Black Hat, White Witch (Black Hat Bureau Book 1)

Black Hat, White Witch by Hailey Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What an interesting new world and wonderful set of characters to meet! This wasn’t your average procedural, nor was it a straightforward paranormal romance. While I hope we get there, it was a nice blend of world building and something new.

Rue “escaped” from the Black Hat Bureau after the traumatic events of a case she was working on. Assumed dead (since that’s your typical exit strategy from that organization filled with blackmail and questionable moral character), she has embraced her new life trying to convert from a black witch to a white witch. She also has a “kid” in the form of a rescued 10-year-old-not-aging soul from said traumatic serial killer case. Just as she is fully settled into her new life, her old partner and a new hottie show up to mess up her life.

A copycat for the serial killer they destroyed is surfacing, luring Rue out of hiding and back into Black Hat. It doesn’t hurt that she is also fascinated by the aforementioned hottie, despite his half-fae half-demon heritage. While we are still learning about Rue’s backstory, it was really interesting to watch her grow and navigate what would have been a minefield of temptation 10 years prior. I didn’t think I’d enjoy reading about someone tempted by eating hearts, but here we are. While we do wrap up the case in this book, the larger storyline is certainly still filled with surprises for us in the future books. I am usually one who needs romance thrown in, and while it is present in small doses here, this is (I guess) a slow burn.

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The Marionettes

The Marionettes by Katie Wismer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved this book! As the first in a series, it gave me all the things I wanted - dove into the world and let me figure stuff out as I went, introduced a lot of characters without giving me too much information to judge them, took me along on a twisty turny path of story, and I am left dying for the next book. OK, that last part I could do without having as a cliffhanger, but you are forgiven.

We are dropped into Valerie’s head on a supernatural campus as she is gearing up for her initiation into “The Marionettes.” She’s a blood witch, which is super rare, so she should have an easy time passing, except her powers have been acting funky. In true teenage style, she keeps this hidden, trying to deal with it on her own. This is reinforced when right off the bat she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her, sending her into a tailspin. Oh, and her mom is apparently an evil right-hand-lady to the vampire ruler of their area. If I understand correctly, supernaturals are “out” in this world, and rule their areas with different degrees of harshness. Witches mostly serve these vampires in various capacities, but humans are mostly food.

Valerie’s friends are great, though, so there is at least some bright spots in her life. If only she would confide in them more. The secrecy of the initiation testing leads to even more secrets and now folks are showing up attacked or murdered, which puts an ominous pall over the entire campus. Her unlikely ally in initiations ends up being the “prince” of the vampires. Things go all sorts of wrong there, too, but it’s too early in their story arc to understand where it will go. No big romance fireworks in this book, so I assume we will get there in future installments. With a hard cliffhanger at the end here, I am eager to start book 2!

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Over the Moon

Over the Moon by Hailey Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m still a little blown away that so many things ended up getting wrapped up in this single book. We start where we left off and things go WAY off course quickly, leaving even more loose ends than they started with.

Dell did her job and somehow navigated fae politics to get help in the war, and the inklings of a plan. Then faerie and earth end up mushing together in a very bad way, putting that on her already long list of to-do’s. In this post-apocalyptic world, they need to rescue Isaac’s brother, protect the supposedly future king of faerie, make sure their backup is actually on their side, not get ensnared by the fae now occupying earth, and probably a thousand other things. Oh, and there’s the whole pack/mate/future of the world stuff, too.

I had a lot of fun in this last installment, feeling like the time in faerie did end up contributing to their ultimate ending. We get oodles of shifting, danger, familiar faces, some true stakes, and what is maybe the best outcome we could hope for here. Is everything completely wrapped up? No - we don’t really know how humans are going to keep on going, but the paranormals are mostly complete. I will say that I finished this book hoping Theo had a spinoff book in the works but sadly that looks like it was abandoned. The start of it is in the epilogues but we are left incomplete there. I wish this world continued!

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Wolf at the Door

Wolf at the Door by Hailey Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am still struggling with Isaac, but LOVE Dell in this series. They gave her so much more depth of character. This is the “roadtrip” book, where they pick up a few characters, throw them outside the supporting cast and have us learn all about a new place at the same time.

When last we left Dell, she was in trouble. They ended up throwing her in supernatural prison which, obviously, is not great for a pack animal. This happen quickly at the start, somehow everyone is convinced breaking her out of jail is a good thing, and that they should trust a fae king, and that we’re all good with Isaac being able to shift to cover for Dell, and … a million other probably bad decisions, but made sense at the time. This puts Dell and her love triangle/ex-love triangle together in faerie, trying to… gosh I kind of forget. Oh! It has something to do with them needing their teenage winged friend back to be the person they are rooting to become king? It gets really complicated in the machinations and motivations in this book.

The love story, if we can call it that, does make a lot of progress. By progress I mean that they say I love you which… do they even know each other well? Sure they’ve been in life threatening situations but it feels like a fated mates quick type of love. I guess I’m on board, but can we please stop hurting Dell? She cares so much about so many people and I think she gets the short end of the stick most times. I can see the character growth from her, and it was definitely a wild ride in this book, but book 3 can’t come quick enough.

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Dining with Angels: Bits & Bites from the Demonica Universe

Dining with Angels: Bits & Bites from the Demonica Universe by Larissa Ione
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Is this required reading for the Demonica series? No. Did I need to read this because I like to be thorough? Yes. It was a very quick read, especially if you are not actively creating all the recipes in the book. I hesitate to call this a short story anthology because some of them are really just scenes strung together in the same time period of a few days.

I’m not going to go into full breakdown because that would essentially recreate this quick book, but if you’re looking to “check in” with any of your favorites from the series, this is your chance. You see all the familiar faces, or at least learn more about what they’ve been up to. Some have smutty goodness, some are just romance, some are just conversations. Overall, it left me feeling like the series is wrapped up tight (even though I know it continues on, these characters I classify firmly in HEA territory). You obviously should not pick this up unless you’ve read the series and/or if you are an avid recipe enthusiast. Since I read this on kindle I’m not sure how easily I will be able to grab recipes out of this, but it is a fun concept.

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The Witch of Wall Street

The Witch of Wall Street by M.J. Etkind
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book had a really unique spin on your typical witchy romance. In this world, magic is real but hidden, and Miriam and Nelson both have their own magical baggage to address before we get to a happy-ish ending.

Miriam is a workaholic with chaos magic. She has worked her whole life to contain this side of her, only letting it out during her nightly broomstick rides or when it bubbles up uncontrollably. Her childhood was spent embarrassed of her obviously chaotic magic, even overshadowing the childhood friendship (or attempted friendship) of Nelson. Nelson inherited a bit of a more beneficial magic that can give him or those around him a dose of lucky benefits. This drove Miriam to be jealous and that particular resentment colored her memory of the past until they re-meet as adults.

Nelson, still a very positive person, is now leading a charity that finds homes and jobs for those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to find them. Miriam’s firm, on the other hand, is secretly trying to steal the deal for new housing out from under said charity. It’s all hush hush so this puts Miriam in a bit of an awkward position when she find herself attracted to and then spending the night with her ex-arch nemesis.

This is a fade to black type romance, which didn’t bother me so much because there is A LOT they end up needing to address on their magical adventure. Oh, and they are on a magical adventure because Nelson’s magic teleporty thing and Miriam’s broomstick run away. It’s a magic thing, apparently, but ends up forcing a lot of overdue conversations, reconnections, and the Nelson/Miriam one night stand grows to multiple nights/days/weekends. Miriam also is forced to re-asses her career and what she wants to do with her life. It was definitely a journey, but ends up mostly wrapped up in a neat bow by the finish.

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