Review: King of Wrath by Ana Huang

King of Wrath by Ana Huang

Series: Kings of Sin #1

Publication date: October 20th, 2022

Pages: 398

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

She's the wife he never wanted... and the weakness he never saw coming.

Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.

Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.

The billionaire CEO never planned to marry--until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.

Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.

It doesn't matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.

There's only one problem: now that he has her... he can't bring himself to let her go.

***

Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.

Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family's ticket into the highest echelons of high society.

Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.

While the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.

Craving his touch was never part of the plan.

Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.

King of Wrath is a steamy arranged marriage billionaire romance. It includes explicit content and profanity.

Recommended for mature readers only.

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Review:

When I was organizing my bookshelf I enlisted some help doing so. During the organization process we discovered that I had several books by Ana Huang in piles all over my room that needed to be rehomed on my shelf. It became a funny situation to state the author's name with exasperation at how many books I had of hers that needed to be wriggled into the shelf when I alphabetized. I decided to start decluttering my shelves by reading all my unread books and deciding whether they were keepers or ones that I would donate to my local secondhand bookstore. My daughter had overheard the joking about my abundant Ana Huang collection and impishly grinned as she pulled this one off the shelf. Far be it for me to deny the desires of my 10 year old.

There is an undertone throughout the book that I didn't truly catch and understand until closer to the end: the way culture played a firm factor in how things unfolded. With a name like Vivian Lau I don't know what I didn't realize it to begin with but the fact she was impossibly submissive and subservient to her family should have tipped me off. I do believe the book touched on the importance of respecting elders to the point of sacrificing one's own wants and desires in the Chinese culture. It made Vivian's determination to please her parents all the more real when you realized it wasn't just her desperation to be their perfect daughter but the fear that if she didn't she could lose everyone she ever loved. I liked that the author used that but also had Dante's own upbringing shed a light on how differently one would see the interactions especially between Vivian and her father. It was a fascinating tidbit that explained a lot of the reasoning for the FMC's actions but also the struggle between differing cultures. What is the usual for one is outrageous to the other. The fact that was so subtle it was almost missed was a nice garnish to the already great book.

Dante's hot and cold antics with Vivian were the customary for control freaks who feel like they are losing control at every turn so have to snuff out the cause of it. It was infuriating to watch though. Vivian was so sweet and charismatic that it was hard to see Dante even able to be indifferent to her at all. In those moments I hated Dante but I never lost hope for her. Vivian cracked his shell bit by bit until we got to see the real man underneath. He was a lot more soft spoken and sweet than the armor he wore. That evolution followed a very believable ebb and flow even if it broke my heart to see Vivian constantly feeling like nobody truly loved her for who she was. That insecurity spoke to me and made my heart ache. 

This would have definitely been a five star book for me if it weren't for Dante being a little... less feral than I would have liked him. Sure, he could throw around some dirty talk and growl once in a while, but I didn't feel that desperation pour off of him for Vivian. Which is completely valid. Not every male lead has to be borderline caveman. And Dante seriously tried to live up to my expectations, but he fell short a little. That is really all I can critique about the book and it was simply based on my own preferences.

This was a great start to what I expect to be a really good series of various couples in the same universe finding their happily ever afters. Even through all the pitfalls and obstacles along the way telling them to ignore their hearts completely.

Release Blitz with Teaser: Follow the Play by Kaylee Ryan @GiveMeBooksPR

Follow the Play by Kaylee Ryan

Series: Nashville Rampage #4

Publication date: December 16th, 2025

Synopsis:

NYT and USA Today Bestselling author Kaylee Ryan brings you a new standalone series surrounding the Nashville Rampage football team. Follow the Play is a single dad, nanny, friends-to-lovers, forced proximity sports romance.

Baker

Being a single dad was never part of the playbook, but one look at my son and everything changed.

Now football and fatherhood are my whole world--a world that gets turned upside down when my nanny quits two weeks before training camp.

Sloane Peterson runs interference by stepping in to help.

She's sweet, dependable, and the one woman I shouldn't want. Not when our lives are so entwined.

But every time she smiles at my son--or me--it gets harder to remember that our little arrangement is only temporary.

Sloane

Taking a short-term nanny gig for Nashville Rampage's most eligible DILF has disaster written all over it.

But when Daddy Sin is in a bind, I do just that. It keeps me from waiting tables, and his son is the cutest little boy on the planet.

Baker Sinclair is famous, has a body like a Greek god, and when he's in daddy mode... he's irresistible. He's also currently my new boss, and completely forbidden.

The longer I'm in his home, the less this feels like a job.

Because between reading bedtime stories and baking cookies, I can't imagine my life without them... either of them. Too bad love doesn't follow lesson plans... or playbooks.

Available at:

Make the Play by Kaylee Ryan (Nashville Rampage #1) -

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Run the Play by Kaylee Ryan (Nashville Rampage #2) -

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Learn the Play by Kaylee Ryan (Nashville Rampage #3) -

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Releasing March 3rd, 2026:

Change the Play by Kaylee Ryan (Nashville Rampage #5) - 

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New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author KAYLEE RYAN has been crowned the Queen of Swoon by her readers. With nearly fifty romance books under her belt, she's known for penning happily ever afters with heart. When she's not writing, you can find her with a book in her hand and hanging out with her family where she resides in her home state of Ohio.

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Review: Self Control by Esa Irvings

Self Control by Esa Irvings

Series: Cantil Snakes #1

Publication date: December 31st, 2021
Pages: 297

Spice: N/A

DNF Percentage: 75% (page 215)

Synopsis:

Mykie Vesper is not having the best week.

As the so-called "princess" of the Cantil gang, she's known as the best of the best. The one who always gets the job done, no matter the consequences. The Valkyrie that can take any man down that challenges the people she loves.

At least, she believes so, until she meets five incredible hot boys that turn her world upside down and get under her skin in ways she never thought possible.

She's known for not being seen at the scene of a crime, but what happens when these boys begin to see her in a different light than she's used to?

Like someone who couldn't hurt a fly.

She has a job to do, but will her control slip the longer she's around these boys?

Or will they discover that she's more dangerous than they thought possible?

Available at:

Review:

It has been a hot minute since I have had a book that I just couldn't find a way to finish. I feel often like I have an obligation to the author who put forth their best efforts to make a good book and DNF-ing the book feels like an insult. I try not to make it seem that way. There are some that are abjectly awful and its obvious that the author just threw it out there in hopes of meeting a deadline or to keep the income flowing inward. I don't believe that is the case with this one. However, I had to take a step back and figure out whether I cared about the outcome of the characters or not and if I didn't, that was the time to stop. I reached that point 25% past where I said I would stop if I didn't get more invested in the story. I feel I truly gave the book a good shake. 

The thing that first threw me off a bit was the third person narrative. I am used to either dual POV or a story narrated from the perspective of the female main character. It felt a bit like the author was trying to maintain the third person narrative but at times almost seemed to slip a bit into first person. It was jarring and hard to follow at times. Not to mention it was very difficult to connect with the characters when in a third person narrative. It's a degree of separation that you definitely don't want if you want your audience to feel for the characters enough to be invested in their love lives. That was likely why I couldn't seem to get into the story overall. I felt no tangible connection to keep me reading.

The characters were inconsistent with who they were meant to be. Mykie was meant to be this badass assassin for her gang but she was insecure, shy, and flinched away from touch a lot of the time. That was not the type of person who could go out and kill people without batting an eye. Granted, I know some characters tend to put on a different persona when they are tasked with dangerous jobs, but Mykie was a shaking flower most of the time. Even when she did perform her job there was no noticeable shift in her personality. She was still all squirmy even though she should be used to doing what she was doing. It made her unpleasant to deal with. Add to that the fact that all the guys (save maybe Blaine) were also uber sensitive and insecure. It was not endearing. It didn't make me like them more. It gave me the ick. 

Unfortunately if you lose the flow of the narrative and don't establish some backbones within at least a few of the characters to counteract the uber submissive vibe of the others, it feel unbalanced and unrealistic. We all want to get lost in the books we read. We want to feel like we are not only reading the story of characters we grow to love but also be able to feel the emotions flowing off the pages. This book missed the mark in a lot of ways. The grammatical errors were also a bit of a frustration. This book just wasn't it for me.

Book Blitz with Excerpt + Giveaway: Reclamation by Kristen Zimmer @XpressoTours

Reclamation by Kristen Zimmer

Series: Dark Horse #1

Publication date: December 9th, 2025

Synopsis:

Kristen Zimmer, author of The Gravity Between Us, When Sparks Fly, and Forbidden Girl takes readers on an adrenaline-fueled dystopian journey into the future where a scrappy band of rebels rise up to bring down an unequal and unrelenting government.

This is your future.

The United States of America has been gone for over a century.

In its place, The Unified American Territories--a nation divided, the impoverished and the wealthy are separated by a looming steel wall. In the Northern Territories--The Vault, as it is known by its inhabitants--the government rules with an iron fist: All citizens are tested for intelligence and aptitude, thrust into compulsory higher education and saddled with insurmountable debt. All student loans are granted and controlled by a branch of the regime called The Federal Bureau of Education. Failure to repay their debt consigns borrowers to the Knowledge Reclamation Process, a mysterious government-sanctioned brainwashing program that strips them of their education with dire mental and physical side effects.

Fletcher Daniels is a recent college graduate struggling to stay ahead of her arrears. After a visit from Reclamation Agents, she knows her life is about to change for the worse. Enter Youth Opposed to Reclamation, a scrappy band of rebels who try in their own small way to bring some relief to the people of The Vault by smuggling as many potential Reclaimees to safety as possible. When Fletcher meets and falls for fellow female YOR member, Sparrow, her world is twisted away from the one she once knew even more radically. The group offers Fletcher a chance to escape her fate, but through them, she sees the promise of bringing real change to The Vault. History has taught her that even the smallest rebellions can trigger revolutions. It's time for history to repeat itself.

Available at:

Excerpt

FLETCHER HAD BEEN ENJOYING the luxury of her sole day off work, reading The Scarlet Letter. Happily. Quietly. Until some unknowable thing, a strange tug in her chest, made her look up. She shut down her antiquated digireader with a tap of the cracked screen and watched from her bedroom window as a sleek, silver sedan pulled to a stop at the curb outside of her dilapidated row house. Agents.

She couldn't see them through the car's blacked-out windows, but it was obvious. The simple fact that the vehicle had the shine of something new was enough to give the Agents away. Being from The Vault, or The Northern Territories, as Fletcher's part of the country was known officially, she rarely saw any cars on the road at all; cars in such impeccable condition were all but complete anomalies. Why do they even bother plastering the Department of Reclamation's seal on the doors? She wondered.

That hideous seal. Words failed to capture how much Fletcher both loathed and feared it. The great red and black per bend crest, showcasing a scroll of parchment in one half and a tasseled mortarboard in the other, had always been reviled by citizens of The Vault. It meant that someone hadn't paid their dues, and The Department of Reclamation had come to collect.

The Department of Reclamation employed the Agents who did the strong-arming for The Federal Bureau of Education. While the BOE housed the bookkeepers, The Department of Reclamation's Agents handled the unseemlier work... and their work was generally quite unseemly. The Governing Council of The Unified American Territories had long ago authorized Reclamation Agents to use brute force "in the event of necessity." More often than not, visits from Agents did end in violence--if not on their first visit, when a potential Reclaimee received their Notification of Violation, then most definitely on their second visit, when the Agents returned to take the Reclaimee into custody. Reclaimees seldom initiated said violence, of course; Fletcher had heard that most cried or begged for just a few more moments with their loved ones. They would be flogged once or twice and give up or otherwise be knocked out with narcotics. Occasionally, a Reclaimee would try to escape. Those individuals had it much worse. Fletcher closed her eyes and, although it pained her to do it, allowed herself to envision the brutality Agents inflicted upon braver people: Arms twisted so violently that shoulders snapped out their sockets, fingers bent backward with such force that the metacarpals fractured, skulls cracked against living room floors. She shuddered as if her skin had been kissed by an icy wind.

Reclamation Agents were no strangers to The Vault, considering it was the part of the country reserved for the impoverished, the destitute and the disillusioned--those who needed "excessive assistance" from the Government. Those like Fletcher. She would need at least ten more fingers to be able to count the number of times she had seen Agents in her neighborhood in the last week alone. Watching these men march toward her home, she couldn't help but wonder if they had come for her this time.

"Fletcher," her father's voice boomed through the dimness of her room. "Can you come out here, please?"

"I'll be right there."

She peered into the tarnished mirror atop her bedside table. Using the remnants of daylight to aid her vision, she pulled her long blonde hair up into a ponytail. "Alright," she sighed to herself, her sharp jawline clenching and her hazel eyes burning with angst. "If they are here for you, you'll find out soon enough."

KRISTEN ZIMMER is the author of The Gravity Between Us, which spent 12 weeks as the number one best-seller in both the Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian Romance genres on Amazon. It was listed as one of USA Today's "10 Best books to read for Pride 2018" and in December 2021 was named one of Reader's Digest '50 Best Romance Novels of All Time'

That same year, her follow-up novel, When Sparks Fly, debuted as the best-seller in Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian romance, and clung to the spot for four weeks.

Her latest novel, Forbidden Girl, a dark mafia sapphic romance, is available now.

Kristen lives in Salem, Massachusetts--yes, where the witches were.

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