progressive and queer-normative society, which was definitely interesting to read about; however, obviously, when it comes to men, that is not the case (duh, I get it). I don't know, it just hard to visualize a society that is so accepting of everyone and then still, after 500 years, is like "fuck all men."

Additionally, there was a lot of hand-holding when the characters were talking about sex, to the point where I felt like I was back in 9th-grade health class. With this being considered an "adult" novel, I just don't see the point in having to explain how the female body and sex works? If this topic were just mentioned one or two times, I would have brushed it off; however, it seemed like every chapter, I was getting some sort of "education" regarding sex. It felt like the author didn't trust the reader enough to know about any of it beforehand, so we got a full sex-ed class throughout. And again, since this is considered "adult," I don't need to be hand-held when it comes to sex.

This book could have made a huge statement with the role-reversed world, but it completely fell flat. After reading, I was expecting to feel empowered as a woman, but I'm left feeling uneasy and confused. I just don't understand what statement What Fury Brings was trying to make? I get that it is supposed to be filled with female rage due to oppression in society... I just don't think it was executed properly in the way it was intended.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Macmillan for the ARC in exchange for an honest review :-)