Gray Seas

Gray Seas by Hailey Edwards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poor Rue has a lot on her plate at the moment. She’s trying to generally make changes for the better in the Black Hat Bureau, protect her mate from retaliation after her kaboom in Hael, avoid getting kaboomed herself, avoid whoever is carving up victims, stop whoever is poisoning folks, and keep the Wargs generally in line. Not too much, right? Well the end of this one adds even more to her plate.

Rue and her crew are the best, and now that we’ve got the Warg crew in some books, I’m completely on board with their food-heavy adventures. This book is a lot of chasing clues, travel, legal negotiation, lack of sleep, and it always seems to end with Rue adopting more misfits. I was very sad to get inside her cousin’s head for some chapters, but do still hold out hope that we get a happy ending for him and a certain human. This whole entire crew needs a nice roadtrip/vacation short story where they can shake it the sillies when the dust settles here. Or people stop getting blown up. Sigh.

View all my reviews

The Gloaming

The Gloaming by Jamie Dalton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really fantastic read from the start - I had trouble putting it down! The story dove right in (my favorite) and introduced characters I can’t wait to learn more about.

Erin is a vampire hunter. We don’t really know how that came to be, but I’m here for it. She has some slightly better skills, but her most useful is being able to sense where vampires are and heal/run a little faster than average. She and her two friends own a cafe together, and they’re all in on Erin’s secret. One is the “guy in the chair” and the other is… the idea man? Almost love interest? It’s not super clear because when we start the book we find out he was murdered, but staged to look like a suicide while away in Scotland.

These now grieving friends try to continue with life, but folks keep turning up dead under suspicious circumstances, so it doesn’t take a “guy in the chair” to figure out vampires are targeting people around Erin. It’s around this time that some infamous vampires and mystery men walk into Erin’s life, causing her to re-assess her black and white view of vampires. There’s some elements of fated mates, some interesting vampire lore, and a lot of injuries that take us through the rest of the book. It ends on a little cliffhanger, but I can forgive it as long as I get more of this!

View all my reviews

Love Potion Number 99

Love Potion Number 99 by Daphne James Huff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The magical elements of this story are highly suspect, but I still very much enjoyed this as a romance. Ethan and Brooke meet in a rather unconventional way and things spiral from there. When Ethan’s foster puppy eats one of Brooke’s grandmother’s prize plants they are immediately enemies, at least in Brooke’s eyes.

These two do still need to live in the same neighborhood, so while Brooke and her friends enjoy his outdoor workouts from afar, she keeps up a good front of holding the grudge. Ethan, however, is curious and putting on a good show. While Brooke is dealing with the loss of her grandmother and living up to her legacy (or against her mother’s legacy), Ethan is managing through some life changing news. Losing his parents taught him to just go where life takes him, but getting a diagnosis that puts him out of his firefighting job and into a really terrible inspector gig is not the best situation for him. A surprise invite to Brooke’s Halloween party ends up putting these two back in each other’s path and potentially exposes Ethan to a “love potion.”

It was adorable watching these two try to adapt to life as a reluctant couple, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eventually they find their footing, but it takes a lot of the usual miscommunications to get there. I did really enjoy meeting Brooke’s friends and hope we get to see them all paired off in their own unique romance installments.

View all my reviews