Evelyn intends to kill the man she’s destined to love.

She’s the shifter alpha’s fated mate, and the red marking on her hand is the proof. Captured as a child and raised in a human government facility, she’s the weapon that will finally bring the shifters to their knees.

Evelyn knows her purpose. Get close. Learn the alpha’s secrets. Then kill him.

Sent into shifter territory under the guise of a failed kidnapping, she quickly finds herself in the presence of her mate—the elusive Alpha Knox. He’s feared, ruthless, and yet nothing like the monster she was taught to expect. Instead of brutality, he offers protection. Instead of cruelty, he offers patience.

For the first time in her life, Evelyn begins to question who the real enemy is.

If she accepts the mate bond, she betrays her people. If she completes her mission, she destroys the only man who has ever treated her like she matters.

My thoughts…

You know, the whole reason why I decided to read this is book is because I read a one-star review on Goodreads where the person talked about all the things they didn’t like about this book, and it piqued my interest. Not because I thought it would be fun to mock the book, but because everything she had an issue with, sounded like my cup of tea. With that said, it did take me a while to fully get into this book. A lot of it is Evelyn living with Caleb while she struggles with her mission and her growing feelings for him. I did feel like the writing was a bit clunky and stilted, but I wanted to see this story through, so I pushed on, and I am glad I did.

I honestly thought this would be your typical story where she’s programmed to take out the enemy, catches feelings, and then confesses to everything she was tasked to do. Except, that is not what happens with this book. Even though Evelyn is developing a connection with Caleb and he’s showing her compassion and comfort that she never received in the human facility she was raised in, she still thinks she has to kill him for the greater good. She has been brainwashed and manipulated since the age of 7 when the human agents abducted her, saw that she had a mate mark to a werewolf, and then started training her as their weapon to infiltrate the werewolves and take out an Alpha. So, even though Caleb makes her feel safe and she catches feeling for him, she still reminds herself that they are nothing more than animals and resolves herself to the mission.

Now, the beginning may have been slow going for me, but let me tell you, when she goes to kill Caleb this book takes off like Usain Bolt. Unfortunately for me, this part took place at 10pm when I wanted to just read one chapter before bed. I wound up staying up past midnight, heart racing, devouring the second half of the book. For me, this is when the story got really good. It’s no longer just Evelyn and Caleb in his house, it’s Evelyn living on pack lands after she completes her mission. For obvious reasons, they can’t release her to the humans because she knows too much, but for whatever reason they won’t kill her, either. So she’s stuck living on pack lands, trying to navigate her new life, while coming to terms that she was manipulated and brainwashed by the people she trusted. I found this portion of the book to be fascinating and at that point I had a hard time putting the book down.

I liked the fresh take the author had with the mate marks. Rather than some invisible internal pull we always read about with shifter novels, this one is a mark on your hand that you are born with. The mark changes color if you are intimate with someone other than your mate, or if you betray your mate in any way. I liked that there was a visual marker for mates and that due to the magic of the mate bond, it was a unique pattern and color. I also liked that the storyline did not follow the usual story arc I expected. Evelyn could have given up her purpose, confessed, and moved on like every other heroine who is trained to assassinate someone. However, she followed through with her mission, and paid the price. Another aspect that I liked was that each chapter had an illustration depicted from a scene in that chapter. It was interesting seeing the characters through the author’s eyes.

All in all, it was a bit of a rough start for me, but it sank its hooks in me and grabbed me at the end. It ends on a cliffhanger, but thankfully for me, book two is already out.

My childhood crush is my injured captain… and I’m the physio secretly keeping him on the pitch.

Rafe Calder is everything I learned not to want: flashy, reckless, adored, and far too beautiful. He is also hurt, lying about it, and somehow mine to fix.

I catch the limp no one else sees, then make the dumbest deal of my life. Private rehab, locked rooms, my hands on him daily, and one rule I keep pretending still matters.

At first, he pushes because he hates being handled. Then he listens when pain scares him, lets me see the lonely man under the captain’s armband, and looks ready to break when Donovan Reid makes me smile.

Somewhere between treatment lights, late-night checkups, and one reckless after-hours mistake that turns into more, I fall. Not for the fantasy I used to worship, but for the man who finally stops performing.

Then his injury truth explodes, and protecting him could cost me everything.

Worst of all, loving him might end his career.

Excerpt…

Meet the Author…

Trading boardrooms for bedrooms (of the fictional kind!), Peyton Lux is now fully dedicated to writing steamy workplace romance that leaves readers utterly satisfied.

Her former life in marketing taught her how to craft compelling narratives – a skill she now devotes entirely to her steamy workplace romance novels.

Peyton lives and breathes romance, infusing her stories with undeniable heat and fiercely earned happily-ever-afters.

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Giveaway

His Beautiful Game Blitz

A 90’s Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades… only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers its pawns.

July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social status junior year provokes unlikely ride or die friendships, others’ secrets she’s not allowed to tell, and an unexpected crush on the ambitious Adrian Reed. The result is far more insatiable than anyone anticipated.

Before cell phones and social media, walk the halls of Pure Pines High as they are set figuratively to a Soundtrack of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Counting Crows, R.E.M., The Cranberries and Radiohead… When the preps were challenged by the grunge phase, and polo shirts and loafers were traded in for flannel shirts and name brand combat boots. Their world was changing, and it was hard to remain CLUELESS.

She’s known and competed with him her entire life. He was conceited and arrogant. She was treading water to survive Pure Pines. When circumstances strip them of cheerleading and football, the odds throw a replacement neither of them expects, and something the halls of Pure Pines High are certain to reject. One touch, an out of ordinary lingering stare, and something ignites that won’t die down, only does it count if it’s a secret? How long will it stay behind closed doors? When love is denied, lust becomes unapologetic.

My thoughts…

I loved the premise of this story. As a 90’s kid, I was excited to read a book about life before cell phones, and social media. A time before everything was recorded and uploaded for everyone to see. The 90’s were a time where it was dog eat dog. If you bullied someone, you did it to their face, not over the internet. If you had a crush on someone, you gave them side eyes while giggling with your friends, you didn’t DM them. The 90’s just seem like such a more simple time, and I was excited to dive back into nostalgia.

Unfortunately, this book did not work for me. The story jumps around a lot and it was hard to get my bearings. I had no sense of timeline of events, and didn’t know if things were happening at the same time, days apart, or months apart. I also couldn’t get a good grasp on the characters themselves. I didn’t feel like anyone had their own distinct voice. In the end, the book felt more like the author was telling us their vision for the book, versus painting the picture for us to see it and that disconnect kept me from really connecting with the story.

The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.

My thoughts…

What a story! I’m not usually a scifi reader. I generally like there to be some sort of romance to the story. However, this one was so entertaining that I didn’t need romance to enjoy this. As someone who watches anime and has seen many shows where the main character gets put in a game world and must survive, I had no problem imagining the world dungeon concept of the book.

I listened to the audiobook and I feel like a huge reason why this book worked for me was the narrator. He did such a phenomenal job with all the different characters. His range was insane and any time a character spoke, I didn’t hear him making their voice, I just heard the character. I honestly do not know if I would have enjoyed the book as much as I did if it wasn’t for Jeff’s voice acting. He truly brought the story to life.

I truly enjoyed this story. It is hard not to root for Carl and his cat, Princess Donut. This poor dude can’t seem to catch a break in the story, and it makes for some hilarious times. I mean, just look at the cover, this dude is fighting for his life in his boxers. No shoes, no pants, just running around in underwear and a jacket the entire time.

The series has one more book to go before everything wraps up for Carl and Princess Donut. I am not sure if I will wait until the 9th book comes out to continue the audio-series, or if I will just cath up on the series now and then wait with the masses for the finale to drop. If I’m being honest, it’s probably going to be the latter because I want to be part of the masses reading that final book at the same time.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

It seems like lately the font for book titles is more whimsical, but I didn’t just want to showcase new books that everyone is seeing on their social media accounts. I wanted to show off some of my favorite books from throughout the years. Some of these books may be over a decade old – books that a lot of people might not have heard of.

If you click on the covers it will take you to my review for each of the books. 

Airk Azdajah, the rightful King of the White Clan of dragon shifters, spent half a millennium being tortured by the false High King Pytheios. The only reason he’s alive is a the man who kills Airk will be consumed in his own fire. So Airk was kept alive—barely—and unable to shift in his prison cage, driving the creature half of him into madness. Airk escaped, but he’ll never be truly free. Because what good is a king who can never let his feral dragon loose, never fly, and never lead his people?

Angelika Amon is the last unmated phoenix. The problem? She has no powers. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Angelika hates being dormant, especially now that her three sisters are blissfully mated to powerful dragon shifter kings and are very much part of the fight to take down the rotting king Pytheios. What good is a completely powerless phoenix in a battle to save the dragon kingdom?

Desperate to find some way to help, she offers herself to Airk as a mate—just for political leverage. Now a dormant phoenix is mated to a dragon who can’t shift. But the balance of power is about to change when Pytheios decides to claim Angelika for himself…

My thoughts…

Have you ever read a romance where you DIDN’T root for the MMC?

That was me with this book. Airk was held in a dungeon and tortured for over 500 years. I get that he thinks he’s super dangerous and no good for Angelica. However, I could not stand his back and forth with her. His whole “I won’t mate you, but screw any male that thinks they are good enough for you” attitude, and his wishy-washy with doing the deed with her, only to run off on her was beyond frustrating. I was so over him that I REALLY wanted her to mate with the berserker we meet in this story. He’s a little bit dangerous, but also mature and a leader of the wolf shifters. He would have made a great alliance, but nooooo Angelica had to keep pining away, giving chances to, and going to bed with Airk only for him to run off and claim he would never mate her. Gah! I honestly was so over him and his insecurities. Angelica deserved so much better.

It didn’t help that it took me until the halfway point to actually start to get into this story. Mainly because of Airk’s character. I just found him to be insufferable, and was tired of dealing with their feelings for each other. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty of the story. I mean, this rando overthrew the dragon high king over 500 years ago, killed everyone in charge, imprisoned one of their kids, and has caused nothing but destruction and chaos since that day. This was the finale to the series, this was the big moment for everyone. I wanted the story to focus more on the rebellion and the good guys trying to rally together to take out the bad guy, not “will he, or won’t he” on the whole mating thing.

I really enjoyed the previous books in this series. I thought the dynamics and the overall story arc was great. However, this one missed the mark for me, which is sad since it’s the final book in the series.

Previous reviews from Inferno Rising
The Rogue King
The Blood King
The Warrior King

This post is linked to Sunday Post, Staking the Shelves, Sunday Salon, and #IMWAYR

As I predicted, it’s been a very active summer. We’ve already had 3 typhoons head our way since June 1st, with another heading our way this weekend. The incoming typhoon was listed as a Cat 5 level typhoon. So this week will be spent watching the weather, and preparing the house. Needless to say, due to the high temperature and humidity, the choppy waters, and the constant vigilance of what’s developing out in the ocean, we haven’t done much of anything this summer. We already had one trip cut short when we tried to travel right before typhoon season started, only to have a typhoon arrive on opening day. So, this summer may be less fun in the sun, and more indoors with a book. Not that I’m complaining. After taking a few years off due to school, I have enjoyed catching up on all the books I’ve been wanting to read.

This month I took a break from going through my TBR on Goodreads. I read The Cursed King and Kamisama Kiss, but that was about it. I was starting to get burnt out because the books were just not bangers for me. I can’t say it was because I wasn’t in the mood for them, because I was. I just had a hard time with the characters, the writing style, or sometimes the story as a whole, and in the end it left me wanting more. So, instead of completely burning out and needing a break from reading all together, I decided to shift my focus to my summer reading challenge, catching up on my book club reading, and took a walk through the library and snatched up a few books that caught my eye. Oh and I also signed up for a couple of ARC’s that I’m excited to read. So, thankfully, I was able to divert myself away from a reading slump.

Currently Reading

Read this month

 

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On Insta

 

Fighting for love, honor, and freedom on the galaxy’s lawless outer rim…

When Earth space marine Harper Adams finds herself abducted by alien slavers off a space station, her life turns into a battle for survival. Dumped into an arena on a desert planet on the outer rim, she finds herself face to face with a big, tattooed alien gladiator…the champion of the Kor Magna Arena.

A former prince abandoned to the arena as a teen, Raiden Tiago has long ago earned his freedom. Now he rules the arena, but he doesn’t fight for the glory, but instead for his own dark purpose—revenge against the Thraxian aliens who destroyed his planet. Then his existence is rocked by one small, fierce female fighter from an unknown planet called Earth.

Harper is determined to find a way home, but when she spots her best friend in the arena—a slave of the evil Thraxian aliens—she’ll do anything to save her friend…even join forces with the tough, alpha male who sets her body on fire. But as Harper and Raiden step foot onto the blood-soaked sands of the arena, Harper worries that Raiden has his own dangerous agenda…

My thoughts…

This was a new take on aliens that I’ve never read before. Usually it’s some sort of breeding program because females are rare on their planet. But rather than that typical story line, this story focuses on an arena where creatures throughout the galaxy fight for entertainment purposes. Romance isn’t something sought after in this story, it’s just something that happens due to proximity.

One thing that I liked about this story is that there isn’t a lot of back and forth with Harper. She’s a strong female character who is dead set on getting back to earth, but once she realizes that that just isn’t possible in her lifetime, she accepts it and changes her focus to being a gladiator in the arena and helping the other life forms who may have been illegally trafficked. The fact that she didn’t constantly battle against her fate, or the people around her was a nice change of pace, and allowed the story to flow at a good pace.

I will say that I felt like the romance moved a bit too quickly for the amount of time she was there. With that said, we are talking about intergalactic gladiators, so sometimes you just need to let go of normal expectations and enjoy the ride.

Three rules keep a memory thief alive.

Rule #1: Don’t touch skin.
Rule #2: Don’t look too long.
Rule #3: Don’t let them see what you really are.

Tonight, I’m breaking all three.

Kira Shadowmere is the best memory thief in Vespera — a city where memories are bottled, sold, and savored like wine, and the people they’re stolen from are left to rot. One touch, one pull, thirty seconds: she can lift the worst night of your life right out of your head. The Guild pays in silver. Her conscience pays in everything else.

But memory thieves don’t live past twenty-four. Tomorrow is her birthday.

One last job should buy her way out. Instead, it binds her — soul-deep, unbreakable, fatal — to Lysander Winterbourne: the last son of a slaughtered house, the lord who executes thieves like her, and the only person in the world whose presence quiets the curse that’s been drowning her since she was three years old.

She should run. He should kill her. Neither of them does the smart thing.

Now the Guild’s master wants her caged, a power no Null should have is waking in her blood, and the deeper Kira digs, the clearer the truth becomes: she isn’t the only memory thief in this story. Someone has been inside her head. Someone has been editing. And what they took will cost her the only family she has left.

My thoughts…

I was so excited to dive into this book. It sounded new and fresh, and I was all about this adventure with a memory thief. However, this book just didn’t work for me.

At first I thought it was just that I was not used to the author’s writing style, or maybe just needed more time to connect with the characters. As time went on, and I was 3/4 of the way through the book and still struggling, I knew it was time to put the book down. It was just words to me. There were times where I was able to picture scenes, but then I would have a hard time holding onto that image as I read. I think a lot of it stemmed from the writing. There was a lot of repetitiveness throughout the book. We would be given a feeling, thought, or even dialog, and a line or two later, we would get the same thing again, but maybe with one word changed. This happened quite a bit and it really took me out of the story. I am also not sure what happened with the scene between Kira and Gideon. Her name is Kira. The synopsis tells us that, and all the characters in the book call her that. Yet, when she goes to see Gideon, he calls her Kirstie, and there’s no explanation of it. No, “he’s losing his memory of me”, “he always called me Kirstie as a way to hide my identity”, or any other way to tie in the fact that her pseudo father figure is calling her some random name.

I love the idea of this story. I see the world that the author tried to create and it’s rich and deep. There are a lot of players in this story, and they are not all just black and white. There’s a complexity to them that molds their actions. I feel like if this went through a good editing and scrub down it would shine and be right up there with the big fantasy romances.

First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince.

As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

My thoughts…

This was a cute romance between the first son of the US and the Prince of Wales.  Nothing groundbreaking, but a nice palette cleanser.

A lot of this story deals with politics as Alex’s mom gears up for re-election. Things like navigating the press, creating stories to direct the narrative, and just the overall pressures of always being watched were present in this story. However, the author does a great job adding in things that are not just campaign rooms or briefs. We got moments of weekend fun, trips, and visits between Henry and Alex while they try to keep their relationship under-wraps.

This story is told in Alex’s POV. So we don’t get too much intel on how things are going for Henry during all of this. I will say, the third-person narrative was jarring for me. I kept forgetting who Alex was, and I really didn’t like the fact that his mom was listed as her given name. I do much better with stories when they are in first-person since I’m able to better connect with what’s going on through their eyes.

I did find that the story dragged at times, with all the email exchanges. Pages and pages of emails between the two as they quote books. I get that it was there to build a connection with the readers, but I was just bored out of my mind. It was a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. I wanted to see them interact. I wanted to see them navigate this new change in their life. I didn’t want to read an entire chapter dedicated to emails.

This story started out strong, but did have some hiccups for me both with the writing style and with the overall flow of the story.