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
Epic stakes, palace intrigue, and plenty of magic: Stark’s newest series is off to a solid start.
A romantasy mash-up of Crave (2020) and Fourth Wing (2023) from the bestselling author of A Court This Cruel and Lovely (2023).
When an undead stranger shows up on Arvelle’s doorstep, he offers her an impossible choice: Agree to kill the emperor, or watch her brother die. The bad news is that the emperor is an ancient and very powerful vampire protected by an elite company of soldiers. The good news is that Arvelle is a champion fighter herself—or at least she used to be. And, left with a choice that is no choice, she sets out for the capital to do the impossible. This is, on the whole, an engaging read. The Rome-inspired setting is interesting, its magic system is well-defined, and the politics of the emperor’s court is a nice complement to the action in the arena. Arvelle is a complex but sympathetic protagonist and Stark surrounds her with characters who also feel real—most importantly, the boy who broke her heart and the emperor’s sadistic son. The pacing is a bit slow at the beginning, but readers who get past the first third of the book will be amply rewarded. Fans who come to romantasy mainly for the love story may be slightly disappointed that the romance elements mostly stay in the background, while other readers may appreciate the emphasis on the action (and, of course, there are more installments to come). Stark has been building a dedicated following since she self-published Speak of the Demon in 2021, and her Kingdom of Lies series has been huge on TikTok. This author clearly understands the demands of her chosen genre: She knows how to hit the tropes while introducing intriguingly novel details and maintaining suspense.
Epic stakes, palace intrigue, and plenty of magic: Stark’s newest series is off to a solid start.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780063436718
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
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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