Review: Kings of Chaos by Eva Ashwood

Kings of Chaos by Eva Ashwood

Series: Dirty Broken Savages #1

Publication date: June 18th, 2021

Pages: 484

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

I was a good girl once, but now I dance with devils.

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. I wear vengeance like a suit of armor.

I've got a list with six names on it. Six people who wronged me, who hurt me, who took everything from me. Six people who turned me into the monster I am now.

And I've crossed off every name but one.

One more name. One more death. Should be simple, right?

Yeah, you'd think so. But it turns out revenge is a messy business, and when I end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, I royally piss off four brutal, twisted, gorgeous men.

Gage, Priest, Ash, and Knox.

Lucky for me, the last name on my list is someone they've got their own grudge against, so instead of killing me, they offer me a deal. They'll give me a chance to exact my vengeance, and in exchange, all they want is...

Me.

I'm not stupid. I've played this game before. Even though they've agreed to help me, I know they want to punish me too. They want to toy with me. To let their demons loose on me.

But maybe these Kings of Chaos have let my pretty face fool them.

Because I'm just as vicious as they are. And I've got demons of my own.

Kings of Chaos is a full length dark new adult romance with enemies-to-lovers/love-hate themes, featuring a slightly psycho heroine and four even more psychotic men. What happens between these pages will be dirty, dark, and delicious, so read at your own discretion.

Available at:

Review:

River is out for blood and has already collected 5 bodies worth for her troubles. She has a list and only one name remains, but finding a way to pin down the slippery snake to add him to her collection proves to be tough. When her latest lead turns up to be a dead end she is frustrated enough to track down the person who sold her the misinformation and kill him so he wouldn't make the mistake of double crossing someone again. It was in that alleyway with blood on her hands that she encounters the Kings of Chaos. They could kill her outright for daring to kill another outside of their club but they're intrigued by her and want to know if she was leaving the body there as a calling card for a rival gang. Determined to know her motives they take her captive until she tells them who her true mark is. They decide that she is best kept under their roof and within their line of sight as she carries out her path to vengeance so it doesn't fall back on them some how. But along the way they start to realize that the psycho woman with the silver hair and the smart mouth is a bit more than meets the eye. Her monster calls to their monsters and maybe there is more to this motley crew of misfits than just a single deal.

I absolutely loved every second of this book to the point where I decided to trudge my way through a sleepless night to read it from start to finish. Well worth it in my opinion. The dynamic between River and the Kings of Chaos reminded me a lot of the Harlequin Crew of Caroline Peckham's creation. Their attitudes and the way they interacted seemed very similar. This was a good thing for me because that series is definitely one of my all-time favorites. I almost didn't read this book because I could have sworn I had already read it before. But, luckily, I had not so I was able to add another 5-star read to my yearly tally.

I found River's tough-as-nails personality to be refreshing from all the weepy whimsical wimps that a lot of the female protagonists are. If she were captured and tortured like so many series usually have the heroine go through so the men can white knight for her, River would get free and massacre her captors before the Kings even realized she was missing. I loved her brand of crazy and while sometimes I really wish she would get out of her own way, she still was adorably endearing.

With any harem I always have to have a favorite and Priest is mine. He is cold but not because he just enjoys being an asshole. He's cold because he suffered a huge loss and doesn't know how to cope with it. He shuts down and removes all emotion because he doesn't want to feel any emotional pain and so he takes all the happiness out of the equation too. I loved watching River slowly chip away at his exterior.

I am dying to read the next one to the point i had to PHYSICALLY remove the book from my presence in order to write this review. If you are looking for a reverse harem story with a kickass female and some hot angry men then this is the book for you. Eva Ashwood outdid herself and I can't wait to keep reading!

Review: Come Out Swinging by Sam Hall

Come Out Swinging by Sam Hall

Series: Reach for the Moon Trilogy #2

Publication date: April 24th, 2021

Pages: 372

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

DNF Percentage: 53% (185 pages)

Synopsis:

They struck me down.

They tried to end me.

But I'm about to come out swinging.

Available at:

Review:

Paige woke to a pounding headache and a dark realization from the town coroner. Paige's father did not die of a stroke but of foul play. Now she is on a mission to find out who killed her dad and who hurt her while also trying to organize the fights for the Alpha position that she had set about to avoid choosing someone herself. Along the way she starts to explore what it means to be a nix and what power that may hold. When she touches on something bigger than her understanding with her men she finds out that she is the catalyst for change within the shifter world. But can she stay alive to fill that role?

I don't DNF a book easily. There is always that voice in the back of my head that tells me that if I quit now that there may be a time when I wonder what happened and have to start the series all over again. The question I asked myself when I find a grumble in my internal monologue as I reach for my ereader to start my reading time. If I am that against picking up that book and reading, should I even be reading it? There are so many books out there in the world and there is no way I will be able to read them all in my lifetime. So I need to make sure the time I spend reading I am devoting it to books I enjoy the stories of. This one was not for me. 

Once the plot line twisted from Paige being simple a alternative version of a wolf shifter to something greater that involved what they essentially saw as shifter gods, it was done for me. I was enjoying watching Paige explore her identity and the mystery of her father's death but when they started hyping her up to be this all powerful being, I wanted to read no more. I have read too many books that turn that way over time and I always found them boring. A key to characters is making sure they have equal or more weaknesses to their strengths. I feel making the character essentially a goddess may be a little too strong. 

I think if the book lost a bit of the extra fluff within it then it would be an interesting premise. But at 53% I tapped out.

Review: Lone Wolf by Sam Hall

Lone Wolf by Sam Hall

Series: Reach for the Moon Trilogy #1

Publication date: March 26th, 2021

Pages: 320

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

One man, one woman, that's how wolf shifter's find their mates and mine is supposed to be the next alpha of our town. But when I kiss Mason on my eighteenth birthday, he rejects me politely, but firmly.

So I leave town, not giving a damn about the succession, determined to make it as a lone wolf.

And I do. I'm strong, capable, able to take down almost any wolf shifter I go against, when I get the call. Dad's in hospital and I need to come back, to care for him and determine his successor before outright war breaks out.

So why do I feel like a little girl all over again?

I'm right back where I started, being expected to find my true mate, but what if instead of one, there's several? I know I need to choose, and my heart has: all of them.

Available at:

Review:

Paige had stopped thinking about the day she would inevitably be called home, but she had hoped it wouldn't be in the event of her father being hospitalized. When she returns she is put in a position to find a mate and assign an Alpha to lead the town in her father's absence. But what she hadn't realized was that she was more than she had originally thought she was. She was a being of wolf shifter lore that took several mates instead of just the one. So now Paige not only has to assign a new Alpha for the town but she has to find all the missing pieces of her heart and claim them as her own otherwise her call will continue to drive the available male population crazy with need. But there is also someone who may have played a hand in her father's death and she must gather her mates to her side as she searches for them to exact her blood revenge.

There are books in the industry where you read them and you can't understand why none of the big publishing companies have picked them up yet. Then there are indie books that you can tell are potentially something done by an author who is still learning their craft. This was one of the latter. The storyline shook from time to time. The twists were not all that surprising so they lacked the punch that they needed to hold undisturbed attention. The formatting needs some use which I read from the book's forward to be an ongoing struggle that seems to keep cropping up issues. The editing for the book seems to have been subpar if that is the case. I found myself struggling to connect with any of the characters. They all felt very one dimensional and lack a bit of draw that I would have liked them to have to pull me in.

I almost DNFed the book from the very beginning when the word 'vajayjay' was used. The infantile terminology made me a little uncomfortable what with the fact it was meant to be a reverse harem with sex around every corner. If you can't even call it by its real name or the romance genre's widely accepted term then it throws it in the young adult category in my mind which this was anything but. It would have been different if the character was saying the term, but it wasn't. Just... no.

I will say that there was at least a little bit of interest in what would happen with Paige and her mates because I will likely read the next book in the series. I think that was found within Mason's dynamic with her. He wasn't as quick to throw away all his independence and commit himself completely to Paige like he knew he would have to eventually. His push and pull while frustrating held my attention a bit and made him the most intriguing of the characters for me. The lackluster cast was disappointing but Mason saved it at least a little.

Review: Make Me Queen by C.R. Jane & May Dawson

Make Me Queen by C.R. Jane & May Dawson

Series: Rich Demons of Darkwood #5

Publication date: June 23rd, 2023

Pages: 361

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

With my mother in the Demon's clutches, I'll do almost anything to buy her more time.

Like make a deal with the Demon.

I'll pay him with an enemy's death for my mother's life.

Long ago, dear old dad took me on a camping trip with his serial killer bestie before he broke their pinkie promises. Now the Demon wants the man dead. But when I come face to face with Uncle Carnage, strange memories start to surface.

Who am I, really?

What have I done?

Was every sin solely to survive?

When I don't know who I am, my men anchor me in reality. Cain's daddy dom vibes, Stellan's sweet way of seeing straight through me, Remington's easygoing genius, Pax's fierce protectiveness.

Then the Demon starts taking them away from me...

As the Demon unravels both my past and present, will I finally be able to bring him down?

Or will I always be daddy's little girl?

The epic conclusion to the Rich Demons of Darkwood series.

Available at:

Review:

Aurora had finally found the mother who had abandoned her after all these years and now she was being taken away from her again. Her father has escaped from prison and has taken her mother's captive. He threatens to kill her mother in hopes that by taking all the connections that Aurora has formed or reformed that it would bring back the bloodthirsty daughter he had groomed. In the pursuit of trying to play the game of the Demon's making the man starts stealing her lovers away one by one. First Paxton, then Remington, Stellan, and finally Cain. His aim is to leave Aurora alone in the world so she can remember who she was before all of them with her life. Add to that these memories that keep popping up in her mind that seem so real but she can't understand why she would ever be that vicious. Can she find a way to defeat her father, free her men and mother, and discover what of her past she has forgotten?

There were a lot of inconsistencies in the finale that left me feeling unfulfilled when I finished the book. One such instance was when Aurora had been fine with her mother abandoning her and forgave her for the action but then after its discovered why she abandoned her she suddenly grows cold to her mother. To the extreme of not really caring what happened to her in the end. That sort of flip should have really had more of a hard hitting reason than the one given. Like she abandoned her because she hated her and was selfish. The reason the authors chose didn't sit well with me and felt simplistic which wouldn't make Aurora react in such a way I wouldn't think.

Second issue I had was in how quickly they steamrolled through this dark secret from Aurora's past. They touched on it and hinted to it through out the series but to have it suddenly remembered the minute a TV was turned on seems a bit rushed. Wouldn't these memories be stronger than just a terrible case of deja vu whenever she let loose violently on someone? And I would have liked a little more back story around those memories and what she did and why she did it explained to me so I could figure out why she thought her men would be so disgusted by her antics when they had seen her do a lot of bad things and not batted an eye.

I did like Aurora and the guys starting to explore their dynamic a little more. The jealous and the in-fighting dried up and they all started to accept that this was something they were going to have to deal with or lose Aurora completely. There were some points where I could have sworn there would be some sword-crossing but they remained pretty platonic towards each other while devoting all their attention to Aurora. 

Overall, I felt the series spread out a bunch of situations and trials then rushed through the ending. I realize the series was five books long and it needed to be thinned out to accommodate that number of books but the ending was just too neat and clean to the point of losing some of the character traits for the characters that made them who they were. By far the most disappointing of the books but not the worst one I have read this year.

Book Blitz with Excerpt + Teaser + Giveaway: In the Midst of Shadows by Nicola Italia @XpressoTours

In the Midst of Shadows by Nicola Italia

Publication date: October 30th, 2021

Synopsis:

In the Victorian era, a cheap and popular form of entertainment has entranced the population often known by the name; penny dreadful. Costing a penny, readers purchased the stories and entered the fantastic world of superhuman men and damsels in distress.

The stories have been popular for over fifty years and Lavinia Howard is a young woman who dreams of being such a writer. Having recently lost her father, she turns to a family friend who puts her in touch with Jasper Courtenay, owner of Courtenay Publishing.

Writing under the pen name G.R. Howard, Lavinia creates a character who becomes a huge success as her penny dreadful stories are the most popular ever printed. Her character is brash and obnoxious and has no respect for authority as he solves London murders and the working classes adore him!

But strange things begin to happen as the stories Lavinia writes start to come true. Two very similar deaths mirror those she writes about, and Detective Chief Inspector Harrison Bryce is assigned to investigate. Inspector Bryce soon discovers that Lavinia has become so popular that she has also made enemies along with her legion of fans.

He realizes that everyone surrounding Lavinia has a motive to have committed the crimes. He must work fast to determine who wants to harm her as he suspects Lavinia may be the next target on the killer's list.

Available at:

Excerpt

Lavinia felt her throat constrict. "How did the woman die?"

Harrison looked into her face. "She died at the foot of some stairs in an alleyway."

Lavinia frowned. "Was she murdered?"

"Unlike your story, our woman was not married and no one had any reason to do her harm. There's no money, there's nothing really. She was quite poor. I can't imagine anyone wanting to harm her," Harrison explained.

"Yet you're here questioning me," Lavinia said slowly.

"Because there was another woman who died after that," he said.

Lavinia's eyes widened and she watched his handsome face. "In a train station on the platform?" she whispered.

Harrison nodded. "Yes."

"This--this is ludicrous!" She shook her head and stood up, walking to the window. "I don't predict the future1 I write a story. A silly story to interest people and make a little money."

He came to stand before her. "Miss Howard, no one is accusing you of doing anything. I'm simply here to question you. To find out how you write and who knows about your writing."

She turned to face him. "Well, now you know! My aunts. That's it. No, wait!" she said as a thought occurred to her. "I keep books for a solicitor and a doctor. They are both family friends. Malcolm, the doctor, was the one who first told me about Jasper. He was the one who took my work to Jasper to get his advice," Lavinia remembered.

Harrison looked confused. "You keep books for a doctor and a solicitor?"

Lavinia sighed. "My father was a successful banker. In the course of his career, he helped several gentlemen get started in their respective fields. One was a lawyer, the other a doctor. He kept books for them, which I think was more of a time to enjoy port and cigars but--" She paused for a moment. "When he died, I continued the tradition of keeping their books--minus the port and cigars, of course," she said, a slight smile on her face.

"You've known these men--" he began.

"All my life. You'll want their names," she predicted.

He nodded.

"Elazar Schulman is the solicitor and Malcolm Allsopp is the doctor. They are both fine, upstanding gentlemen. I've known them both all my life."

"Malcolm Allsopp was the one who gave your stories to Jasper Courtenay?" he clarified.

"Yes."

"Why would he do that?"

"Malcolm knew I had been writing stories for some time. He wanted to help me, I suppose. His exact motives I can't speak on. You'll have to ask him yourself." She shrugged.

"I intend to."

"What is it that you think is going on here?" Lavinia said, becoming irritated at the entire conversation. "I understand that you wanted to speak to G.R. Howard because stories that were published came true. But obviously I'm not writing stories during the day and committing murders at night, am I?"

"It was merely a direction I had to follow. I thought to find some old man with gout drinking brandy by the gallon and writing his stories. I never expected to find you," he admitted softly.

"What does that mean?" Lavinia asked.

"Just that you were a surprise," he clarified. "And I'm not a man who is surprised easily anymore."

"In your line of work, you must see a very dark side of society," Lavinia guessed.

He was about to answer when the doors opened and Jasper stepped inside.

"Ah-ha! You two are still here. So--" Jasper said, coming to stand before them. "The Inspector of Metropolitan Police and my celebrated penny dreadful writer. What else could bring you two together but a country house party?"

Lavinia looked at Harrison and then away from him.

"Miss Howard has been very obliging in answering my questions," he said. "I think we're done for now."

"And I trust this conversation will remain between the three of us?" Jasper said, looking pointedly at the Inspector.

"There's no reason why anyone else should hear of it," Harrison agreed.

"Excellent." Jasper smiled hearing the words. "We have a picnic planned for this afternoon. And croquet, I believe."

"No, I'm sorry. I must head back to London," Harrison said, suddenly changing his plans.

"If you must head back, you must head back," Jasper said, untroubled by the Inspector's early departure. "I'll have the driver take you to the station," he added, leaving the room as quickly as he had arrived.

"Were you only invited for the one day?" Lavinia turned to Harrison. "I recall you said you had been invited the weekend."

"I was invited for the weekend, Miss Howard, but as I'm finished--" he began to explain.

"I see," Lavinia interrupted. "You've spoken to me and gotten what you need."

NICOLA ITALIA is a Los Angeles native. Early in elementary school, Nicola had a great fondness for reading and began to write creatively. She graduated from university with a degree in communications and had held a variety of positions in journalism, education, government and non profit.

Nicola has traveled extensively throughout Europe, China, Central America and Egypt and loves all things historical.

She has nineteen historical romance and mystery novels on Amazon.

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