A smart, sexy story filled with ghosts, history, and resilience.
A superstar publicist has to contend with the literal ghosts of her past when they attempt to ruin her life in this debut novel.
Gwendolyn Montgomery has it all: the nice apartment, the fancy clothes, the perfect job, and she’s just recently begun dating James H. Watson, who just might be the man of her dreams. So when terrible things start happening at all of her events, with a clear message that they’re intended for her, she knows the past she’s been running from might have caught up with her. Across town, Fonsi Harewood, shop owner and medium, is informed of a breach between the world of the living and the world of the dead that will come to a head very soon. In order to stop it, he needs to find help from someone more powerful, someone who can manipulate the worlds themselves, while also dealing with the love triangle he’s found himself in with his ex-boyfriend and an attentive ghost. Together, Gwendolyn and Fonsi might be either the team that can save the world or just watch as it burns. Haynes has created a mystical, sensuous, dangerous world of spirits and power while also making characters that feel three-dimensional and knowable. Friendships feel real; family problems have the weight of generations of fights and secrets behind them. Like the best fantasy novels, there is room for a million more stories to be told, to see how things progress after the last pages with both the characters and the world itself. There are twists and turns, but everything is grounded in a sense of reality, impressive for a world steeped in spirits. This is a strong debut for a new, interesting voice with things to say.
A smart, sexy story filled with ghosts, history, and resilience.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781538768518
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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