Thank you to NetGalley & Hachette for this ALC.

This book was so cute, easily my favourite out of the three. Rosie is such an interesting character, I feel immortals are usually portrayed as broody little pessimists, but she had such LIFE in her. I loved seeing more Tamria lore, especially the Gods. Hoping the next instalment gives even more!

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit for the ALC! The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam (book 3 in the Hart and Mercy series) follows the demigod Rosie Fox. At the start of this story, Rosie is electrocuted while on patrol and disccovers that something is wrong with the portal. When the portal's creator, Adam, is called to the scene for repairs, Rosie can't help but find him infuriatingly attractive. As they investigate the issue, Adam and Rosie grow closer, but he seems to know more about the issue than he's saying. What could he be hiding? Rosie's determined to unravel the secrets and put the world to rights. This is a fun opposites attract romance with an emotional twist, perfect for fans of the previous Hart and Mercy books. The audiobook is fun and engaging with fantastic performances from Jim Frangione and Kacie Rogers.

I had a wonderful time with this book! It was a delight to this world with Megan Bannen's hilarious prose and her loveable characters. This is my perfect brand of cozy fantasy - some plot shenanigans to keep things interesting mixed with high emotional stakes for the characters. I fell hard for Rosie Fox. She was hilarious and stole my heart right away. This book made me crack up in public and while it's not explicitly sad I did tear up a bit during some bittersweet moments because I was that invested. I adored getting to see Pen and Zeddie in the background of this story and I would love to see them get a book of their own because I love this so much. If you're looking for a cozy fantasy series to pick up this is a fantastic choice!

The narrators really brought out the humor of this story! I had a blast listening to this on audio. They pulled me into the story and I didn't want to put it down. If you enjoy audiobooks this is the superior format for sure.

I didn’t know what to expect going into this book, and honestly, the cover doesn’t do it justice. What I found inside was something far more compelling than I anticipated. From the very first chapter, I was pulled into Rosie’s world. There I found subtle danger and layers of mythology.
The author has created a story that balances emotion with tension and magic. Rosie’s journey felt personal, yet universal in the way it explores grief, love, identity, and faith. The way religion and mythology are woven into the narrative isn’t heavy-handed though. It’s thoroughly explored, purposeful, genuine, and fascinating. The book definitely makes you want to keep going to find out what happens next.
The relationship between Rosie and Adam is full of complexity. It’s not a typical enemies to lovers trope. I’d say enemies to lovers light. It’s more open and honest but still having that bit of angst in the beginning which transitions to the emotional connection which grows between them. It feels more real and natural the way it’s written.
This story is great for fans of Caraval, powerless, and anyone who likes a touch of magic and mythology.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachette!

First thing’s first: thank you Netgalley for the ALC of this book!

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam by Megan Bannen is the third book in the Hart and Mercy series. I ADORED the Undertaking of Hart and Mercy but The Undermining of Twyla and Frank just wasn’t for me. I was cautiously optimistic when I saw the third installment on Netgalley and I was excited to get into it!

Good news, everybody!! I loved this one!! The characters were quirky and endearing, top to bottom. I really loved that Rosie was a demigod and we got that point of view. I loved her irreverent way of interacting with the world because of it. Dr Adam Lee was well dressed and uptight…but like in a “the right woman could really loosen him up” kind of way. Oh and forced proximity?! One of my faves 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

I was so delighted that this one brought back so many of the parts I adored about the first book and none of the parts that didn’t work for me in the second. I definitely recommend this one- and the audiobook was really well narrated to boot!

4.25⭐️

An absolutely fantastic continuation and conclusion of a trilogy which just gets better with each book.

Rosie is immortal, and it sucks. She’s spent several centuries watching everyone she loves age and die, and she can’t stay that way - which is frankly just rude at this point. She’s currently working patrolling Tanria, but something’s gone wonky with the portals they use to access it, and she’s the only one who can see it.
Enter Dr Adam Lee, the man who created the portals. Rosie met him once, years ago, and has held onto his handkerchief ever since. But he surely won’t remember her… will he?

I absolutely loved Rosie and Adam and their individual stories as well as their interactions. One of the things I really love in an interconnected series is the glimpses we get of characters from previous books, and especially in cases like this where several years have passed since the previous books, and having several previous characters come forward to be a major part of this book was fabulous.
This is one of those series where I feel like I enjoy each subsequent book more as we see more of the world and understand it better. This third book added some really fun twists to the magic and the world that we didn’t know about before, which I loved.

The audiobook was wonderful and I loved how the narrators brought the characters to life.

Overall this was a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy, and I would highly recommend them for fans of romances in a fantasy setting!

this was alot of fun, I Iove this series and the people who are in it. its such a unique plot and I really did enjoy it. I do wish it was about zeddy though. It wouldve been an excellent second chance plot but I did love it. the narration was also great. thank you to Netgalley for this ARC!

I liked Hart and Mercy, and I looooved Twyla and Frank, so I was super excited to read the third in Megan Bannen’s romantasy trilogy. Sadly, this was my least favorite of the bunch, because I simply didn’t buy the romance. Which, in a romantasy novel, makes everything else fall apart too. That said, it wasn’t a bad book by any means.

Rosie Fox is immortal and she’s getting sick of it. While dying (something she’s done quite a few times) is not pleasant, she is beginning to wish it would finally take. Patrolling Tanria may be a good job and she has a lovely friendship with her partner Duckers, but after 150 years, everything loses its shine and Rosie finds herself with no interest in what has become of her life. By a stroke of luck (bad or good?), Tanria’s portals are failing, probably due to some shadowy growth that only Rosie can see. Enter the portals’ inventor, Adam Lee, a stuck up, emotionless man of few words.
Long story short, all portals fail, Tanria is evacuated and Rosie gets stuck inside with Adam, as well as her partner Duckers and his ex partner Zeddie – whom we know from the previous books in the trilogy. Many other characters from those books are named as well, even though they don’t play a role in this one’s plot.

My main gripe with this book, and sadly one that makes the whole house of cards fall down, was that I simply didn’t buy the romance. Rosie is a nice character, outspoken, with no filter and a love for beautiful lingerie (really, though? Did that have to be her thing? Give her a hobby, for godssake!) and she feels attracted to Adam Lee almost immediately. Adam, however, does not say or do very much. He shows no emotions, he’s just there and tries to fix the portals, sometimes asking cryptic questions that you know mean more than it first appears.

The most intersting aspects of the book were all sub-plots. Rosie’s relationship to her god father, the Trickster, was scratched at, at best, even though it could have been its very own novel. While there is a sort of closure at the end, this could have been a much more central theme.
Zeddie and Duckers, being the only two characters present apart from the main romantic couple, also get a sub-plot that I found much more interesting than Rosie and Adam’s interactions. And as always, I loved the postal service in this bananas world, a nimkilim called Gobbo this time. Kacie Rogers’ narration of him was absolutely brilliant. 🙂

The closed setting and very small cast turn this into a rather slow read. It felt like both the thrust of the plot as well as the romance took ages to get going. Since we get so little from Adam’s side, and Rosie’s attraction to him is mostly focused on his looks and choice of menswear, I had a hard time feeling it. I also didn’t particularly understand what Adam saw in Rosie, lovable as she may be, because they don’t spend that much time together. Once certain things are revealed – things that were pretty obvious, by the way – I even felt like there was one particular reason for Adam’s attraction to Rosie and it’s not one that I would base a healthy romantic relationship on. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

Although Megan Bannen delivers the same quippy banter and humorous narration as in the previous books, there is very little plot in this one. And what little there is suffers from uneven pacing to the point of everything happening in the last 15% or so.
Other reviewers praise the romance for featuring a very tall woman and a short-ish man, which is nice I guess, but it still didn’t mean I found their love believable. Whereas both Hart and Mercy, and Twyla and Frank had a long history (enemies to lovers, friends to lovers), these two only met once before the events of this book and that’s just not enough for me to buy their sudden undying love.

As for the audibook narration: I really enjoyed it. Kacie Rogers changes her voice just enough to give each character their own cadence, raspiness, and timbre, but never so much as to become comical. The second audiobook narrator, Jim Frangione, only gets to read one measly chapter, from Adam’s point of view.
I believe this was also detrimental to my enjoyment of the book. A dual POV is perfect for this kind of romance and would have helped immensely with my understanding of how Adam falls for Rosie. I get why Megan Bannen chose not to give him a POV, as that would have spoiled a certain revelation, but I still think it would have been the better thing to do.

All of that said, this was still an enjoyable and fun-ish experience, which picked up steam towards the end and wrapped up the trilogy with a nice bow. We get to see what happened to the characters from the other books, who’s married whom and who works where, and that gave me all the cozy vibes I wanted. Rosie and Adam will never be my favorites, but I can absolutely see myself returning to the world of Tanria to relive Hart and Mercy’s love story, and especially that of Twyla and Frank. So while the ending was not the best, this trilogy as a whole will always have a place in my heart.

MY RATING: 6/10 – Okay

Thank you to Orbit Books, Hachette Audio, and NetGalley for the gifted ARC & ALC.

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam is the third installment of the Hart & Mercy trilogy that takes place in the fictional world of Tanria. Megan Bannen has once again made me laugh out loud and feel surprisingly sentimental for such a silly, mostly cozy, fantasy book.

Rosie is a little reckless and also conveniently can’t die (well, she can, but she always comes back) and Adam is such a serious scholar type (in a hot, nerdy way) that when they come together it is just such a great and hilarious example of how opposites attract.

While the second book in the series remains my favorite, this was just delightful, and I loved the way that narrators brought the characters to life in the audiobook. 4.25⭐️

Every time I pick up something from this series, I am reminded exactly how bonkers this world is. And what a world it is.

The romance was good. I enjoyed the otherness that Rosie felt and her thirst for Adam. I also appreciated that we dug a little deeper into the god narrative and world building/ lore of the world for this one since Rosie is a demi-god. I think that this was more of a slow burn, and with how things shook out, it worked. I also enjoyed that the author moved the timeline of this book a little futher so we got snippets of past relationships and how they're doing now as part of the story. So snippets of Hart & Mercy, Twyla & Frank and as always Duckers & Z. Audio book is an excellent way to experience it, the narrators did a great job, and gave Rosie a perfect characterization.

All in all, it many not be my overall favorite of the series, but it was still a very good installment, and I really enjoyed this silly and weird fantasy romance series unlike anything else I've ever read.

Thank you to Orbit, Megan Bannen and Hachette Audio of an early copy.

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam is the third book in Hart and Mercy, a series that is part romantasy, part small town romance. When I got approved for the audio-arc of this book I decided that while it can be read as a stand alone, it is better read in the context of the series (which I am glad my local library had audiobooks available of so I could catch up). While this entry is not my favorite in the series (Book one ripped my heart to shreds, okay), I do think It is a really fun read. Rosie is a TALL bad ass immortal demigod Tanrian Marshal and Adam is a short king inventor. They get trapped on the wrong side of a portal while he is doing repairs (along with two familiar faces from the prior books) and it gives them the opportunity to explore their budding chemistry while they figure out if her immortal life is to be spent trapped forever or not. I really liked how their height difference was portrayed. Tall girls and short guys deserve to see themselves as desirable without it being fetishized.

Also since this was an audio-arc, I think the narrators did a wonderful job. I personally listen to audiobooks any where from 1.75x-2x and I didn't feel like anything got lost in the speeding up process. Kacie Rogers read the vast majority of the book and I felt like her performance was engaging and entertaining.

Thank you to Hachette Audio | Orbit, Megan Bannen, and NetGally for the advanced listener copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Wow wow wow i loved this audio so very much , i have just finished this as i write my review fresh in my mind . There is so much happening all at once which i loved You won't get fed up at all .
i loved this more than the last one do not get me wrong Heart and Mercy will forever have my heart sorry about the pun there lol . but wow Rosie and Adam came in and pulled the rug from under me in the best way they could ..
i love how both characters both love sanding on the edge of danger i also think they was lots of fun so clever at pulling you into their world . I like how heart and mercy are in the story too.

i thought the plot was lots of fun ,also lots of emotion and very tense at times which is great kept me on my toes.

i loved the world building Megan is so clever at taking you out of this world and putting you in a dream-like state .

i am a little sad it has come to an end but Megan well done on taking us on such wonderful adventures
this has got to be one of my favourite enemies to lovers stories this year .

i am giving the book 5 out of this world stars

Ooh this book had me kicking my feet! It was a bit of a slow start, however, once it got going I was definitely hooked and needing to know how it ends. I loved the MC’s. Rosie and Adam were a good match and though they don’t start out liking each other (for various reasons) they’re not enemies, so more of a dislike to lovers situation.

The fantasy world building was done well, I was able to follow along easily enough with elements of a parallel magical world alongside the mundane world. It gave off fantasy but also fairytale vibes which worked well together. The narration was well done, the narrator for the characters and was easy to listen to.

Thank you to the author for gifting me this ALC, I am voluntarily leaving a review.

Such a fun and emotional rom com and a great addition to the series. The expanded worldbuilding Bannen does in Tanria is delightful and I love that we continue to connect with characters from the previous books without it feeling out of place. Read this whole series!

This was a really excellent conclusion to a fantastic trilogy. (I’m assuming it’s a trilogy because there doesn’t seem to be much left to resolve after this installment, though I would love to be wrong about that.) It was so lovely to come back into this unique, imaginative world and I’m very sad that it seems to be over. I’m kind of hoping that if the author writes another series it will be set in a shared world, even if it’s not the same exact place and characters, just because I find the worldbuilding so interesting.

I’m still a little bit upset that we didn’t get a book that was called The Underwhatever of Zeddy and Penrose. I feel like there’s a thing in romance series where queer side characters get their own love story but it’s always a side plot and never the focus of an entire book, and I find it kind of disheartening.

I loved Rosie and Adam, both as individual characters and as a couple. I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrator did a fantastic job. Though I will say that the inclusion of a male narrator on the description of the audiobook led me to believe that the book would be dual POV, like Hart and Mercy. It was not – there was only one chapter with the male voice and it was not really Adam’s POV. However, as with Twyla and Frank, even though I missed the dual POV I thought that the single POV made more narrative sense, mostly because the non-POV character was hiding a secret that was better revealed later in the story, and to include that person’s POV would give too much away.

All in all I really enjoyed this whole series (I think it’s going to be highly worthy of a re-read, and I don’t say that often) and I’m eager to see what the author does next. 4.5 stars rounded up.

I received an advance copy of this audiobook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm finally getting around to writing this review, but don't let that reflect on the book, which i deeply loved.

Some time has passed in the world outside tanria- the kids (duckers) has grown up, hart and mercy have kids of their own, and rosie and frank have acrually retired. but for immortal rosie fox, not much has changed. her godly parent, the trickster, is still meddling in her (157 year old) life, she still misses her mom and worries about losing the people she cares about, and she still cant die....which she confirms by electrocuting herself on the portal to tanria. Rosie's little accident brings Dr. Adam Lee to the marshalls side in an attempt to maintain access to the magical land, and the spark that was ignited during his and Rosie's earlier meeting is still smoldering. But there are bigger issues at hand- rosie sees thorny vines and shadows that others can not rolling over the magical hills, which affect all access to the magical land, eventually leaving her and adam stuck in tanria- looking for the cause, and their escape.

this series is a highly recommend for me, and i loved this book. the audio narrator was excellent, and i think rosie's silly humor and quirky personality really shined along the ride. the mix of tanrian mythology and interplay of the gods was a welcome addition/return, and i loved that mary georgina was back in action. i love adam's short king energy, and that rosie does not give a hot toot about it. i feel like this book really rounded out the series and gave every character you fall in love with a satisfying end.

i loved so much about all of it. i vote you just go read the whole series. thanks, netgalley, orbit, and hachette for this audio ARC.

This was such the perfect ending to this series. I loved being back in this world and learning more about it. And I loved that we got cameos from all our beloved characters. I was especially glad that Duckers again played a key side character role, I did always hope he would get his own book but I loved the conclusion to his story.

Rosie was a great FMC, I had a lot of fun following along with her. She's tall, funny, knows who she is and has a healthy dose of daddy issues. I really enjoyed both her character arc and her romance with Adam. It was a slow burn and I loved how flustered they both got by each other.

I think Hart & Mercy will always remain my favourite with this one coming in 2nd.

Penrose Duckers must be protected at all costs. This third installment had more humor and banter than its predecessors, and the continuing presence of Duckers plays a huge role in that. Rosie is wise-cracking and lovable, and Adam is so dry and broken. While the twists were predictable, it was a fun story.

I was lucky enough to have the audio and ebook version of this and loved both!

I LOVE THIS SERIES.

I truly don't think there is anything Megan Bannen can writer that I wouldn't love.

This part of the saga follows Rosie, a demi-god Marshall, and Adam Lee the person who invented the portals to Tanria.

Drama ensues. There is mystery, love, friendship, and the best side characters ever.

⅘ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam
Author: Megan Bannen

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for my ALC! I absolutely love the Hart and Mercy series, and this latest installment did not disappoint. Each book features a new duo set in the world of Tanria. This time we follow Rosie, a demigod who cannot die, and who is growing tired of her mundane and repetitive life. After accidentally breaking a portal, the inventor Adam is brought in to fix the situation. When things escalate, Rosie and Adam find themselves trapped in another realm with no way out. Forced to work together to survive and return home, they slowly begin to bond and realize they have more in common than they thought. One of my favorite things about this series is how it is borderline a cozy fantasy while still delivering plenty of action and plot. It has the emotional warmth of a comfort read while keeping the pace and intensity of a traditional fantasy. The audiobook narration was fantastic, and Kacie and Jim brought great energy and chemistry to the characters. Highly recommend this for fans of fantasy with humor, cozy vibes, AND adventure.