Book Review Alert: The Bandalore by DK Girl

Reviewed: April 21st 2023
Released: February 26th, 2021
Genre: Gaslamp MM Fantasy

His second chance at life will be the bloody death of him.

Silas Mercer is a dead man. Or at least…he was.

Upon waking in his grave, he finds himself without a single memory of the life he once lived. Silas is bewildered and lost, and apparently, now in the employ of the mysterious Order of the Golden Dawn. A secretive organisation who specialise in all things supernatural.

To begin with, their plans for him seem to involve nothing more than making a spectacle of himself in front of London society, with his terrible dancing skills and inept attempts to host the occasional séance.

But Silas’s odd new life takes a startling turn when the Order partners him with the scandalous rake, Tobias Astaroth. A quick-tempered, dangerously beautiful man who harbours some hellish secrets.

Their unlikely, and infuriating, partnership soon faces its first terrifying challenge.

A monster straight out of a nightmare is haunting the woods of Leicester, and the Order want Silas and Tobias to end its rampage.

But nothing in this world is as it seems. Not the Order. Not Silas himself, and certainly not the incorrigible and utterly beguiling Mr Astaroth.

For Silas, the perils that lie ahead are many. But few are as dangerous as the bewitching man at his side.

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Book Review Alert: The McConnor Curse by M.J Padgett

Reviewed: April 15th 2023
Released: October 26th, 2022
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Audiobook narrated by Kristen Saburn

Charlotte McConnor has all the luck of the Irish… until she doesn’t. When she agrees to marry Colin, her boyfriend of several months, things go downhill fast. The second the engagement ring slips on her finger, things get strange—and hot. As in, he burns her hometown to the ground every night in a sick game of cat and mouse. Unbeknownst to Charlotte, she’s just met her sin-eater—the man cursed by her family to carry her sins to Hell and keep her cup of luck overflowing. Now he’s out for revenge, unless, of course, they can figure out a way to break the centuries-old curse that has enslaved them both.

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Book Review Alert: Where Shadows Lie by Allegra Pescatore

Reviewed: April 13th 2023
Released: March 20th, 2020
Genre: Epic Fantasy

The Chosen One is dead.

Only his sister can take his place.

Disabled since childhood, Elenor was content to live in her brother’s shadow, besting her cousins at cards and sneaking her girlfriend into her room at night. Now she’s next in line for the throne and beset on all sides by factions out for blood. With time ticking down until someone manages to kill her too, Elenor will be forced to choose between accepting her father’s despotic rule or risking everything for her late brother’s lofty ideals.

Meanwhile, from the rainy streets of Lirin to the scorching dunes of the Mondaer Desert, the death of the Chosen One has inadvertently broken a chain of events five centuries in the making. Ancient forces move in the shadows, calling in debts and striking deals. A monster with a thousand faces fingers his knife, ready to kill, and a pair of fugitives run for their lives, unaware of the danger they carry with them.

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Book Review Alert: Wicked Hunt by SK Alexander

Reviewed: April 10th 2023
Released: January 24th, 2022
Genre: Crime Thriller

A vicious sniper on the loose in Los Angeles. A grief-stricken empath. A ticking clock…


For Nathaniel Colt, Los Angeles is not the City of Angels. For the empath, LA is hell. A quick visit turns into a nightmare when the former special agent becomes embroiled in the hunt for a ruthless sniper terrorizing the city.

When the lurking evil puts the profiler and those closest to him in his crosshairs, a race against time begins and the consultant must rely on his psychic abilities before their time runs out.

Can Nathaniel save those close to him or will LA, once again, prove that it is hell on Earth for the empath?

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Book Review Alert: The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

Reviewed: April 7th 2023
Released: January 24th, 2022
Genre: Crime Thriller

It’s time to solve the murder of the century….

Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford’s novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.

Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today?

Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn’t just a writer of forgotten children’s stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn’t the only one trying to solve it….

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Book Review Alert: Soul Marked by Lissa Bolts

Reviewed: April 5th 2023
Released: October 26th 2022
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Oh, hey. Nora here.

Just over here trying to process everything I’ve learned lately—the least of it being that magic is real, and I’m the last in a long line of practically extinct jinn.

Me? Magic? What?

You might be wondering why all of that isn’t taking center stage in my currently mind-blown state. Well… I’ve got bigger problems.

Namely, I trusted the wrong person.

We’ve all been there, right? But of course, when I do it, I wake up not knowing where I am or how I got there. To top it off, something isn’t quite right with me. I’m off. But maybe that’s just what happens when your heart is splintered into a million tiny pieces.

Whatever the case, I’m done with all the half-truths and secrets. It’s time for me to figure out why everyone seems to know more about me than I do. Why the entire magical world is watching every move I make with bated breath.

But most of all, I’m going to find out why he did this to me. And then I might just make him pay with the one thing that’s ripe for my taking…

His soul.

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Book Review Alert: Messenger by A.L Morrow

Reviewed: March 19th, 2023
Released: August 1st, 2022
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Hell on Earth? Not if these angels can help it.

Nothing has been the same for Messenger angel Cyrus since Jace was exiled from the celestial community. Night after night, he searches Sin City for the demon who might have the answers he needs to find his lost love. But his quest hasn’t gone unnoticed. Dark forces reach Cyrus first, and a brutal encounter with his enemy leaves him at the mercy of the ruthless warrior who once broke his heart.

Believing Cyrus has been killed, Jace returns to Sin City with a death wish and one thought in mind: vengeance. Instead, he finds Cyrus alive and the unsuspecting center of a plot that will change Sin City—for the worse—forever.

Time has never been a friend to Jace and Cyrus, but now the clock is ticking faster than ever. With the fate of the city on the line, they’ll need to choose between saving each other or saving their souls. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Reviewed: March 30th, 2023
Released: August 13th, 2020
Genre: Science Fiction Fantasy

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Twice Upon a Name by Various Indie Authors

Reviewed: March 29th, 2023
Released: April 20th, 2023
Genre: Fairytales

Double the name and double the magic, mystery, and mayhem

Once upon a time, a fairy tale name generator issued a challenge to a group of authors. Volume Two of these quirky stories brings double trouble.

In this clean YA anthology, spy on thieves discovering their princely identities, accompany villains seeking redemption along with accident-prone geese, and rejoice in the reunion of siblings separated at birth. Side with twins split between good and evil, giggle over mistaken identities, and discover the secrets of royal doppelgängers. When fates are intertwined by a namesake, mayhem and mischief are sure to follow.

Venture into this collection of adventurous stories by award-winning and up-and-coming authors and see if what happens once . . . happens twice!

Pssst…some characters from Once Upon A Name might make a comeback, but the two sets and all stories in them can be read as standalones.

All proceeds donated to charity in support of reading and literacy.

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Book Review Alert: A Threat of Shadows by JA Andrews

Reviewed: March 25th, 2023
Released: September 6th, 2018
Genre: Epic Fantasy

Alaric betrayed everything he believed to save Evangeline — and failed.

His last chance to save the woman he loves lies in an ancient Wellstone, a repository of power, buried and lost long ago.

Luck—or something more troubling—leads him to a small group searching for the same stone.

A disgruntled dwarf,

a bumbling wizard,

and an elf with an unsettling amount of power.

If he can gain their trust, they might help him find the cure.

But the Wellstone holds more than he knows, and a terrible evil he’d thought defeated is stirring again, searching for the stone.

Can the companions survive a traitor, a dragon, and their own pasts to reach the stone before time runs out? Read my thoughts…