City of Souls by Mel Harding-Shaw

Bounty hunter Hel’s life depends on staying below the radar and passing as human. But when the infuriating Lord of the City of Souls discovers her hidden power is the key to solving his problems, he reclaims her bond-debt and drags her into the spotlight. He’ll protect her secrets on one condition—that she does everything he asks.

Winged necromancer Bastion would do anything to save the city he rules from the strange magic menacing their world. Even blackmail the angry, intriguing bounty hunter who despises him. As the rulers of the elemental courts converge to face the threat, he’s not sure who hates him more—them or Hel. The only way to keep her close is to make her pretend she’s his.

With dark magic tearing at the fabric of reality and betrayal lurking behind every corner, Hel and Bastion’s fake relationship becomes the only thing either of them can rely on. But Bastion’s past might just come back to kill him.

And Hel’s might kill them all.



Hel was being hunted and all she wanted to do was stay in the shadows. Too bad her special set of skills are required to help save the world. Hiding behind the shell of a human, she has to straddle the line between compassion and self-preservation... and resist the charms of a certain necromancer.

Bastion was everything I love about a hero. Strong and gorgeous, fiercely protective and incredibly loyal, and just a little bit broken, he was such a joy to read about. I kept turning the pages for more of him. For more of the world he inhabited. For more information of what made him such a unique force of nature.

The author did such an amazing job with the worldbuilding. It was easy to see the cities and landscapes she tried to capture. I was equally enthralled and terrified by the creatures of this strange world and all of the people who lived there. I'm still not clear on the lore, but I believe that's something that would work out as the series continues.

Fantastical imaginings, an evil slowly encroaching its way across the planet, and a burgeoning love make for one heck of a story!



Mel Harding-Shaw is a Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy author from Wellington, New Zealand. Her debut novel, City of Souls, is forthcoming in November 2022.

She is also a widely published speculative short fiction writer under Melanie Harding-Shaw.

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Making Faces by Amy Harmon

Ambrose Young was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.

Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.



I'm sitting here, at the end of this story, trying to think of what I could possibly say to convince you to read this book if you already haven't. There have been tons of incredible reviews posted already, such as this one from Aestas Book Blog and this one from Candace. Seriously, if you love love and romance and all of the feels... READ. THIS. BOOK!!

My only thought right now... Bailey. Dude did not deserve the hand he was dealt. None of it.


Okay, so here is everything there was to love about this book:
➳ the unrequited love from the ugly duckling for the gorgeous jock
➳ the fact that said gorgeous jock was also a pretty good guy from the beginning
➳ the whole Cyrano disaster
➳ the game of This or That
➳ everything to do with Bailey and his amazing personality and incredible way of looking at life
➳ Fern's beauty, even when no one could really see it
➳ Ambrose's vulnerability when he was at his lowest
➳ the hope and love that seeped from these pages.

Making Faces is one of those books you never want to end. A book that will never 'get old'. It is pure magic, people!


I still can't decide who was my favorite character in this book. It definitely wasn't Becker (read the book to find out why). Let's just say I really needed to see some justice done and it was my only complaint for this book. However, I do believe Bailey edged out everyone else. As much as I loved Fern and Ambrose, and I loved them a lot, there was something truly special about Bailey.





Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times Bestselling author. Amy knew at an early age that writing was something she wanted to do, and she divided her time between writing songs and stories as she grew. Having grown up in the middle of wheat fields without a television, with only her books and her siblings to entertain her, she developed a strong sense of what made a good story. Her books are now being published in seventeen different languages, truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Levan, Utah.

Amy Harmon has written eightteen novels - the Washington Post bestseller What the Wind Knows, the USA Today bestsellers The Bird and The Sword, The Smallest Part, Making Faces and Running Barefoot, as well as the #1 Amazon bestselling historical From Sand and Ash, Where the Lost Wander, The Songbook of Benny Lament, The First Girl Child, The Second Blilnd Son, The Queen and The Cure, The Law of Moses, The Song of David, Infinity + One, Slow Dance in Purgatory, Prom Night in Purgatory, and the New York Times bestseller, A Different Blue. Her latest novel, The Unknown Beloved, a historical romance, was released April 19, 2022 by Lake Union Publishing and is now available for purchase.

Visit http://www.authoramyharmon.com for more information

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Beauty and the Villain by V.F. Mason

Once upon a time I had it all.
I thrived in all the power and luxury this world had to offer.
Until I found out the hideous truth.
When a man I considered a friend betrayed me in the worst possible way.

The scars on my body burned anew every single day as I only craved one thing.
Revenge.
And to execute it I had to strike him where it would hurt the most.
His family.

I patiently waited in the shadows for more than a decade for his beloved daughter to grow up.
Unaware that a villain was ready to steal her far, far away.

I used to be a prince once.
But a certain underworld king destroyed my life.
The price for his betrayal is his daughter: the princess of the dark castle.



Beauty and the Villain seems like a cross between a redemption and a revenge plot and it grabbed me by the throat right from the beginning.

Rush is the dark prince who is willing to do anything and everything for the vengeance that burns through him. His life was ripped apart and the man who ruined everything doesn't get to live his life untouched. What better way to make him suffer than to take his daughter and do... whatever he wants?

Aileen is the young woman who doesn't have a clue of the reality she lives in. She doesn't really know her father, her family, herself. That doesn't stop her from defending them with everything she's got. It doesn't stop her from fighting against the kernels of truth to what Rush reveals. All she knows is that she's his captive and she has to find a way to escape this villain.

I'm loving the mystique surrounding Rush and his castle on an island. What really happened? How did he become obsessed with revenge? What exactly was done to him and his family? And will his newfound heart have the power to save him? Save Aileen?

Book two can't come fast enough. I just hope Aileen finds some sense in the meantime! She's too focused on thinking she knows everything already, despite evidence to the contrary, typical to the newly adult, and I can only hope that she learns something from the suffering she receives.


V.F.Mason always loved reading books and had quite a few fights with her mama over the genre she liked (romance, duh!) She studied filmmaking and thought that would feed her desire for stories, but that didn't happen.

Finally, when she was tired of all those voices in her head, she sat down and wrote a book. It was a huge decision to make and she thanks her friends and family for supporting her in it.

When she is not writing, she can be found with her friends doing all sorts of crazy things or reading recent romance books that were written by her favorite authors.

Visit http://www.vfmason.com for more information

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Suck This by Lani Lynn Vale

Blood, sex and alcohol.

That was what Club Worth was all about.

Ever since vampires had come out to the world, people had been obsessed. Take a walk on the wild side and see what the nightclub was all about.

Acadia Powell, on the other hand, didn’t do vampires. Nor did she do messy.

What she did do was stay away from people like Constantine Worth, Master of the City, and the most gorgeous man in the history of men. It didn’t matter that he had hypnotizing eyes, beautiful lips, and the sexiest body she’d ever had the privilege of laying eyes on.

It should be easy for her to stay away, but with each subsequent encounter, it’s becoming harder and harder to fight the growing need inside of her.

***

Constantine Worth knew that Acadia was off limits. Not only was she human and not willing to slum it with the undead, but she was also the baby sister of the city’s chief of police. The man that liked to arrest him every other day and twice on Sunday.

He should hate her based solely on the last name she shared with her brother. Yet each time he sees her, he forgets that he’s supposed to be playing nice. She sets his blood to boil, and each time she lets the verbal slurs flow, he finds it harder and harder to maintain his distance.

Soon, he will have to make a choice. Maintain his upstanding relationship with human law enforcement, or take what he wants, and damn the consequences.



Con wanted Acadia.
Acadia wanted Con.
These two couldn't keep their eyes or their thoughts off of each other.
Too bad Acadia's human.
Funny how forbidden fruit is always the sweetest!

When one of my favorite authors decides to dabble, once again, with paranormal romance, you better believe I was gonna be all over that! LLV's books are my solace and I found some comfort with this one.

While this story tackled some ugliness (those activists were no joke), I couldn't help but be enamored by all that was developing between Con and Acadia. He was so mysterious and utterly irresistible to her. And although she was supposed to be off limits, he couldn't help but give into temptation, again and again and again.

---

Not gonna lie, I did have some issues with this story.
* It was a bit all over the place and I sometimes felt like I was dumped in the middle of an untold story.
* Acadia had a best friend, but aside from a couple of scenes, that friend was never seen again. Which was weird because Acadia went through something intense. Where was her friend then?
* other than putting the blame for what happened to Acadia at their feet, the human activists were never really put to justice that I could see. Does that mean her case is still open?
* Con's organization, his foothold on their town, his allies, everything that was a part of him was so vaguely mentioned, but I wanted some more details. For example, his dad popped up on page. More please!
* Con's dead daughter and undead wife. Ummm... why wasn't this properly explored? What happens now?
* Acadia's entire life was vague. She was such a one-dimensional character that I struggled to give her a chance.
* Honestly, more details about the important stuff and less about the unimportant stuff would have worked well.


Lani Lynn Vale is married to the love of her life that she met in high school. She fell in love with him because he was wearing baseball pants. Ten years later they have three perfectly crazy children and a cat named Demon who likes to wake her up at ungodly times in the night. They live in the greatest state in the world, Texas. She writes contemporary and romantic suspense, and has a love for all things romance. You can find Lani in front of her computer writing away in her fictional characters world...that is until her husband and kids demand sustenance in the form of food and drink.

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Stolen by the Warlord by V.K. Ludwig

I stole her soul… now I will fill her womb.

The leaders of Solgad call me a rebel. They banished my tribe to the drought-cracked plains, denying me what is mine by right—the title of warlord and a place among those who wield power.

But not much longer.

To save those under my protection, I steal an Earth woman away from her betrothed. With a sting of my tailclaw between her ribs, I force a soulbond on Ceangal, ruining her for all males to come. Once I put my child in her belly, her influential father has no choice but to support my claim.

With my tribe at the brink of collapse, the female’s reluctance toward me means nothing. I stole her soul, yes, but she will surrender her body. Come her next heat, she will beg me to fill her with what only I can give.

It may save my tribe.
Or destroy us both.

Stolen by the Warlord is a full-length novel, and the first book in the Sci-Fi Romance series Ash Planet Warriors. While this is a spin-off to Garrison Earth, taking place 20 years after the invasion, the series can be read on its own.




The cover... ridiculous.
The blurb... not worthy of this story.
This book... so much better than I could have expected!

Toagi was seen as a rebel warlord, his rightful claim deemed unsubstantiated, and he was treated as scum. All he wanted was to protect his people, ALL of his people, and his tribe needed help. To solve his problem, he stole the intended bride of another warlord, a woman of power, bonded her, determined to make things right. He didn't intend to fall for her.


For her part, Ceangal didn't go quietly into the good night. She was smart and despite some early misconceptions based on rumors and not fact, she came to see that Toagi was so much more than people made him out to be. She discovered that he was honorable, loyal, intelligent, and probably the best male she'd ever known.


I adored this story. I enjoyed the characters, the plot, the underlying tension of the warlords and the world they inhabit, basically everything. Honestly, the only reason I didn't give this five stars was due to the fact that a lot of words from an alien language were used without definition. I had to try to work out the meanings myself, which was a bit tiresome. Other than that, this book was perfection for me and if you're someone who loves alien romance with plenty of heart and substance, you'll love this!


If I could introduce myself the way Daenerys Targaryen does, then it would probably sound like this:

mother of two children and the Clan of the Woodlands series,

drinker of two cups of coffee a day,

admirer of the Whippet and the Thoroughbred,

breaker of every single diet after two weeks,

loser of important ID’s,

caretaker of eleven hens,

minder of my own business and

lover of forests and mountains.

Visit http://www.vkludwig.com for more information