Unpopular Opinion: When a Moth Loved a Bee by Pepper Winters

Synopsis

A pack of wolves hunt a girl who takes her last breath by a river’s edge.
She is found and nursed back to health by the kind-hearted Nhil people.
She has no memory.
No past.
And is given a choice that could change her forgotten life forever.

A pack of wolves adopt a man who begs for death in the grasslands.
Blood revives him. Flesh strengthens him. All while the alpha watches him as if he knows who he is.
He has no memory.
No past.
And yet… he’s drawn toward the smoke of a faraway clan.

And in that smoke, he finds a girl with the same mark on her thigh, the same empty mind, and the same forgotten language on her lips.

He’s convinced they know each other.
She’s certain they are strangers.
But the more time they spend together, the more tangled the truth becomes.
Their forgetfulness was deliberate.
To keep them apart.
To keep them lost.
To keep them from claiming their true power.
Because in that power exists a terrible choice.
A choice that could destroy the world…
…or each other.

When a Moth Loved a Bee is the first volume in the Epic Fantasy Romance Destini Chronicles.
A heavily romantic, spice-filled fantasy set in a world where life and death, shadows and stars watch over two forbidden lovers whose powers are best left forgotten.
Recommended for readers over R18 due to explicit scenes, content, and darker elements.

Author Note:
This Fantasy is 100% romance. It isn’t a quest where they spend most of the book apart. If you want a rich world, magic, intrigue, oodles and oodles of page time with the two characters together, all brimming with longing, forbiddenness, and butterfly-winging moments, then this is the book for you.

Review

WARNING: Unpopular opinion

2,5 stars

I thought a lot about my rating. Would I give a three stars rating or not. But considering that 3 stars means “I liked it” and that I didn’t like it, I lowered my rating at 2,5 stars.

Know that I have adored countless books by Pepper Winters and that me giving this low rating doesn’t mean that I won’t read any more books from her!

I guess there is always “the” book from one author you love that won’t work for you and When a Moth Loved a Bee is that book for me.

Last remark: that book gets tons of great review so go read them too if you want other opinions on the book.

What is “When a Moth Loved a Bee” about?

This is a fantasy romance set in a “prehistoric fantasy world”. We follow two main protagonists: “The Girl” and “The Stranger”. Both have lost their memories and are traveling alone, close to death in the beginning of the story.

The Girl will be saved by the Nhil people and the stranger by a pack of wolves.

Soon they’ll meet and see that they have similar marks on their thighs.

The stranger is convinced they know each other and are linked.

Both will try to find their memories. They are drawn to each other but everything , every beast, tries to keep them apart forewarning of an impeding doom should they be together.

That’s in a nutshell.

What did I love about that story

I loved that both can communicate/talk to animals. And that the Girl has such a huge heart that she nurses them, protect every animal.

The Girl was extremely sensitive to every life and every creatures and honestly I felt a kinship with her because I am an animal magnet. And I adore every living creature too so that was extremely satisfying to rea about.

I loved the universe.

We are in a prehistorical/fantasy setting with huge wolves with curved horns, lynx with antlers and double tail, Bisons….

That reminded me of Jean M Auel books somehow.

The fantastical elements

Fire manipulation, glowing water, moving shadows, everything that I love in fantasy stories.

The beginning.

When I discovered the universe, slowly unraveled the magic, tried to put the clues together. The first times they met. Their questions about the past they had forgotten.

What I didn’t like

Here is my main problem: I felt like we were running in a circle. We were on a repetitive loop where they tried to be together then got pushed apart by something then rinse, repeat. We had too much repetition and no real progression.

That resulted in unfortunate side effects. Things that I loved about the characters in the beginning I now despised.

The main characters became a caricature of themselves in this repetitive process with the Girl crying a lot and the Stranger switching between anger and desire. Instead of adding dimension to their personality, they became two dimensional, reduced to their desires and fears.

Another major turnoff was a choice made by the author in her storyline concerning an assault. I won’t give details as I don’t want to spoil anything but suffice to say that this was rewarded instead of being punished. And that didn’t sit well with me at all!

It was even painful to read bout said reward.

I confess that by 70% of the book I had to really push myself to finish.

The only think that kept me reading was my desire to know what would happen next.

What could have been better?

I am no writer and criticism is easy while art is difficult so this is only my personal opinion as a reader but I think the author could have cut parts of the story and given us more progression in the process.

I needed a steeper character growth.

Will I read the sequel?

Honestly I am not sure. I’ll wait to read many reviews to see if the flaws of the first book have disappeared or not.

To end up on a more positive note, I praise the author for her courage of launching into fantasy, something Pepper had not done before and I praise her for going outside of her comfort zone.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie