An imaginative and engaging romance set in a world watched over by angels and plagued by demons.
An ER nurse discovers her guardian angel is real—and hunky—in Withrow and Pinkis’ fantasy romance novel.
Brianna Weldon has finally accepted that her memory of what happened the day her mother died—as she recalls, the two of them were attacked in their car by shadow creatures until a beautiful man with bright blue eyes appeared and saved Brianna—was just a traumatic hallucination. At least, that’s what her therapist says it was, and she’s sick of arguing about it. That was five years ago, and Brianna is ready to move on with her life—she’s just secured a nursing job close to her best friend, and she’s finally leaving her hometown behind. On the road to her new home, however, the necklace that (so far as she remembers) the blue-eyed man gave her—the one he told her never to take off—starts to burn her skin. When she removes it, the shadow creatures immediately return and run her car off the road. Luckily, her guardian angel, who turns out to be a literal angel from an otherworldly realm called Elysium, once again arrives to pull her from the wreckage. His name is Cameron, and Brianna quickly learns how useful he is to have around; he’s a “slayer of demons and speeding tickets alike,” and when he sleeps in her bed at night, her thoughts aren’t entirely chaste. It soon becomes clear that demonic forces are out to steal Brianna’s pendant, and they may be too powerful for even Cameron to handle. Withrow and Pinkis slowly and deftly build the romantic tension between Brianna and her angel, highlighting his mystical yet alluring glow: “He was all sunlit haloes in the daytime, but the moon had a different effect, making him quiet and silver, like a shimmering reflection. One that drew her ever closer. One that she was aching to reach out and touch.” The relative wholesomeness of the relationship is effectively balanced by the truly horrifying—and sometimes seductive—beasts who crawl out of the underworld to complicate Brianna’s life.
An imaginative and engaging romance set in a world watched over by angels and plagued by demons.Pub Date: July 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798990811201
Page Count: 318
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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