Book Review Alert: May Day by Josie Jaffrey

Reviewed: September 23rd, 2024
Released: July 9th, 2020
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy

If the murderer you’re tracking is a vampire, then you want a vampire detective. Just maybe not this one. It’s not that Jack Valentine is bad at her job. The youngest member of Oxford’s Seekers has an impressive track record, but she also has an impressive grudge against the local baron, Killian Drake.

When a human turns up dead on May Morning, she’s determined to pin the murder on Drake. The problem is that none of the evidence points to him. Instead, it leads Jack into a web of conspiracy involving the most powerful people in the country, people to whom Jack has no access. But she knows someone who does.

To get to the truth, Jack will have to partner up with her worst enemy. As long as she can keep her cool, Drake will point her to the ringleaders, she’ll find the murderer and no one else will have to die.
Body bags on standby.

May Day is the first book in Josie Jaffrey’s Seekers series, an urban fantasy series set in Oxford, England. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Shards of Hope by BL Jones

Reviewed: September 22nd, 2024
Released: January 19th, 2023
Genre: Superhero Fantasy

Hope can be a prism of scars from which light shines.

Twenty years ago, an infamous scientist created Liquid Onyx, a world-changing chemical which led to the rise of superheroes and supervillains.

Jack Roth is not a superhero. He’s an assassin, a killer, a lethal weapon forged and controlled by the evil organisation Obsidian Inc.

Leo Snow isn’t a superhero either. He’s a British secret agent who spends his life protecting the world and saving everyone he can.

When these two men’s lives collide on the streets of Danger City just as Obsidian Inc is gearing up for another cataclysmic scientific discovery, they’ll both need to reckon with their dark past, messy present and potentially hopeful future. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The Haunted Hotel by Vawn Cassidy

Reviewed: September 10th, 2024
Released: August 24th, 2024
Genre: Contemporary Paranormal Fantasy

Have a frightfully good stay…Morgan Ashton-Drake hasn’t given his ancestral home in Yorkshire a second thought in decades. He has a great life in the States, running his stepfathers hotel empire with his brother. So what if he’s all work and no play. He’s not missing out on anything important.

But when a suspicious death and rather public scandal at his childhood home forces Morgan to return to England for the first time in years, he’s not keen to confront his past. What he didn’t count on was the seriously cute little blonde disaster who seems to be single-handedly running his eccentric grandfather’s hotel.

Ellis Sparks has worked at the Ashton-Drake Manor House Hotel since he was sixteen and he loves it from the bottom of his soul. Always the eternal optimist, he’s never met a frown he can’t turn upside down; that is, until he meets Morgan Ashton-Drake, the grumpy grandson of his employer.

With the hotel in danger of closing, and convinced Morgan is the only one who can help to save it, the resident ghosts decide to try their ghostly hand at a little matchmaking as an incentive to get him to stay. After all, how hard can it be to get a grumpy workaholic to fall in love with a twinky ray of sunshine? Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The First Ethereal by E.L. Williams

Reviewed: September 7th, 2024
Released: October 29th, 2020
Genre: Contemporaray Fantasy

Lost magic, buried secrets, love, and found family. Can Lilly and Storm find the First Ethereal before all is lost?

Super empath Lilly is almost relieved to be living her last human life. With only her spirit guide, Jack, for company and the world unravelling around them, she longs for the peace of the Eternal Forest.
When catastrophic floods force Lilly from her home, fate intervenes, and she finds refuge with Storm, a widowed ex-witch who has mysteriously lost her magic.

As Lilly falls in love with life and finally finds the family and community she has always dreamed of, the two become entwined in a desperate mission to find the First Ethereal – the one being prophesied to save the world from imminent destruction.

But they’re not the only ones seeking this mythical being. Dark forces, driven by fear and greed, are closing in, determined to seize the Ethereal’s power at any cost – and they’ll destroy anyone who stands in their way.

As the clock ticks down, Storm must unlock the secret of her missing magic, while Lilly confronts the devastating truth about who Jack really is. Are some truths better left buried?Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Blooded by Nat Kennedy

Reviewed: September 26th 2021
Released: September 25th, 2021
Genre: Contemporary MM Fantasy

A broken mage. A penitent vampire. Can they put aside the horrors of the past to save each other?

Plagued with erratic, volatile magic, Nicodemus Green focuses his entire life to stop an evil sorcerer who brainwashes or kills anyone in his path to domination. Ten years into this crusade, Nick stumbles upon his former Academy instructor in the Austrian Alps. The strict and pious Byron Domitius has cloistered himself in an isolated manor. Alone and starving, he hates the twisted, damned creature he has become.

A prophecy calls for Nick and Byron to bond by blood to finally bring an end to the sorcerer’s hidden agenda. The two are forced to see beyond their shared past, and Nick finds himself desiring more from his old instructor than just his magic. But are these emotions real, or do they come from the heat of their bond? Read More…

Book Review Alert: The Lightning-Struck Heart by TJ Klune

Reviewed: August 8th, 2021
Released: November 12th, 2019
Genre: Gay Fantasy Romance

Once upon a time, in an alleyway in the slums of the City of Lockes, a young and somewhat lonely boy named Sam Haversford turns a group of teenage douchebags into stone completely by accident.

Of course, this catches the attention of a higher power, and Sam’s pulled from the only world he knows to become an apprentice to the king’s wizard, Morgan of Shadows.

When Sam’s 14, he enters the Dark Woods and returns with Gary, the hornless gay unicorn, and a half-giant named Tiggy, earning the moniker Sam of Wilds.

At 15, Sam learns what love truly is when a new knight arrives at the castle – Knight Ryan Foxheart, the dreamiest dream to have ever been dreamed.

Naturally, it all goes to hell when Ryan dates the reprehensible Prince Justin, Sam can’t control his magic, a sexually aggressive dragon kidnaps the prince, and the king sends them on an epic quest to save Ryan’s boyfriend, all while Sam falls more in love with someone he can never have. Read More…

Book Review Alert: A Grim Affair by Rachel Stanley

Reviewed: August 5th 2021
Released: April 12th, 2021
Genre: Dark Fantasy

Wait! What? The Grim Reaper’s real?

Emma lives a normal life, so normal that even her own mother has been known to accuse her of being boring.

That is until the Grim Reaper starts haunting her dreams, and then her normal life becomes anything but. Not only is she stalked by Blake, the wickedly handsome ‘Keeper of Souls’, whenever she sleeps, but a mysterious stranger follows her every move during the day.

Despite the danger, Emma finds herself inexplicably drawn to the scythe carrying reaper. Will loving him be the death of her? And just who is the stranger who lurks in the shadows? Read More…

Book Review Alert: Shattered Moonlight by K.L Bone & Erin McFadden

Reviewed: August 4th 2021
Released: February 1st, 2021
Genre: Fairytale retelling

Every night, the wolf wailed his sorrow to the lonely moon.
Every sunrise, her heart echoed his mournful call.

**
Celine treads a worn path through the cursed wood to pray beneath the Hawthorn tree for her sister’s safe return. The trail is dangerous—her nightly pilgrimage is stalked by monsters who dwell in the murky shadows. One moonlit evening, the beasts come for her, yet instead of meeting death, Celine is saved by a fearsome wolf.

As Celine and her wolf develop an unlikely companionship, she begins to suspect the complex creature is more than he appears, and perhaps his fate is inexplicably tied to the kingdom’s curse.

When a handsome huntsman arrives intent on slaying her protector, Celine must face her fears to save her big bad wolf. Read More…

Book Review Alert: The Last Magus by Mark Piggott

Reviewed: August 1st, 2021
Released: May 18th, 2021
Genre: Comtemporary Fantasy

Marcus Gideon awoke at the crossroads outside the border town of Armändis. Lost, with no memory of his past life, he was stabbed through the heart and left for dead. His life was saved by a blacksmith’s kindness who replaced his damaged heart with a mechanical, magical miracle—a clockwork heart. The gears clicked, the motor spun, and his heart started beating again, powered by his own magical energy.

Gideon was alive, but his savior was no ordinary blacksmith. Henry Botàn was a Magus, hiding out in Armändis to protect the weapons within his magical armory. The swords, spears, and other-worldly artifacts were potent, some cursed and even forbidden to wield. His responsibility was to protect these weapons from falling into the wrong hands, but he was old and past his prime. He needed an apprentice, and Marcus Gideon may be the one he waited for. As Gideon searches for clues to his past, he looks toward his future and his fate in Attlain as THE LAST MAGUS. Read More…