A fine blend of genres with an engaging protagonist.
A Western time-travel romance in which a woman goes back in time to save a handsome gambler.
In 1880 Arizona, Caleb Young is gambling with a few friendly men in a saloon when a suspicious stranger walks in and asks to join them. When the stranger obviously cheats, Caleb calls him out on it, and the man reacts poorly by drawing his gun. Caleb does, too, and the altercation ends with the stranger dead. Caleb leaves town, finding a run-down cabin in the middle of nowhere to hide, but a mysterious figure finds and shoots him, leaving him for dead. In 2019 Seattle, Dr. Emily Sweeney is just starting her trauma-center shift when she hears gunshots coming from the waiting room. She runs toward the scene and gets shot while attempting to help. Emily never wakes up—at least, not in her own body or in her own time. She has a vision of an older gentleman who claims to be her great-great-grandfather and says that he has a gift for her. Emily then wakes up dressed in strange clothing, some 200 feet from a cabin where more gunshots ring out. Soon, she finds a half-dead Arizonan bleeding out. It’s clear that Emily and Caleb are inexplicably connected and potentially in danger. Over the course of this novel, Swenson presents a story that not only flows through different eras with ease, but also through different genres with equal facility. The narrative is solidly paced and displays the author’s gift for salient detail, and the chronology moves forward and backward, as necessary, to provide readers with the full story without ever sacrificing clarity along the way. The characters feel fully fleshed-out and genuine; readers will be particularly intrigued by Emily’s modern perspective on a time and place that’s very different from her own.
A fine blend of genres with an engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-833571-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A fast-paced, action-packed paranormal romance that teases a more promising sequel.
A witch discovers her true lineage after she’s abducted by a handsome werewolf in this dark Victorian romantasy.
All her life, Cordelia Carter has believed that she’s descended from a line of powerful witches—and that’s true, but now that she’s moved in with her aunt Lenora in London following her mother’s death, certain traits, such as her heightened sense of smell, ability to see at night, and increased appetite, have brought up lingering questions. After crossing paths with a handsome, top hat–wearing stranger, Cordelia quickly uncovers the truth. She’s a lycan, someone who happens to be both part witch…and part werewolf. The latter half she inherited from her father, an Alpha werewolf who’s just sent his second-in-command, Bishop Daniels, to abduct her and return her to her rightful place at Trevelyan, the estate belonging to the Albion Pack. Unfortunately, Cordelia’s father also has more nefarious intentions for her, and they start with forcibly marrying her off to Bishop, his intended successor, in order to ensure the Pack’s strength continues for generations to come. Surrounded by dangerous werewolves at every turn and unsure of whom she can really trust, Cordelia has been restricted from using her magic to save herself—and she can’t challenge her father’s authority as Alpha, either. Under Bishop’s guidance, she begins training to understand her new lycan abilities, but she’s also confronted with her increasing attraction to her father’s strongest lieutenant. Archer’s debut romance is a quick, diverting read, but it struggles to balance heavy themes with more lighthearted ones. The will-they, won’t-they tension between Cordelia and Bishop contributes to some of the book’s best scenes, but their building romance sits in sharp contrast to some pretty dark twists that may take readers by surprise. The ending hints at the clear possibility of a stronger sequel with the two characters positioned as a united front against multiple antagonists, and there’s the potential for an already rich supernatural world—consisting of witches, werewolves, demons, necromancers—to be built out even more extensively.
A fast-paced, action-packed paranormal romance that teases a more promising sequel.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781250393074
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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