One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: M/M Urban Fantasy; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 360 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Black knows all about the dark underbelly of life. He should. He lives it every night. He and his twin sister were little more than children when circumstances forced them to the streets. Now they're Nightwalkers, selling themselves to survive.

Not sex...or blood, for that matter. Their vampire johns - Lyche, they call themselves - don't drink blood, and sex has never been one of the services the siblings offer. Besides, vampires have other needs. What Black and his sister sell is their chi, their life energy.

Hey, it's a renewable resource, and vampires pay well for it. Not that the transaction is risk-free. Quite the contrary, especially as he and his sister don't just sell their chi. They steal vampire chi for themselves in the process.

Turns out, their johns don't appreciate that much, a fact that becomes painfully clear when Black taps the very last vampire he should have anything to do with, Monsieur Garthelle. Not only is Garthelle the top vampire in the city and the law of the land, but the chi tap Black did on the guy goes wrong in a way that no other has.

Now he's got two choices. Either he lets Garthelle turn him and his sister into his two pet spies during some swanky party thing the vampire is holding for his nearest and dearest not-exactly-friends, or Garthelle will end them both.

Which really isn't any choice at all, is it?


With a fresh and original twist on vampire mythos and a complex and intricate story, Etzweiler's Blacker than Black was a much more entertaining read than I was expecting based on the cover alone. No offense to the art designer, but wow - that cover does this book no favors at all. Fortunately, both the atmospheric world and Black's travails after biting off more of Garthelle's chi than he could handle made up for it nicely.

I loved the mystery and investigation surrounding the murdered Lyche, and the world that Black and his sister are surviving in has just enough of a touch of slightly futuristic dystopian nightmare to give it a seedy, humans-are-second-class-citizens-at-best flavor but not so much that it turned me off (I'm not normally a fan). It was a nice balance, and all the meatiest plot threads were woven together in a way that slowly revealed more and more pertinent details about the characters and the Lyche culture.

It wasn't love at first chapter for me, though. I have to admit, I had to work at it a bit in the beginning. Black is narrating his story in first person perspective. Nothing unusual about that; a good majority of urban fantasy fiction is the same. What was unique...and, for me, off-putting, was the present tense in the telling. It made the beginning of the book in particular feel a bit odd and jarring, and I was well into the story before I realized I was no longer getting jerked out of the read every few minutes by the style of the narration.

The fact that Black wasn't my favorite character didn't help matters, either. I didn't dislike him. He had several good points. I just didn't think he was all that strong as the lead character - especially in comparison to his sister, who I loved. Black tended to focus too much on the fallout of his tap of Garthelle's chi for my taste, shortchanging the story's potential for more comprehensive world building and additional plot depth.

And because the story is being told by Black, who is almost completely ignorant of Lyche culture and all the labyrinthian politics, obfuscated loyalties, and seemingly cross-purpose agendas, he didn't serve as a very good source of information about them as the story progressed. I was forced to learn what I could as Black did, around his obsession with fighting off the effect of Garthelle's chi. There just wasn't sufficient explanation for me to be able to fully immerse myself in the world, or be consistently solid on was going on in it.

I liked what there was, don't get me wrong, and some of it I liked a whole lot. There just wasn't quite enough of it for me.

Black's sister would have made a stronger protagonist, I think (though that would obviously have put the kibosh on the M/M leanings). She was brash, cagey, independent, and showed no fear, even when she felt it. And she loved the hell out of her brother, which softened her roughest edges nicely. I was saddened to see her so underutilized in the story, but every moment of page time she got improved whichever scene that included her.

Garthelle was the other character that really worked for me. I can't say I feel like I knew him all that well by the end, and I still don't completely buy his motives or the wisdom of the decision to bring Black and his sister into his situation, but I loved his inscrutable, stoic exterior, especially when it was so clearly covering up a much more vulnerable side of himself. His machinations were deliciously Machiavellian, but those moments when he let his guard down around Black were some of my favorites of the book.

It all set a nice foundation for the personal conflict between him and Black, but as most of Black's best efforts were made with the hopes of getting out from under Garthelle's influence, it threw a monkey wrench into the arc of the romantic relationship between them. I just never felt they were ever on equal footing - neither in Lyche culture nor in the relationship that slowly develops between them. That put a serious crimp on the romance-flavored aspects and made some stuff at the end of the book not quite as satisfying as I would have preferred.

If this was a first book in a series, I think most of my other issues with parts of the story - an abrupt ending, the odd relationship jump between Black and Garthelle, and the myriad questions that lingered after the final page - would have been largely mitigated. Plus, I'm greedy. When I'm impressed by the originality of a book's world or the freshness of the plot, I can only want more.

This book begs a sequel. Or a series. As a stand alone it was entertaining, if not always consistently so, and I liked it. If it was the start of something bigger, it may have been love by the end. For now, I can only hope to see more of Black and Garthelle...and Red and Blue, for that matter...at some point in the future.

Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 265 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: A copy of this book was provided to me by the author for review. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




It started with a girl.

Grad student Savannah Meyers seems exactly the sort of complex and beautiful young woman that most reliably catches the eye and holds the interest of contractor Robby Dalton, and Robby is thrilled when she agrees to meet him for coffee.

It turns out to be a really good date. Sort of. At least, he thinks so. Honestly, Savannah's a little hard to read, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Besides, she agrees to see him again, so Robby's very optimistic. And interested. Of course he's very interested.

He just wasn't expecting their next date to include another guy - one who obviously has a history...and a present...with the pretty Savannah. After that curve ball, a little confusion is perfectly understandable, right? Or a lot...given Robby's utterly stunned, mostly uncomfortable, yet undeniable physical reaction to the gorgeous and haunted Tristan.

After all, Robby's not gay. It's all about the girl. Really. Even if they're a package deal.


My feelings are so conflicted about this book. It's definitely like nothing I've ever read before, and I liked both the uniqueness of story and the wealth of emotion Kerick stirs with the personal journeys of main characters Robby and Tristan, with Savi's unconventional assist. It was gripping in places, heart-rending and painful. Other parts were soothingly, gently hopeful or sweetly, charmingly romantic. A good part of it was tense and a little confusing - in that totally good way of reading a story that's drawn you so deeply into a character's life that his or her perplexed discomfort becomes your own.

Then there were the parts that infuriated and frustrated me, both on behalf of the trials Robby and Tristan face (a testament to how affected I was by them), and in a less positive way at the story itself, which had a few elements that didn't appeal.

For the first three quarters of the book I was totally hooked. I absolutely loved this unusual, touching, emotional story. I loved Robby, with his befuddlement and earnest social awkwardness in the face of his complex and confusing reactions to both Savannah and Tristan. His journey locked me into this book and refused to let me go. And Tristan, the sweet man-child with a gentle soul and horrific past, made my heart ache.

He is such a broken young man, our Tristan, so fragile in so many ways, and yet there's such a guileless innocence and decency in him that I just wanted everything to work out for him, because he desperately deserved happiness, peace, and unlimited love.

It didn't matter to me in the slightest that the unconventional relationship between Tristan, Robby, and Savannah wasn't to my taste for romance. Frankly, the dynamic between Robby and Tristan didn't work for me in that regard, anyway, so I just stopped expecting any sexy M/M romance from the story early in. That helped tremendously.

In fact, this read much more to me like a coming of age story than anything else...except that all parties are already of age (despite the kid's card games and boyish nicknames). It was just far more effective for me as an emotional journey of self-discovery, acceptance, and healing than any sort of romance.

That's generally not something I like to read, but for the first three quarters of this book I was utterly and totally captivated by the characters and their lives. I loved everything about it. Well, okay, I loathed Robby's friend Mikey. From his introduction he did nothing but disgust me. That wouldn't have been too big a problem, though, if it didn't also draw Robby's strength of character into question for putting up with him for so long.

Still, I was dealing with that well enough right up until the incident between Mikey and Tristan. That's where the story started to stumble for me. The aftermath of that scene did more than draw Robby's strength of character into question. It obliterated it, as well as any respect I had for him as a human being for his response - or astounding lack thereof - to what Mikey had done. But it got worse, because there was also Robby's father.

Again, the problem wasn't that Robby's father wouldn't be winning any Father (or Husband) of the Year awards. He's a controlling, close-minded homophobe, but I expect to encounter at least one in stories of this type, so while I detested him, he was not the issue. No, it was Robby's choices and actions after the inevitable face-to-face with the man that derailed the story for me and put another series of large dents into Robby's knight-in-tarnished armor.

By that point in the story, I was hating on Robby almost as much as I was on his dad and Mikey. Fortunately, it was relatively near to the end of the book. Unfortunately, the too-abrupt resolution to everything didn't quite redeem Robby to me before the story ends, so in general the book ended in a less positive place for me than it was throughout the first three quarters of the story.

It also begs mentioning that the book's cover art, which practically oozes an implication of hot, sexy, mature content, utterly fails to reflect the New Adult tone of the story and the extremely tame (mostly glossed over) sexuality in the two brief scenes in which sex occurs. The cover is sexy and beautiful, no argument there, but that art shouldn't be on a book with a story that refers to a man's dangly bits as his "privates" during the only moderately descriptive sex scene in the whole book. Fortunately, it didn't affect my opinions of the story, but that's only because I didn't see it before I finished the book.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 1 Star
Length: 161 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Covet publisher Entangled Publishing, LLC via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.

Genre: M/M Paranormal Romance; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 236 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: A copy of this book was provided to me by the author. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Back in his hometown of Chicago after spending five years in eastern Europe slaying vampires, Gabe Vadas is having a hard time adjusting to life stateside and feeling at loose ends on a Friday night as he cruises the bars downtown. Not sure exactly what he's looking for, he ends up with way more than he bargained for. He bumps into the most doable guy in the place, quite literally, and as luck - and his neglected hormones -  would have it, the guy is a vampire.

It was supposed to be simple. He'd done it so many times before. All he had to do was track the vampire back to its nest and kill it.

Okay, so that plan didn't quite work out as he'd anticipated. Instead  he ends up getting shot in the ass by a tranq gun and when he comes to, he's sprawled out on the couch in the vampire's lair...well...apartment, really. And while the vampire is seriously brassed off, a rather expected response all things considered, he's not so much with the bitey and killy. A decidedly unexpected response. Though by no means unwelcome.

It helps that the vampire, who introduces himself as Harvey Feng when the bellowing and reprimands are done, is even more attractive up close than he was in a crowded bar.

Gabe may not completely trust that Harvey is exactly who he says he is at first, but the undeniable lust that burns between them is hot enough to raise even an undead's body temperature, and Gabe's willing to give the guy a chance to convince him that the vamps on this side of the world are a bit different than those he was used to. The bennies, after all, are to die for.


This is one of those books I'll remember more for how much fun I had while reading it than the actual story, or stories, themselves. Not that the stories were bad. They weren't at all. I just had such a good time with Gabe, Harvey, and all their friends that that's what sticks in my mind the most.

Though the book isn't really what I'd call an anthology, it's also not a single story either, exactly. The book is split into four novellas, and each has it's own self-contained mini plot arc, but from the first to the last each novella picks up where its predecessor left off and the events of everything that happen in each build the backstory and set the foundation for the external conflict in the next. Because of that, it ends up reading more like a single story split into four parts as opposed to four truly individual novellas.

The nice thing is that readers get to see the relationship and romance arc between Gabe and Harvey evolve as each story goes along. I liked that aspect a lot. In fact, I didn't want it to end, and I sincerely hope that Harper will return to them in the future, because I absolutely adored them both and there just seems to be so much potential for them to get themselves into further mischief.

And Gabe and Harvey getting themselves mired in mischief provides a hell of a good time reading.

I will say the writing style wasn't my favorite element of the book. Maybe because the stories were split into novellas, the plotlines of each felt a little thin. The narrative throughout each story also maintains a line-of-sight sort of style. There is quite a dearth of description in the narration and what little there is stays directly in the sight line of each plot thread as it develops. There just isn't much world building, scene description, or detailed action written out, including the sex scenes - which is a true shame, because they were as quirky and kinky as Gabe and Harvey were, and like the greedy fiend I am, I wanted more.

The style makes for a fast-paced tale, but for a reader like myself, who uses description and detail to visualize scenes and gets mental movie clips of events as they unfold, it limits the depth of what I pick up from a story and impacts my emotional connection to the plot.

It did not, however, limit my emotional connection to the characters and their relationship. I was fully engaged and delighted with Gabe, Harvey, and their small band of friends and frienemies.

Gabe and Harvey are the driving force of the book and I loved them to death. I also loved how Harper incorporated their personal histories into the arcs of the external conflicts of each novella's plot. By the end I felt I knew not only who they were as characters, but where they came from and what made them into the men they were at this point of their lives. It was all very nicely done.

It would be a crying shame if this is all there is for Gabe and Harvey. Not only because they're so awesome together, but also because I felt there were a few unanswered questions and unresolved story elements. Nothing that detracted from the read at all. It just made me even more hungry for more. More Gabe and Harvey and more from new-to-me author Lou Harper.

Quotables:

So far this had been the second weirdest day of his life, but as his mother used to say, strange was just something you haven't gotten used to yet.

"Good thing you're a lousy shot."
"You moved."
"Ah! My bad. Is that how hunters do it? Ask the deer to hold still?"

"May I suggest an official ceasefire? No slaying each other for a while. What do you say?"
Gabe screwed up his brows. "It's highly unorthodox. Why would I trust you?"
"Why would I trust you? I've abstained from killing you or even feeding on you twice so far. You, on the other hand, have shown far less self-control. You really don't have the moral high ground here."

"Get dressed. Hurry! We need to get you something decent to wear."
"What's wrong with my clothes?" Gabe protested.
"You have the fashion sense of a drunken marsupial. I'm surprised the fashion police haven't taken your gay card away. C'mon, chop-chop."

Genre: Paranormal Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 227 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ignite publisher Entangled Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.


Since his mentor John's sudden death a year ago, it's been a daily struggle for Zach Goldman to keep up with the construction business he inherited. He's getting by though, clawing his way through. Until someone leaves an inscrutable note on his door one morning. It asks just one short question. "Where is she?"

When Zach figures out John's daughter is missing, he's rocked by self-loathing and fear. He'd promised to take care of the woman who was like a sister to him. Obviously, he failed, but he's going to do everything he can to bring her home.

Boutique shop owner Sloane Swift isn't too concerned when Zach first shows up to ask about her friend and employee Ann. She's too shocked by the pleasant zap to her psychic senses when they touch and too overwhelmed by healthy, normal lust for the gorgeous man. When they meet up at Ann's house later that day, though, Sloane finds out just how bad things really are, for Ann and for her own closely-guarded secrets.

She can tell something very, very bad has happened even before she comes in direct contact with the negative energy around Ann's front door. Actually touching the doorknob hurdles her into a dark and terrifying psychic vision that makes her violently ill. Now she's got to explain the inexplicable to someone who doesn't look real long on embracing a bunch of woo-woo stuff, because one touch tells Sloane that Ann's time is very limited, and if Zach wants to find her, he's going to need Sloane's help to do so. No matter how desperate she is to keep her secrets.


Have you ever read a book that introduced you to a secondary character with such presence on the page that you're desperate for that character to get their own book just so you can spend more time with him or her? Maybe it was the scars and damage that the character has that drew you to him/her, or the honor with which he/she lived despite it. Maybe it was just the sheer intensity of his/her personality. Whatever it was, it caught you by the throat and almost superseded your feelings about the book in which he/she was introduced.

Then you get that next book, the one in which the secondary character you met and fell for is now featured, and it's fantastic, giving you a more detailed look at the character, more definition to his/her personality, and the sort of thorough backstory that both breaks your heart and makes you fall even more in love with the guy...or girl. It's everything you were hoping it would be and leaves you feeling excited and satisfied for that character.

That is exactly, to the letter, how I felt about this book and Zach's character. I loved him intensely and enjoyed finding out a bit about his past and the people in his life who helped shape him into the sexy, strong, sometimes self-doubting but noble man he is. A far better man than he thinks he is. There's just one problem with all that awesome.

In this case, there was no first book. In fact, as far as I know, this book isn't a part of a series at all. It's a stand-alone novel. And yes, that's a big problem.

See, I think there actually is a first book. There has to be, even if that book has never been published or the story exists only in the author's mind. This one is just too quintessentially a second book in a series to ever convince me that there isn't something, somewhere, written or not, that featured Zach's friends Twyla and Archie and their relationship. A story in which John is still alive, at least in the beginning, and Zack is the brooding guy with a tragic past that offers up a kidney to his best friend's terminally ill wife because he can't imagine not doing everything he can to save the life of the woman who has come to mean absolutely everything to the man who is closer to him than a brother, regardless of the danger to himself.

Because that is who Zach is. That's the awesome character we meet in this book. And we get all that delicious detail about his past that fleshes him out and makes him real, if in too-brief snapshots of a rough childhood and heartbreaking young adulthood. What we don't get is the foundation, the building blocks of the character and his key relationships to the now-deceased John, to Twyla and Archie, to Morgan, and most notably to Ann.

It felt very much like walking into a movie theater twenty minutes into the featured presentation.

Therein lies the largest stumbling in this book for me, particularly as it pertains to the suspense elements of the plot. Ann was a complete non-entity to me throughout the story, with no real impact on my emotions one way or another. As a result, I didn't care beyond the level of passing curiosity what happened to her, or if Zach and Sloane would find her before her ugly demise. I was more affected by what happens to a character we do meet in this book, yet that horror never really seemed to have much of an impact on either Sloane or Zach after the initial hit, which puzzled me.

Here's the thing though, I still liked this book, despite what is a pretty serious problem. In fact, I liked it a lot. The elements I couldn't connect with were far less significant to me than all the wonderful things to which I connected brilliantly. Like Sloane, who I absolutely adored.

Despite her tendency to burst into tears a bit too often for my tastes, I loved her. She had some personal issues and a tragedy in her past which provided some nice layers to her character. I appreciated that. What really made me love her, though, was her unerring eye for judicious pragmatism in the face of pretty disturbing goings on and the way she dealt with Zach's inherent alpha male-ness. She not only held her ground with the overprotective and occasionally stubborn male, she had no qualms about telling him exactly where he could stick his attitude when it started to choke her healthy independent streak.

I believe the term she used was seismic jackass, and I loved every second of it.

They were great together as a couple, and their chemistry hit hard, fast, and was totally off the charts. Maybe it wasn't always appropriate to their surroundings or what was going on in the story, and their relationship progressed to love way, way too fast for me given the timeline of events, but I couldn't help but absolutely love them. And I was a huge fan of Sloane's psychic abilities and how they were introduced and utilized in the story.

Now, about that story...

As a reader, I don't have to feel particularly connected to the victim of a crime to be able to fully enjoy the pulse-pounding action and thrilling danger in which the main characters get themselves embroiled. That's a very good thing in this case, because this book was an absolute roller coaster of emotion (in Zach and Sloane's relationship), danger, mystery, and suspense. I had no idea who was responsible for Ann's disappearance until the moment of reveal and the plot twists after that reveal made my gut clench. Did not see that horror coming at all.

For me, this book was absolutely a high-octane thrill ride of paranormal romantic suspense with great characters and a sizzling romance that wowed me in a lot of very awesome ways. It's just not a stand-alone novel...despite the fact that it is.

Genre: Contemporary Romance; Sports Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 241 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




The first time they met, they hated each other. Then Matt Scanlon, an MLB catcher riding a self-destruction rocket to rock bottom, got traded to his rival team, the San Francisco Blaze, and comes face-to-face with Kelly Maxwell in a professional capacity. Maxwell is the publicist for the Blaze.

Second impressions - for both of them - were no better than the first.

All Matt wants is to be left alone while he tries to pull his life back together after a long, painful year of bad decisions and worse actions. He refuses to talk to the media vultures clamoring for an interview, no matter how intently Kelly badgers him. If pushing her buttons and being an ass keeps her off his back about it, well, that's not exactly a hardship. Especially when it hits him that Kelly Maxwell, professional ball buster, is pretty damn gorgeous when she's riled.

He's the bane of her existence. The insufferable, boorish jackass is making her job hell. Kelly doesn't know why Matt suddenly went from being the golden boy of baseball to a self-made pariah, nor does she care. She's stuck with him for now, so she'll do whatever it takes to get him to tow the publicity line. And if it just so happens that doing her job forces her to get in that shockingly handsome face of his at every turn, well, maybe that isn't so bad after all.

Matt never expected that sparring with the fiery Kelly would become the highlight of his day. He's not sure what that means, exactly, but he knows one thing. If he can't convince her that he's sorry for their past and he's genuine in his interest in her, she'll toss him out of the game before he can even make it to the plate.


I like sports romance and I love the enemies-to-lovers trope, so I have to admit, I was predisposed to enjoying the heck out of this sexy, fun little reading treat, but Packard really went above and beyond for her readers with this one. Not only were the characters fairly awesome, especially the tomboyish, foul-mouthed (though she's working on that) Kelly, but the plot had enough meat on its bones to satisfy even the pickiest reader.

Baseball isn't really my thing as a sport (I'm a football fangirl), and I don't know much about it, but even my untrained eye was impressed by the authentic-feeling touches Packard put into the story. There wasn't a huge baseball element (a fact I appreciated), but what was there felt very much like it was written by someone who not only understands the sport more than I do but likes it. That was a particularly nice touch and, oddly enough, fairly rare in the sports romances I've read.

Kelly and Matt had a nice bit of depth as characters, too. Kelly, who deals daily with the harsh realities of surviving an eating disorder, isn't your typical romance heroine in form or function, and I liked that about her. Matt, probably the more stereotypical of the two of them, didn't make any better a first (or second) impression on me than he did on Kelly, but allusions to the cause of a lot of his personal demons kept me from writing him off precipitously and he evolved rapidly enough after that to win me over.

That was a good thing, because he had a lot of evolving to do. I've rarely read an enemies-to-lovers themed romance in which the "enemies" part of the plot was so completely justified. If any man ever spoke to me the way that Matt spoke to Kelly on their first meeting, I don't know that I would've been as violence-free as she was. Kudos to Kelly for her ability to handle him with a vicious verbal volley that reverberated long after their initial encounter.

And kudos to Packard for divulging that scene when she did, because if it had come at the beginning of the book, I can't say I would have continued the story long enough for Matt to redeem himself.

My only disappointment with the read came, unfortunately, at the end of the book. The relationship conflict was predictable, obvious, and cliched, and the resolution was downright unsatisfying. After such a great buildup, with a slowly evolving romance and a positively wicked amount of sexual chemistry between Kelly and Matt, the end felt more like a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and it left me a little agog. A few dangling secondary plot threads lent it an unfinished feel, too, which didn't help matters.

I could have handled the lack of satisfactory resolution on those plot threads, because there was setup in this book for another story in that world (though nothing I could find about this being a series, despite the character connections to Packard's debut novel, Love in the Afternoon), but the romance resolution left a mark. Just about everything that preceded it, though, was great - some was even more than great. It was certainly enough to make me a fan of both the book and of Packard's writing, if not the sport of baseball (nobody is that good).

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 400 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballantine Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.






She fled to the end of the earth...

When she was a child, Shay Morgan survived the sort of brutality that leaves the deepest scars and the most terrorizing nightmares. To protect herself, she stays off the grid, living in Earth's End, Alaska. She has few true friends and the one man she loved dumped her because she could never open up to him, no matter how much she wanted to. Her life is a lie told to perpetual strangers, the truth too shattering to ever be revealed.

Two weeks after a serious car accident, Shay has finally recovered enough to start to getting back to her life, but a trip to a friend's bookstore brings her face to face with her ex-boyfriend Elliot Winter. On its own, their conversation has the power to leave her hurting and shaken, but it's what she sees on the bookshelf beside the man that rocks her to her core. A signed copy of the latest thriller by author Shane Neil.

The problem with that seemingly innocuous discovery is twofold. Shane Neil is a very carefully guarded secret of Shay's. The name is her nom de plume. But she sure as hell didn't sign any of her new books...for that bookstore or any other.

...it wasn't far enough.

The closer Shay looks into the mystery of who signed the books she authored, the more troubling her life becomes. Facebook, Twitter, and online outlets everywhere have been impacted by this impostor in a detailed and disturbing case of identity theft that threatens to expose Shay to the very man she's been hiding from her entire adult life even as it targets Elliot, the man she still loves. But when identity theft turns out to be the very least of the perpetrator's crimes, Shay may no longer have the luxury of worrying about her past. Her present has become deadly enough.


One of my favorite things about Shiloh Walker's books is her gift for creating truly damaged characters who have been through hell and are flawed and/or broken as a result, who are then, through the plot of the book, put through more hell before they get a chance at redemption or happiness. That gift is sometimes a double-edged sword, though, because occasionally her characters have gone through so much and are going through so much more that I can sometimes find the journey from Point A to Point HEA a little too dark and depressing, or the level of damage a character has is so severe that it makes it hard to relate to them and really embrace them in their full role.

That was the case for me in this book.

I struggled quite a lot with Shay as the main character. I loved the concept of the story, and could understand and sympathize with why she is where she is geographically as well as emotionally at the start of the book, but somewhere around the middle it started to really drag me down. I couldn't quite connect with the story or the romance because of just how much Shay was going through and how deeply damaged she was.

I liked Elliot, and I thought the story was scary for just how easy it was for the Big Bad to infiltrate Shay's life and completely take it over. She had worked so hard to hide that she managed to create the perfect opportunity to be victimized yet again. Given the proliferation of social media in our daily lives, it's eerily easy to imagine everything that the Big Bad was able to do. That's actually a little terrifying.

It didn't create a good foundation for the romance for me, though, and I need to be on board with both the romantic elements and the suspense elements for a romantic suspense novel to really work for me. I just think Shay needed some serious therapy and as good as Elliot was to her (eventually) and for her, I don't think he was enough to truly heal the sort of wounds Shay has.

None of that makes this a bad book. Walker writes extremely good suspense and very hot romance, and the combination of the two couldn't possibly be bad, as far as I'm concerned. It just wasn't quite something I could fully connect to and enjoy, either. Walker's Ash Trilogy worked much better for me in that regard.

Genre: M/M Paranormal Romantic Suspense; M/M Paranormal Romance; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 250 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Crawling under his desk to hide from his board of directors is perhaps not the most dignified course of action for museum curator Dr. Wyatt Case, but with members of the board looking to discuss the museum's dismal attendance and subsequent lack of revenue, it seems a prudent option at the time. Unfortunately, it wasn't a successful one.

With his job on the line and not one crowd-drawing idea to speak of, he needs a distraction from the growing probability of impending unemployment. Maybe that's why he lets his best friend Noah drag him out to an odd little gaslight-themed bar called The Gravedigger's Tavern.

Wyatt quickly realizes he should have been more specific about that whole distraction thing. Gravedigger's is definitely not his normal scene. Not that he's gotten laid enough in the last decade to really have a scene, but still. Hey, at least the bartender is cute.

Ash Lucroix, bartender extraordinaire, takes one look at the geeky-chic Wyatt and falls into serious like with a side-order of healthy lust. It's obvious he's not the history buff's normal type, but they hit it off so well that a night spent flirting and talking while he serves the man his drinks certainly put ideas in his head.

Gravedigger's puts ideas in Wyatt's head, too. Ideas for a new museum exhibit featuring history on hauntings and haunted buildings, as the tavern is purported to be. When Wyatt's research uncovers the building's sinister and macabre past, even the skeptical Ash is freaked out. Then a barroom brawl ends with Ash taking a bottle to the head, and suddenly his skepticism is taking a worse beating than his noggin.

Is Gravedigger's really haunted, or is the combination of a concussion and the stories Wyatt has dug up playing tricks on Ash's mind? More importantly, will they live long enough to find out?


Expectations can be so damaging to a reading experience. I went into this one with my mind set on paranormal romance and ended up almost doing this fabulously freaky story a grave disservice. Yes, it has paranormal elements and there is romance, but the relationship between Wyatt and Ash is never really the focus of the plot. At times it's even less than a secondary thread.

Personally, I got way more of a paranormal romantic suspense vibe from the story, and if I had gone into it with that mindset, I think a lot of the problems I ended up having with the romance (and there were several) wouldn't have ever been problems and this would have been pretty close to a five-star read for me. Right or wrong, as a reader I have a different set of wants and needs from the arc of a romance in the two different sub-genres. For romantic suspense, those were mostly met, for romance, they weren't even close.

When I remove my issues with the relationship arc, though, I have to say this book is haunting, chilling, and creepy-good entertainment. Hell, even with the issues, I didn't dislike anything I read.

Wyatt and Ash were solid lead characters, if a little lacking in depth and definition. The plot didn't leave a lot of room for complex personal or interpersonal issues, but as characters they were perfectly likable. They were even quite nice as a couple, though they aren't actually a couple throughout a good portion of the story (part of my problem with considering this a romance). It also wasn't a relationship that was brimming with visceral sexual chemistry - at least, not that I ever felt outside the few sex scenes - but it made up for that with an abundance of endearing charm.

The book has a nice assortment of colorful secondary characters that had more going for them in personality than they did in depth, but that worked for me. They added to the vibrant intensity of the story itself. I really enjoyed Wyatt's best friend Noah and his relationship with Ash's boss Caleb. They were fun together and had a lot of sweet scene-stealing moments. Actually, in a lot of ways, the arc of their romance was more traditionally satisfying than Wyatt and Ash's.

Where this book truly shines, though, is with the superlative storytelling surrounding the Gravedigger's ghostly woes. There is a wealth of interesting historical information throughout the book, some of it disturbing as all hell, and a conflict with a psychotic poltergeist that builds in intensity and horror as the story goes along. Everything is woven together so brilliantly that the blend of historical fact and imaginative fiction creates a stalwart foundation of horror and suspense that seeps into every nook and cranny of the narrative.

It starts with chilling subtlety, with much of the weirdness being written off because of Ash's head injury. It was all so fabulously realistic and believable in that regard. Then things begin to get increasingly weird as Ash draws more and more attention from the spectral sadist. Roux handled it perfectly, keeping me perched precariously on a razor's edge between the unbelievable: a haunted tavern and a serial killer ghost, and the entirely believable: a young man with head trauma.

It was really well done; atmospheric, disturbing, and more than a little scary.

With Halloween just around the corner there couldn't be a more perfect time for fans of creepy ghost stories to make note of this little bundle of spine-tingling fun. Just check your expectations at the front cover. There's some hot M/M sex, solid characters, an understated romance, and one mightily brassed off ghost with a yen for the freaky life. Enjoy.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 247 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Covet publisher Entangled Publishing LLC via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Vampire Liaison Valerie Craig has a big, bad situation on her hands. There have been a rash of bloodings lately, vampires draining human victims, and an increase in derangements, or a transformation from human to vampire that went wrong. She has no choice but to take the matter to the king and queen of the vampire nation and ask for help to put an end to the crimes.

There are a couple of problems with her goal, however. First, Valerie loathes vampires with a deep and highly bigoted passion, so dealing with them in person always gives her a case of the willies. Even if she can get a handle on that reaction, she's got to simultaneously convince two members of undead royalty that there is a problem, and that their own people are responsible, without making one single political misstep lest the temperamental Immortalis Dominorum view her accusations as an aggressive act, potentially kicking off an inter-species war in the process. The sort of war that would not go well for the human population.

As it turns out, the vampires do something even worse than start a war. They give her one single vampire to act as her backup and mouthpiece during her investigation. And if Val's instinctive reaction to the king and queen of Dominorum is bad, then the foul-mouthed, bad-tempered killer Kade is going to give her convulsions.

She hates vampires, he hates humans, and they will have to rise above their prejudices to work together to stop the killings and prevent a war that would decimate the population of both their peoples.


I think I should have reviewed this book sooner, because the more time that's passed since I finished it, the more problems I have with the story upon reflection. There were some nice, fresh elements in the world building and concept of the plot. I enjoyed the vampire caste system and the idea of the Vampire Liaison Office for which Val works. The external conflict of the investigation into the bloodings may have been a bit pedestrian, but it was introduced well and fleshed out enough to sustain the narrative. It also provided a nice framework for the relationship arc between the two main characters.

Unfortunately, all those good individual pieces weren't assembled in a way that appealed to me. I struggled with the characters, their romance, and various plot points and story elements that either didn't make sense in the framework of the story or contradicted previously established mythos. It all just ended up seeming a bit of a frenetic mess.

My concerns started early in the book. Val's ignorance and militant bigotry was so extreme it was off-putting. She was working on legislation that would eventually result in the eradication of an entire race of sentient beings because her ex-husband was a douchebag to her. Thousands of people expendable because one guy did her wrong. That made it sort of hard for me to warm up to her as the romantic heroine.

To make matters worse, she was a hypocrite. She blasts her friend Graham for going gaga over the vampire Rex and Domina when he meets them, but five minutes after meeting Kade she does the same thing. I was far into the book before her character evolved enough for me to find her tolerable, and even then she was too inconsistent for me to really like her.

I did like Kade, though. Quite a lot. Problem is, he's supposed to be this foul-mouthed tough guy. So much so that the book is titled accordingly. Except he wasn't. Oh sure, there was profanity, and every once in a while he'd blurt out something...earthier than what one would hear in normal polite conversation, but it never struck me as egregious, nor was it consistent throughout the narrative. And by the end of the book there were more cheesy-romance mouth moments than bad mouth moments.

Val still reacted to his language throughout the book like he was a drunk sailor with poor impulse control. It got tiresome.

They did have solid sexual chemistry, and had the timeline of the story occurred over a longer span than the handful of days it does, the romance would have been a plus for me. Val and Kade just went into it with way too much baggage for me to buy that they'd get over their prejudices and fall in love in less then a week. I don't like romance arcs that culminate that quickly to begin with, and these characters started with pretty virulent antagonism that quick-flashed into romance melodrama well before the end of the book. It didn't work for me.

There were some interesting secondary characters that had surface appeal, but none of them were really fleshed out in any great detail. If I'm dealing with a series that will feature those characters as protagonists in their own book at a later time, that lack of character definition doesn't bother me as much, but nothing I've seen has mentioned that's the case with this book so I wasn't even able to be really happy with them.

Other niggling details, like seeming contradictions in established mythos (Graham bounced back faster than I thought was possible), moments of character stupidity, questionable timelines, and a Big Bad's suspect motivations all served to muddy the waters more than they entertained. And boy howdy, that Big Bad took the concept of a Long Game to extremes far beyond insidious Machiavellian intent and straight into delusional idiocy. I'm still not sure I understand the reasons behind it all.

To be fair, I didn't dislike the book while I was reading it. I didn't love it, but it was okay. It wasn't until I gave it a few days to marinate in my mind, though, that the sum the issues that had built up throughout the story started to wear down my opinion of the read. It may have had all the right pieces, but it just didn't put them together in a way that left me happy with the book. I would like to revisit the world, though. There's potential there.

Genre: Fantasy Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 142 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Princess Kimri of Anagard is furious with her brother the king. He has traded her hand to the King of Helsmont for an alliance and weapons. A worthy enough cause, given the toll the ongoing war with Kenasgate has taken on her land and people, but that doesn't excuse him bartering her like a piece of property.

Especially not to the enigmatic king rumored to have a dragon guarding his mysterious kingdom.

Arriving in Helsmont to meet her betrothed brings all manner of surprises to Kimri. The king is neither old nor unpleasant as she'd feared. In fact, he's quite arresting in stature and gracious in nature, and instead of a quick wedding, he is abiding by mountain custom and allowing her a year to make sure they suit before committing to the marriage.

As Kimri settles herself into an unfamiliar kingdom and acquaints herself with her betrothed and his people, finding acceptance and freedoms she hadn't even enjoyed in her own land, Kimri can't help but start to think that when it comes to betrothals to a handsome and kind mountain-king, perhaps a year is too long.


This was a lovely little tale, and despite having some issues with several elements of the storyline, I enjoyed it. The characters were likable and the writing was well-crafted and wonderfully descriptive. There was a fantastic amount of world building, especially throughout the first half of the book, and Kimri's character, as well as a couple of secondary characters, were memorable.

It's good that I enjoyed Kimri's character as much as I did, though, as she was the sole main character, and that's where my problems with the book started. At best, Tathan was an ancillary character in the story, sharing only a handful of scenes with Kimri. They spend a bit more time together off page, as Kimri refers to sharing their morning meals and accompanying him around Helsmont, but it still wasn't close to enough for me to be able to consider him a romantic lead character.

Kimri spends far more page time with Prince Herrol of Kenasgate, and while those scenes were nice enough to build towards the plot elements late in the book, it hampered my appreciation for the romance between Kimri and Tathan. That romance was understated nearly to the point of nonexistence and I felt Tathan, who I liked very much from what little I saw of him, was painfully underutilized. It was truly a shame, as this could easily have been a story I absolutely loved had he and their romance had more presence in the tale.

I did love the big reveal during the book's climax, even though I saw it coming, but that's about all I loved in the final quarter of the book. The storyline, which had been evolving at a relatively slow but pleasant, steady pace once Kimri arrived in Helsmont, started to come apart a bit for me as layers of external conflict were added into the plotline. The pace definitely picked up, and that would have been fine, but I thought the various plot points and elements of conflict got glossed over and rushed through as the story reached its climax.

Still, there were very many good points in this read, and I enjoyed Lee's authorial voice. Had the story evolved just a little differently towards the end, and had Tathan had a much larger role, this could easily have been a five star read for me. It fell short in that regard, but I would still love to revisit this world if given the opportunity. Several characters, Commandant Beatris in particular, left a lasting impression. I was saddened by how her role in the story ended and would love to know what becomes of her.

Genre: M/M Paranormal Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 217 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.


No one wants to get cases involving kids. It doesn't matter that it is the first real case Detective Matt Bennett had been given in the fifteen months since his world exploded, when he not only lost his partner, but had the full nature of his personal relationship with the man become public knowledge. No one wants kid cases.

And no one wants to be standing in the house of frantic parents before dawn on Christmas Day, watching his or her captain question those parents about the timeline of their six-year-old daughter's disappearance.

Regardless of what Matt wants or doesn't want, that's the grim reality of his situation. Or it is until he hears the first giggle, then the words that draw him down the stairs to the basement of the house. That's where Matt finds Abby. Where he sees her, speaks to her. And then his reality takes a detour into a hellish nightmare, because the missing little girl with the too-large eyes and so-pale skin vanishes just after she points him to her own corpse.

Forced off the case and onto administrative leave after he unwisely tells his captain he saw Abby's ghost, Matt is at lose ends. Then his best friend drags him to see Kiernan Fitzpatrick, a well-known medium. Ghostly encounter aside, Matt is highly skeptical, but even the staunchest skepticism falters under the weight of one small little ghost who keeps making her presence known.

To catch a killer, Matt is going to have to believe. In ghosts, in Kiernan, and maybe, after all this time and everything he's lost, in the power of love.


Wow, this book is just a whole lotta awesome. With layered, sympathetic characters who had complex personalities, flaws, and foibles, and a solid plot that ran my emotions through the wringer, this book delivered pure reading entertainment. The romance arc was well-paced, with a relationship evolution that maintained a believable timeline, and Copland did a very nice job balancing that evolution with the murder mystery storyline.

The crime against Abby was truly horrifying and tragic, and sometimes very hard to deal with, but the sweet, sexy, and sometimes scorching hot yumminess that started building between Matt and Kiernan from the moment they met helped keep that horror from overwhelming the narrative. That's always a delicate balance for me, because stories that feature crimes against children always hit me harder than the rest.

I liked Matt a lot and I adored Kiernan. Matt was the broodier, more wounded of the two, and sometimes - especially in the beginning - I wanted to smack him around a little for his attitude, but Kiernan had the exact right amount of good-natured acceptance and easy charm, bordering on boyish enthusiasm, to draw Matt out of his grief prison and give him what he needed to finally heal from his past. They were great together.

And Kiernan's tee shirt slogans were a total riot.

Admittedly, I have a soft spot for ghost stories, so I was predisposed to liking the tale, but it was Copland's imaginative, wonderfully descriptive storytelling and authorial voice that really brought it home for me. The whole book felt very well rounded, offering everything from ghostly spookies to gritty crime, touches of humor, hot sex, and heart-melting romance.

I fell in love with Matt and Kiernan as a couple and through them, Copland's writing. Though I had a few minor issues with a couple of plot points that seemed a tad cliched or predictable, the vast majority of this story was just great reading fun. So much so I was disappointed to find out this wasn't connected to a series. I would love to revisit Matt and Kiernan and their colorful family and friends, but I guess I'll have to settle for rereading this book to do so. Definitely not a hardship.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Zebra publisher Kensington Publishing Corp. via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Little Livvie Dugan remembers a lot about her sixth birthday. She remembers blowing out the birthday candles on the cake her mama got for her. She remembers opening presents, and getting to watch lots of cartoons. She remembers falling asleep in the den with the television on. It was a great day...until she woke up and went into the kitchen for another piece of cake. That's when little Livvie remembers finding her mama hanging by her neck, her face all purple and puffy and her tongue lolling from her mouth.

Livvie doesn't remember much of anything else for a long time after that.

Twenty years later, Olivia Dugan still bears the scars from her childhood, scars that no amount of therapy can erase. They've shaped her into a quiet, reserved woman who stays off the grid, and haunted her with nightmares and a lingering sense of being stalked. Still, she's getting by, until she gets a package from her mother, a package sent two decades after she committed suicide. A package that begs far more questions than it answers and opens far more wounds than it heals.

And when Liv slips out of work one afternoon to pick up a quick bite of lunch and comes back to a bloodbath of mind-shattering proportions, she is terrified that the package from a woman long dead has put her in the crosshairs of a killer. And maybe there is even more to little Livvie's memories of a horrific night twenty years ago than she's let herself remember.


As a twisted, complex, disturbing psychological thriller, this book hits all the right notes for me. The heroine, Liv Dugan, is one of the most damaged and broken characters I've read lately, and as odd as this makes me, I loved that about her. Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say I appreciated it, because she was a quintessential product of a truly traumatic childhood. In short, she was believable in her role, and her manic paranoia and edge-of-sanity actions set the tone of the frenetic race to identify and stop the monster terrorizing her.

There is a lot going on in this book. The timeline is a bit jerky and there are a lot of different characters to keep track of, so some parts were a little hard for me to follow in places. I can't say I totally bought into the introduction of Auggie, either. His behavior wasn't exactly what I'd call professional and his connection to September strained my willing suspension of disbelief. Overall, though, this is a layered, grim, freaky thriller that kept me riveted from cover to cover. And the reveal of the Bad Guy completely blew me away. I did not see that one coming at all.

As out of left field as it was, it completely worked, and all those niggling little bits of seemingly random story detritus so carefully doled out from the very beginning coalesced into a horrifyingly shocking snapshot of insidious evil by the end.  Disturbing, maybe, also effective and intelligently done.

I wish this hadn't been labeled as a romantic suspense, though. For all that Liv was a great main character, and her damage made her realistic and believable, I don't think it made her a great romantic heroine. She was just a little too broken for me to really engage with her in a romantic role. I liked Auggie quite a lot, and I liked them working together, but I kept wishing she wasn't quite as unbalanced as she was, or that the relationship between them had evolved a little differently. I just couldn't get a grasp on them as a couple, not for where Liv was when their relationship started, anyway.

It was the biggest stumbling block of the read for me, and that, along with some of the stylistic elements that tripped me up here and there throughout the story, kept this from being a solid win for me as a romantic suspense. That doesn't diminish my frank appreciation and admiration of the book as a taut, seat-of-your-pants, gut-kicking psychological thriller. In that regard, it's one of the better ones I've read recently, and one I think fans of the genre would enjoy.

Genre: M/M Paranormal Romance; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 175 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Danny Van Doren sees dead people. In fact, that's all he sees. Blind since the accident that stole his sight, his lover, and his career, the writer has been working with Phoenix PD, helping them solve the cases of the spirits he sees.

Unfortunately that help has drawn a lot of attention from media types who want to neatly label him as a charlatan or a fraud. It's making Danny popular for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.

Ghostwriter Logan Riley works for a publisher who wants Danny's story, and they're willing to pay Danny a lot of money to let Logan hang around and write it. What Logan doesn't tell the man is that his publisher prefers when he digs up the most scandalous and salacious bits of interesting people's lives and puts all the gritty details in print.

Some might - and have - said that makes Logan no better than a pack of paparazzo, but Logan doesn't care about the sensationalism of his subjects' lives. He just cares about finding the truth. Truths like whether or not the seemingly earnest Danny is a con man or just mentally ill.

Because Logan knows he doesn't really see spirits. They don't exist.

And he's steadfast on that stance right up until a pissed off poltergeist decides he's getting a little too cozy with the handsome ghost detective.


There's something intrinsically appealing to me about heroes or heroines who manage their lives despite having a disability of some sort, so the idea of a blind guy who sees ghosts and helps the cops find the monsters responsible for them sold me on trying this book. I'm glad I did. Well-written and fast-paced, flavored with spooky ghost activity and two hot guys who were totally into each other, this was a great read. I especially appreciated the nice touches in keeping Danny's blindness realistic and believable while still providing a balanced, descriptive narrative.

The depth of character in both male leads and a solid and nicely layered plot kept me entertained as it provided a few touches of horror, some chills and thrills, and some temperature raising sex scenes. I liked both Logan and Danny. They had genuine chemistry that hit fast and burned deep. Each has inner demons that impacted the evolving relationship as the story progressed, creating realistic, organic conflict and romantic tension.

I wasn't expecting the level of detail and complexity provided in the main characters' backstory. It built slowly, with little bits and pieces of their past disclosed as it pertained to the growing external conflict with the freaky-deaky poltergeist. And there were a couple of secondary characters I really enjoyed. There was even a very subtle secondary romance thread between Danny's sister and her ex-husband that tickled me. All of these elements worked together to create a balanced, well-rounded story.

The romance arc was the only thing that caused me some problems. As much as I enjoyed Danny and Logan together, the timeline of the story was short, with everything happening over a handful of days, so I had some problems with how quickly they became as important to each other as they were. It was the only thing about the read that didn't work for me, and unfortunately, it hampered my appreciation of what was supposed to be a sweeping romantic scene towards the end of the book.

It ended up coming off as cheesy to me instead of romantic.

I loved the epilogue, though. It was set long enough into the future that the issue I had with the romance arc was resolved and the strength of Danny and Logan's commitment to each other was sweet and endearing. As a whole, I felt this was a meaty, entertaining novel that fully engaged and entertained me, even with my issues with the romance arc. I look forward to reading more from Hunter Raines in the future.

Genre: Sci-Fi Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 92 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are  my own.




Space pirate Aurelia Popkiss has issues. Then again, so does every member of her crew, so she fits right in as their fearless leader. It works for them.

Finding a stowaway in with the booty of their latest haul adds a new wrinkle to their lives, though. Aurelia doesn't trust the young Kateryn, but even she couldn't guess the price her and her crew would pay by having her aboard her ship. She has a sneaking suspicion that the young woman has her own agenda. What she doesn't know is that agenda might put a permanent end to Aurelia's pirating days and to the lives of the crew that have become her family.


Short and fast-paced, this novella wasn't as much fun for me as I'd hoped it would be. I liked the characters and the premise of the story quite a lot. Female captain of a crew of space pirates; what's not to like? Unfortunately, there was so much going on in so few pages that the plot just ended up seeming chaotic and rushed, and the ending was pretty abrupt.

The strongest part of the story for me was the characters. I really enjoyed Aurelia and her crew. I liked how they interacted, and their relationships felt very organic and real. I would've been happy to have more backstory and more time with them without the wackadoo stowaway Kateryn. I also wish the romantic elements between Aurelia and Keys had been a larger part of the story, because the little bit I got at the end just wasn't enough to make this really feel like the romance I thought it was supposed to be.

There just wasn't quite enough in some areas and way too much in others for me to really like this one. It was okay, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours reading, but ultimately I think this one will be largely forgettable.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 288 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




It's bad enough Captain Layne Sullivan didn't get the Chief of Police job she thought she deserved, now she's forced to work for the by-the-book Chief Ross Taylor, town new guy and general bane of her existence. When human remains are found in the woods near the site of a teen hangout, though, Layne's issues with Taylor start to lose their significance in the shadow of her growing concern. And panic.

Layne thinks she may know the identity of the person whose remains were found, but if she's right, the ramifications will rewrite everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and her past. To find out the truth, she'll have to depend on Taylor to get to the bottom of a case that went cold long, long years ago. A case that forced her to grow up before her time. A case that scarred her soul.


Expectations are such a killer sometimes. But only sometimes. On one hand, I wasn't expecting a Harlequin Super Romance to have such a solid and meaty suspense thread, nor was I expecting the secondary character depth or complex familial relationships that Andrews created and spun so deftly and realistically. Those were all pleasant surprises. On the other hand, I was expecting a...well...super romance, and unfortunately the romance is the one and only major element that didn't work for me.

My issue with the romance started with Layne as the main character. She's strong, and certainly an independent, competent woman, and she's supposed to be a good enough cop to be at least considered for the Chief's job. Unfortunately, I felt some of her choices, thoughts, and actions were more than just a little flawed. Her personality often struck me as churlish, petulant, and bitchy, and at least some of her actions were flat-out against the very laws she's sworn to uphold.

Though significant issues, thankfully none were consistent drawbacks throughout the narrative, which would have made her character fairly unlikable. It was just enough to create dissonance in the romance for me, though, and make me wonder sometimes why Taylor was so taken with the woman. Because of that, and no matter how much I liked Taylor as a character, which was quite a lot actually, the romance just never got off the ground for me.

I loved the struggle between Taylor and his niece. I found her character particularly well written in that horrifying teen-angst-and-turbulent-emotion sort of way. She was a beast, and she was so horribly wounded, and Andrews did a great job with the highs and lows of that familial relationship. She captured perfectly that quagmire of volatile emotions that family can engender in each other. And in defense of Layne, Andrews also captured much of the long-term emotional devastation that can be caused by the wounds family inflict on each other.

If this book had been marketed as a romantic suspense, I probably would have been more forgiving of the issues I had with the evolving relationship between the main characters. Then again, maybe I wouldn't have been as pleasantly surprised by the suspense storyline in that case. Regardless, this one just wasn't quite as satisfying as a romance, and that did impact my overall impression of the read.