A richly imagined, lurid love story that’s not for the faint of heart.
Love is brutal, bloody, and ecstatic in this passionate romance.
This first installment of Drake’s trilogy follows a nameless narrator (she’s often called Ancilla, a Latin word for a female slave) who’s a nerdy, fantasy-gaming, bisexual, red-headed college dropout, disowned by her Catholic parents for her sexual adventurousness and now living in an unnamed rustbelt city. She meets a distinguished librarian twice her age with a taste for occult literature and a BDSM fetish; she dubs him Magister and begs him to make her his submissive. A whirlwind of kink ensues—with informed consent and safe-words carefully established—in which Magister whips Ancilla with a riding crop, pierces her with needles, cuts her with knives, and performs a traumatic magic ceremony that causes her to black out and dream of the underworld. Ancilla loves the abuse, and the megaton-scale orgasms that follow (“We explode as one, we cry out as one, we burn together and are One”). Fortunately, Magister isn’t cruel: he’s extravagantly respectful of Ancilla’s desires and insists that she return to college and build an independent life. Unfortunately, her budding dominant side threatens to undo the relationship when he can’t take the kind of pain he’s been dishing out. Drake’s erotic saga is full of graphic sex, detailed BDSM scenarios, and intricate tutorials on occult sex lore (“A lot of it is Thelemic sex magick, with an eye to gnosis through ecstasy and self-perfection, but a good part of the practicum comes from Siberian and Finnish shamanism”). The prose sounds rather academic at times, but at its best it conveys the charged thrill of BDSM and the sense of intimacy and release that flows from Ancilla’s voluntary surrender to sexual torment: “‘I love you,’ I cry, when the third blow lands, burning like fire….Eventually, the blows stop, and he’s behind me, leaning into me, kissing tears off my cheeks and sweat off my neck.” BDSM afficionados will love it, but normies may find it too much.
A richly imagined, lurid love story that’s not for the faint of heart.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798889404323
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Staten House
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extremely fun, fast-paced, and unusual addition to the marriage-in-trouble romance canon.
A marriage on the rocks gets a second chance—with a science-fiction twist.
Dr. Emery Martín is happily married to her husband Luca…mostly. She’s been madly in love with him since the moment they met, but in the three years they’ve been wed, she hasn’t been able to focus much on him. To the world—including Luca—Emery’s job involves developing medical-grade lasers. In reality, she works at a supersecret San Diego lab that’s engineering a compound to bring mammals back from the dead. Although Emery doesn’t want to admit it, she can tell that Luca feels pushed aside, but she believes so deeply in her work that she has a hard time leaving the lab. When Emery is late for dinner—yet again—on their anniversary, she rushes home only to see Luca get hit by a car. She has the secret compound in her car, and she knows she could get in major trouble if she uses it—but what’s she supposed to do, not save her husband’s life? The compound has only been tested on animals so far, and there’s no guarantee it will even work for humans. It does, though, and Luca comes back to life—with one small caveat. He can’t remember most things, including his marriage to Emery. After almost losing Luca, Emery is now grateful for what she has, and she’s determined to show him that she can be a better, more attentive partner. While Luca may not remember her, their magnetic chemistry is still there. This may be the do-over they needed to save their marriage—that is, if Emery can keep the life-reviving measures she took hidden from everyone around them, including nosy neighbors and her own company. Lauren—the pen name of the duo behind rom-coms like The Paradise Problem (2024)—has created a unique hook that feels genuinely refreshing. Emery and Luca’s unconventional second chance is emotionally compelling, and the slight thriller edge as Emery tries to cover up her actions keeps the pages turning.
An extremely fun, fast-paced, and unusual addition to the marriage-in-trouble romance canon.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781668017753
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
A deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.
A happily engaged woman is pulled back to her hometown—and her first love—when tragedy strikes.
Billie Wright is living her dream, running a thriving fertility clinic in New York City and engaged to a wonderful trauma surgeon named Dean. Her happily-ever-after meant giving up her life in Wisconsin, where she left behind many friends as well as her high school sweetheart, Mick. Although they’d been deeply in love, when Billie’s ambition pulled her away from home and toward the city, Mick couldn’t handle either the distance or her busy schedule. Billie has finally moved on from that heartbreak—but then she receives a phone call from Mick, the first communication between them in years. Her best friend, Erin, died in a car accident, leaving behind an 11-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Now Billie must return home to help sort Erin’s affairs and provide some kind of comfort to Phoebe while grieving the loss of her best friend. Of course, being back home also means being in close contact with Mick. Their feelings for each other may not have ever gone away, and their proximity leads to big decisions for Billie. Can she ever reconcile her current life in Manhattan with her past in Wisconsin? And which one will be her future? Giffin knows how to do drama, and she ratchets up the stakes with every page as she continues to reveal new obstacles for Billie. The ending wraps up quite neatly, but the nostalgia-filled ride is full of twists and turns that will keep readers flipping the pages.
A deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593600320
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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