Ultimately skippable.
A secretive club owner might just break his greatest rule: Don’t fall in love with an Immortal.
Ildaria Garcia left the Dominican Republic 200 years ago after having survived a vampire attack that left her an Immortal and in constant fear of retribution from the man who attacked her. Moving from place to place, she does her best to keep her past hidden while acting as a vigilante. However, social media has proved to be more of a bane than a boon, forcing Ildaria to lie low after her crime-fighting exploits go viral. The Night Club (yes, that's the name) is run by Joshua James Simpson Guiscard, known as G.G. Though the venue caters to a supernatural clientele, G.G. is all human. A traumatizing event has made him both fearful of and fascinated by Ildaria and her kind. While Ildaria is physically running from her past, G.G.’s avoidance is more the emotional sort. When the possibility of Ildaria and G.G. being mates is brought up, due to their immense attraction, both of them must grapple with their prior baggage. Can G.G. ever love an immortal vampire? Can Ildaria live with endangering a man she's come to care for? There’s nothing terribly new in this paranormal romance—lots of black leather outfits and the notion that fate has selected a one true love. While it’s refreshing to see a vampire heroine, the excitement quickly fades once Ildaria’s previous sexual trauma is revealed and italicized Spanish words start being sprinkled in. If readers are expecting a nuanced representation of a woman of color–turned–vampiric superhero, they won't find it here. Her characterization is hollow enough to hear an echo. Readers who have stuck with the 30-plus books of the Argeneau series will find this to be a passable addition even if the cast is getting rather large. New readers: Don’t bother, as you’ll either be lost, annoyed, or infuriated.
Ultimately skippable.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-295630-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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