A concentrated burst of monster-loving, enemies-to-lovers fun.
Hijinks abound when a prickly dragon-shifter accidentally claims his fated mate without wooing her first.
Fiery and a little reckless, Cherry Hotpepper has spent the last five years cooped up in an aging dragon-shifter’s island tower. Her captor has never said a word to her, and she isn’t entirely sure why he hasn’t eaten her. Yet every escape attempt ends the same way: with someone forcefully returning her to the dragon’s keep. So when another dragon-shifter shows up and offers to help her get home, Cherry leaps at the chance, but she’s already drugged the newcomer with a powerful hallucinogen. Little does she know that Dante Remnac can barely keep his hands off her—and that was even before he was doped up. In the aftermath of a monumental war, Dante’s few remaining friends have all found human women to love. Even so, he hasn’t been actively looking for a bride; stumbling upon his fated mate while visiting his father’s old friend Gideon was merely a happy accident. Still riding high on an ayahuasca trip that sees him chastised by a talking banana after his arms crawl away from him, Dante bites Cherry’s neck, sharing his magic with her and jump-starting their honeymoon...before he’s even learned her last name. Readers in search of character-driven stories will find much to love here, as Cherry, Dante, and a wide cast of secondary characters are all fully realized people. Unwilling to put her family in danger by telling her new husband where they live, Cherry waffles between wanting to escape and yearning for more of Dante’s—literally—electrifying touch. Neither of them realizes her sister is married to his friend, leading to an abundance of miscommunication that never betrays the novel’s overall coziness. Lemming’s latest is a gleefully flirty romp through a fantasyland tinged with shades of Diana Wynne Jones and Heather Fawcett.
A concentrated burst of monster-loving, enemies-to-lovers fun.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780316570350
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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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