An engaging, unconventional, and frequently humorous love story.
A university student becomes entangled in romance with a Norse god in this debut novel.
College senior Abby Veracruz Lanfier takes a summer job working for quantum physicist Dr. Ellie Varghese. Unexpectedly, the two women find a lone man in the seemingly barren Arizona desert. Abby is instantly attracted to him, and the fact that he’s the “God of Mischief, Chaos, & Lies” hardly concerns her. Prince Loki, unhappy with his life and standing on Asgard, has decided to offer his services to Midgard, or Earth. Reciprocating Abby’s mostly lustful feelings, he asks her out on a date. Romance quickly ensues, and the two are in love and discussing marriage within a matter of days. Their imminent wedding necessitates meeting each other’s relatives, including Loki’s mother and Asgard’s current Regent, Frigga. In the interim, Abby and Loki engage in bouts of steamy sex. Unfortunately, covert agency Clear Sky, having learned Loki is on Earth, is heavily monitoring him. He fights these efforts by finding and destroying the agency’s bugs. As the royal wedding approaches (this story unfolds within a week), Abby plans for a “cosmic roller coaster” ride to Asgard. Anuszkiewicz’s otherworldly series opener is delightfully tongue-in-cheek. Abby, for example, easily accepts that Loki is a god but is still surprised by his interest in mundane things, including yoga (“He was totally in Downward Facing Dog position”). Likewise, the couple’s sex scenes, while explicit, are sometimes gleefully bizarre, such as “corporeal copies” of Loki invading the bedroom. Characters throughout are exceptional, with headstrong Frigga and industrious Ellie, who’s researching wormholes for interplanetary travel, two of the best. Nevertheless, the novel delivers minimal conflict since Clear Sky isn’t much of a threat, and a serious enemy, who’s apparently escaped confinement, earns only a minute reference.
An engaging, unconventional, and frequently humorous love story. (list of characters, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: April 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-953047-01-4
Page Count: 441
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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