Book: Untamed by Amanda Marquardt
Reviewed by Maggie Hayes
Rating: 3/5
This was my first time reading Amanda Marquardt, and while this is the first book in the Falcons MC series, I definitely felt like I was missing some context. After finishing, I realized reading The Fallout Duet first probably would have filled in a lot of the Falcon's backstory that felt absent here.
What little we see of McCoy, I really liked. He’s been in love with his childhood best friend Erin for years, but never acted on it. When she left their small town for the city, they stopped speaking for reasons that never fully made sense to me, but I rolled with it. When she returns to their hometown, the boy Erin knew is gone, replaced by a man who is gently possessive and absolutely willing to burn the world down—especially Erin’s ex—to keep her safe. He is a bit of a secret sweetheart, which I absolutely love.
Erin, on the other hand, was harder for me to connect with. I wanted more character consistency from her. She seemed comfortable being Dmitry’s kept woman—living in his apartment and wearing the jewelry and clothes he bought her without working—but later frames staying in Bull Creek and taking a job outside her degree as abandoning her dreams. That contrast didn’t quite land for me.
A lot of that mindset seems tied to the assumptions she makes about her mother’s life. Erin believes her mom “settled” by marrying young and becoming a wife and mother because she once dreamed of acting after doing theater in high school. That belief clearly shapes Erin’s fear of ending up in the same situation. The problem is that the book never actually shows her mother being unhappy with the life she chose—something her mom eventually confirms. Because of that, Erin’s perspective sometimes felt more like projection than reality.
I also struggled with how she treated McCoy at times. She demands complete honesty from him while knowing full well he has obligations to the Falcons that limit what he can share (a point he made very clear before they were together). At one point, she even calls her own behavior childish, and I had to agree—it made those moments difficult to overlook.
That said, I appreciated how the story handled the domestic violence storyline. Erin’s attempts to cooperate with the legal system while also seeking justice outside of it added weight to the story and felt thoughtfully explored.
Please be sure to check the trigger warnings before diving in.
Thank you to the author for providing an advanced reader copy.