A revved-up supernatural tale that takes some impressively sharp turns.
A doctor gets caught in a war between vampires and warlocks in this paranormal romance series opener.
Bane rules the Savannah, Georgia–based Vampire Motorcycle Club. He’s more than 300 years old, fiercely protective of those he considers family, and wants the warlocks of an organization called the Chamber out of his territory. A confrontation in Savannah’s National Wildlife Refuge between the two groups reveals that Constantin Durance, a powerful necromancer, is Bane’s true opponent. Bane and his vampire companions Meara Delacourt and Luke Calhoun survive the battle, and days later, Bane learns that his human friend firefighter Hunter Evans has been mortally wounded after saving a child’s life. He uses magic to travel to Savannah General to see Hunter and runs into Dr. Ryan St. Cloud. Bane is fascinated by the fact that she’s not like other humans; to him, her skin strangely glows, and later, it’s revealed that his “Voice” commands don’t work on her. After Bane vanishes with her patient, Ryan goes home, drinks copiously, and assumes she hallucinated the vampire. Then he shows up at her door—but he hasn’t come to claim her just yet. He needs her medical knowledge; Hunter, whom Bane has bitten in order to save his life, isn’t “Turning” properly. Meanwhile, Carter Reynolds, president of the Wolf Pack Motorcycle Club, contends with Sylvie, a warlock working for Constantin. Day opens her new paranormal romance with a scene of impressive vampire action, which includes severed limbs. There’s plenty of sexual tension throughout the narrative; Ryan, who believes herself to be unremarkable, is described, from Bane’s perspective, as having the “most delicious, curvy legs he’d ever hoped to have wrapped around his waist.” Day drops many hints that Ryan’s healing skills and glowing skin have inhuman origins, and readers should expect a fabulous and fitting solution to the mystery. Bane is shown to have empathy for helpless humans in need, which proves that his heart still beats. Day also includes a few amusing genre references along the way, such as naming an Irish Wolfhound Bram Stoker. A final state of domestic bliss presents a strong foundation for a sequel.
A revved-up supernatural tale that takes some impressively sharp turns.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68281-475-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.
A TV producer and a detective try to stop a strange pattern of young women disappearing.
In “Auclair, Loooziana,” disillusioned detective John Bowie reluctantly meets in a bar with Beth Collins, producer for the true crime show Crisis Point. She needs to interview him about the disastrous case of the missing Crissy Mellin, but he refuses. The teenager disappeared three years ago on the night of a blood moon and hasn’t been found, but a suspect hanged himself in jail after signing a confession. Case closed, says John’s boss. But John is convinced that their prisoner could not have been guilty, and he’s deeply upset at his failure. “The Mellin case messed up your life,” Beth tells him. She persuades John that Crissy’s disappearance is the latest of a series that happen on the night of a blood moon, the colloquial term for a total lunar eclipse. “It’s going to happen again,” she predicts. And wouldn’t you know, another blood moon is coming in four days. Tick, tick, tick. Beth’s boss at Crisis Point insists on airing an update on the case, but Beth knows the show is going to get it wrong, and its reputation will be ruined. Meanwhile, there’s an electric sexual tension between Beth and John that the author toys with nicely—do they, or don’t they? The answer plays out in detail more than once. The characters are fun if easy to pigeonhole: the detective angry at his failure, the honest (and beautiful) outsider eager to do her job but susceptible to love, the hero’s corrupt (to say the least) boss, and the ogre who carries out said boss’s dirtiest deeds. Even John’s dog, Mutt, plays a small but vital role. When John found him, he’d been “a flea-bitten hide wrapped around a skeleton that whimpered.” Little plot devices are easy to spot, like the phone that rings at a crucial moment, or the handgun that John places in Beth’s hand for her protection. Does Chekhov’s guideline apply here? The romantic angle leavens the dark theme, and readers will have plenty of incentives to turn the pages.
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781538742983
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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