The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam - Megan Bannen - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: Megan Bannen

SERIES: Hart and Mercy, #3

GENRE: Romantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: July 8, 2025

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A romantasy with an opposites-attract trope. Okay characters, okay plot, good ending. The third book in the Hart and Mercy trilogy. Can work as a standalone but better read in series order. This is my least favourite of the series. The 2025 series-finale jinx strikes again! 😢

Plot Preview:

Rosie, an immortal demigod, has long served as a Tanrian Marshall, but after more than a century of service, she is frustrated with the repetitiveness of her work and the regular losses of those around her. While on her latest assignment, she discovers a sinister-looking shadowy haze inside the portal leading to Tanria. Unfortunately, the shadows are visible only to her. Because of her meddling, the portal is now defunct, and the inventor of the magical doorway, Dr. Adam Lee, has to be summoned. It is soon clear that the damage goes far beyond the single portal, so when all the portals start malfunctioning, Adam asks for an emergency evacuation of Tanria. Things don’t go to plan, and Rosie and Adam find themselves trapped in the Tanrian mists with two other characters. Now it is up to the demigod and the doctor to get them out of Tanria unscathed.

The story comes to us in Rosie’s third-person perspective.

I had liked the first two books of the ‘Hart and Mercy’ series – quite unexpected as spicy romantasy isn't really my thing. But the creative worldbuilding, the interesting characters, and the darkish plots kept me entertained.

In my review for the second book, I had predicted that the third one wouldn’t be my cup of tea as the blurb sounded too formulaic. I still hoped that my guess would be wrong. But who knows me better than myself, right? This book (the last one of the series, which I didn’t know earlier) turned out to be the least satisfying in terms of main characters, storyline, fantasy, and romance. The secondary characters and the ending helped save my overall rating.

Bookish Yays:

🐉 Many characters from ‘Book One: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy’ get a good role in this story! I have much fondness for these characters, so it was wonderful to see them get a deserved place in this series finale. The characters from Book Two: 'The Undermining of Twyla and Frank' are only mentioned in passing, but even that is good enough as it makes sense given the timeline.

🐉 Duckers and Zeddie get a well-earned separate Yay. I knew that they would never get a book of their own as we have already seen their relationship go through multiple phases in the earlier two novels. That’s why I am delighted that in a romance series that celebrates three new relationships, we actually get FOUR relationships. And funnily enough, the best love story is not indicated in any of the book titles. Love Duckers, love Zeddie, love them even more together!

🐉 It’s great to return to Tanria with its mists and its strange postal workers (love the funny nimkilim in this one!) and its curious mix of human and demigod denizens and the autoducks and the equimares and everything else! (Note: You’ll enjoy Tanria better only if you have read the earlier books as this book assumes familiarity with the worldbuilding.)

🐉 Dragons. Again. 🥰

🐉 The fairytale-esque story within this book, and its link to the main plot. Loved it!

🐉 The ending, with its action and the final resolution. The only part of the story where the proceedings are gripping, the tempo is steady, and the emotions are intense.

🐉 The epilogue. The perfect way to say goodbye to these characters and this world. Gotta give the final book credit for getting at least the ending right. I will miss some of these characters and the whole of Tanria.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🥀 The tempo is somewhat random. The story starts off at a fairly fast pace (unlike the first two books), but then it drops and stays there for a long time, making the plot seem repetitive. The sameness of the location in this middle section doesn’t help. The final quarter increases the speed again.

🥀 It is nice to have a romance story with a height gap where the female character towers over the man. Even when we have the tall-woman-shorter-man combo in this genre, the gap usually isn't more than a couple of inches. So to see this giant woman and a “pocket-sized” man is unusual for sure. However, after a point, the comments about Adam’s height get very repetitive, as if the book wants to keep reminding readers that he’s diminutive.

🥀 Rosie as a demigod: not that impressive. She hates that she is immortal, which is a refreshing change from the usual portrayal of gods and demigods in fiction. But except for this one characteristic, the writing makes her sound like any typical twenty-something woman. I was hoping for a more mature and sensible personality considering the woman is almost 1.5 centuries old.

🥀 Adam was a mostly boring and lacklustre lead, all the more for a romance MMC. The only one thing I like about him is his backstory.

🥀 The fantasy part of this romantasy is slightly better than in Book Two. But it is too vague for more than half the book and suddenly jumps up several notches in the final quarter. I wish there had been more consistency in these elements.

Bookish Nays:

👙 This story is set ten years after Book Two. The gap is a bit too much for such a small series, especially when most characters are humans. I don’t know if such a big time-jump is justified by the plot.

👙 The storyline is the most basic so far. I wish the content had retained some of the darkness of Book One. With a paper-thin plot, a fairly predictable mystery (you can guess the ‘who immediately’; you just can’t guess the ‘how’ until a certain point) and slow pacing, I was never enthralled by the proceedings.

👙 Rosie as a character: too shallow. Her arc keeps circulating through limited topics: her frustration with her immortality, her hatred for her unfashionable uniform, her anger at her father, her attraction towards Adam and his physical appeal, and her obsession with her lingerie. She is the weakest lead of this series, which is really sad as she is physically and potentially the strongest.

👙 The lingerie content is so annoying after a point! It’s as if this was the only trope with the potential for humour and so the writing goes on and on about Rosie’s intimates and her need for fancy bras and panties. The whole thing felt juvenile.

👙 It goes without saying that if I didn’t like the FMC and the MMC, I didn’t like the romance. It is weirdly insta and slowburn at once. There is nothing to connect the characters except physical attraction. The writing aims for a grumpy vs. sunshine vibe, but IMHO, it failed miserably.

👙 Personal preference: Yet again, too many profanities and too high spice levels (with one extended steamy scene towards the final quarter). These two issues existed in the earlier books as well, so I was somewhat prepared for this, and I wouldn’t have complained if they were required by the content. But the implementation, especially of the cussing, feels frivolous this time.

👙 Just as in the second book, I hate that all the chapters come from the female lead’s perspective. If Adam has equal billing in the title and is a complex lead, he should have had some chapters for his feelings. Only the first book used both Hart and Mercy equally in the plot development.

Overall, this has been yet another addition to the 2025 jinxes of disappointing-final-books of ongoing series. To be fair, it was not the worst I have read, and the ending did fill my heart with happiness, but I wish the story had been stronger, the lead characters better sketched, and the humour slightly less immature.

While this book *can* work as a standalone, you will not get many of the plot points and the Tanrian worldbuilding if you start here. So I would suggest beginning with Book One if you are interested in the series.

Recommended to those who enjoyed the earlier books and wish to send off those characters with a fond farewell.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Orbit for providing the DRC of “The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.