A well-judged and absorbing mix of genres with strong characterizations.
A young woman suddenly gains potent psychic abilities and grapples with an inappropriate romantic attraction in this debut novel.
Enjoying a rare vacation at a ritzy Panamanian resort, Amanda Griffith is set on relaxing with her best friend, Lydia Shelby. They’re ready to celebrate after finishing medical school and will soon be busy residents, Amanda in anesthesiology and Lydia in psychiatry. Or that’s the plan until a solar flare changes their lives drastically. They’re attacked by a smoky black column of pure evil that renders Lydia unconscious. Acting instinctively, Amanda zaps the entity with a surprising blast of energy from her fingertips. The mystified Amanda learns from Matt Chadwick, a young man at the resort who had tried to help, that solar flares can cause some people, called Sentinels, to quickly develop formidable psychic talents that last 10 years. The Committee, an old and secret organization, directs Sentinels in battling evil, for which they’ll be well paid. Both women turn out to be Sentinels, but Amanda is the most powerful type, a Sentinel 10. As such, she’s given especially cushy compensation, yet the work comes easily for her once she begins. More difficult to handle is Amanda’s explosive confrontation with her inner darkness and a potentially ruinous romance. Valenti, in her engrossing novel, at first seems to be offering a familiar plotline about discovering supernatural abilities to fulfill a special destiny. But Amanda isn’t a young adolescent, and the story’s true focus is her love triangle with a ruggedly handsome but emotionally unavailable pilot and a psychopath who can feel normal emotions only when he’s with her. The author nicely ties the plots together and skillfully establishes the psychological groundwork for her characters that makes Amanda’s dilemma believably wrenching, helping to counterbalance her considerable powers, beauty, and wealth.
A well-judged and absorbing mix of genres with strong characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77742-730-6
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Brigid Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet fantasy brews little conflict.
A disillusioned palace guard and a powerful mage ditch the Queendom in this quaint Sapphic romantasy.
Undying loyalty to a sociopathic queen can get pretty old. For Reyna, a palace guard, the final straw comes when a potential assassin holds a knife to her throat and she finds that Queen Tilaine doesn’t care whether she lives or dies. Decades of fealty collapse in an instant, and truthfully...Reyna doesn’t care either. She’s finally free to escape the palace grounds and never look back, to travel to the ends of the earth and open a tea shop/bookstore. Reyna and her girlfriend, Kianthe, have dreamed of combining their favorite pastimes into a solid income and living a life free from royal obligation and bloodshed. But Reyna isn’t the only half of the couple who will need to escape Tilaine—Kianthe is the Arcandor, the Mage of Ages. Kianthe wants no part of the Queendom, nor any role in the Magicary; she’d rather act on her own to decide what duty she owes the world’s magic. Reyna and Kianthe flee the Queendom in the night and arrive just south of dragon country in a backwoods town named Tawney, meeting charming locals and uncovering an abandoned barn perfect for their tea- and bookshop. As Reyna and Kianthe embrace their independence, they tackle threats of dragons, Queen Tilaine’s spies, and commands from the ancient Stone of Seeing, all while openly and patiently navigating their newly public relationship. Thorne’s novel encompasses all the wonders of fantasy—pet griffons, vengeful dragons, and a bloodthirsty monarch—while capturing the heartwarming moments of a blossoming romance. Side characters, including a nonbinary diarn crushing on a young lord, add to the whimsy as Thorne deftly weaves a closed-door, cozy romantasy.
A sweet fantasy brews little conflict.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781250333292
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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