Singh shines with elaborate, compelling worldbuilding and scorching sexual and emotional tension.
As an Arrow, Vasic has been conditioned to remain even more detached than most Psy, so when he's asked to guard Ivy, an empath who may hold the key to their society’s survival, he's unnerved by her emotionalism and his long-buried desire to belong.
The corrupt Psy-Council has fallen, and the remorseless regime of Silence—the enforced practice of remaining emotionally distant—has been lifted. The members of the elite Psy paramilitary group known as Arrows are independent now, loyal to no one but themselves. Forging a wary alliance with Kaleb Krychek, the de facto leader who caused the council to fall and has since stepped into its void, the Arrows must help staunch the spread of a deadly psychic contagion that threatens the lives and sanity of the Psy race. Krychek suspects that empaths may be the answer, though their emotional nature was brutally stifled under the Silence. Vasic, second-in-command of the Arrows, is assigned to find and protect empath Ivy Jane, who has been living beyond the grid after undergoing a devastating state-mandated “emotional reconditioning.” Vasic is a cold creature of the shadows, and he knows he can never be forgiven for the damage he’s done under the command of the Psy-Council. However, the more time he spends with Ivy, the more her honest emotions affect him, reawakening feelings he barely remembers. Somehow, under Ivy’s accepting and fascinated gaze, Vasic just might learn to feel again—emotions like hope, passion and love. But first, Ivy and Vasic must vanquish the contagion and a life-threatening legacy from Vasic’s violent past. Paranormal author Singh continues her popular Psy-Changeling series with an emotionally intense and gratifying romance while advancing a new reality for her complex psychic society set on Earth a few generations hence. Shadowy Arrows make great redeemed alpha heroes, and pairing profoundly damaged Vasic with the blatantly empathic Ivy works brilliantly.
Singh shines with elaborate, compelling worldbuilding and scorching sexual and emotional tension.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-425-26401-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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