spicysweetpotato
Sagittarius | Animal Lover | Introvert Fave Genres: fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, romance
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Anathema
Keri Lake
A new gothic dark fantasy coming in 2024
Only the banished know what lies beyond the woods ...
There are whispers about what lurks in Witch Knell—the forest where sinners go to die. The villagers call it The Eating Woods because what’s taken is never given back. Only those who’ve lost their senses would dare to go near it.
Or the banished.
Maevyth Bronwick knows better than to breach the misty labyrinth of trees, but a tragic turn of events compels her beyond the archway of bones, to a boundary no mortal has crossed before. One that cloaks a dark and fantastical world that’s as dangerous as it is alluring.
It’s there that he dwells, the cursed lord of Eidolon. The one tasked to keep her hidden from the magehood that seeks to crucify her in the name of an arcane prophesy. Zevander Rydainn, known to his prey as The Scorpion, is the coldest, most calculated assassin in all of Aethyria and he’d sooner toss his feisty ward to a pack of vicious fyredrakes than keep her safe.
If only he could.
Maevyth’s blood is the key to breaking his despised curse and vanquishing the slumbering evil in Witch Knell. Unfortunately for Lord Rydainn, fate has other plans for the irresistible little enchantress. And his growing obsession with her threatens to destroy everything.
Including himself.
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1w
spicysweetpotato wrote a review...
1w
Talk about ending on a strong note! Not only did I love the ending (and all of the other parts) of this book, but it's my favorite of the whole series! The twisted retelling was on point and the romance was tantalizing. The YEARNING, jeez I was screaming, it was immaculate!
I listened to the audio book and the narrators??? Damn.... The accents by both of them were spectacular, but Erik Bloomquist with his strained voice was top tier. If you don't know what authors mean when they say a man growled a line, listen to this man!
My only qualm is the number of times the phrase "solar plexus" was used lol I think it was used twice in Crossed, but at least half a dozen times in this one 😂
But I loved it, it was so good and I'm sad this is the last one!
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1w
Hexed (Never After, #6)
Emily McIntire
He's the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She's the witch who steals his heart.
From USA Today bestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairytale of The Little Mermaid.
Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realizes he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.
There’s just one problem: she can never have him.
Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father, the strongest don in the Northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.
Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.
Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want.
When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families, or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.
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Post from the Hexed (Never After, #6) forum
1w
spicysweetpotato started reading...
1w
Hexed (Never After, #6)
Emily McIntire
He's the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She's the witch who steals his heart.
From USA Today bestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairytale of The Little Mermaid.
Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realizes he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.
There’s just one problem: she can never have him.
Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father, the strongest don in the Northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.
Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.
Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want.
When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families, or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.
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1w
spicysweetpotato wrote a review...
1w
Really enjoyed the audiobook! Such an interesting twist to a dark romance. I know it's a twist on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so the premise makes sense, but it's the first and only book I've seen that has a priest lusting after the FMC. Maybe it's just a trope I've never considered/looked into before, but I enjoyed it. It added a whole different layer to the forbidden attraction trope.
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1w
Crossed (Never After, #5)
Emily McIntire
From bestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimagining of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
He is righteousness. She is sin.
Father Cade Frédéric is a holy man. Brought up in the streets of Paris, he has dedicated his life to the church. But there’s a monster that lingers just beneath the surface. A sickness. One that bleeds darkness and feeds on the damned. When he’s tasked to become the priest in Festivalé, Vermont, a town both beautiful in architecture and riddled with despair, his sickness sings, demanding he rid the place of evil.
Amaya Paquette is Festivalé’s beautiful mystery. She spends her days caring for her younger brother and her nights transforming into Esmeralda, dancing for greedy eyes and shameless lips. Although she longs for love, she shies away from companionship, afraid of being abandoned again.
When Father Cade lays eyes on Amaya, he finds himself ensnared, convinced she’s using witchcraft to lure him to her. He can’t eat. Can’t breathe. Can’t think unless it’s of her.
And temptation is a devastating mistress.
She’s his weakness, so he decides he’ll be her demise…even if it means killing the only woman he might ever love.
***
*CROSSED is a dark, contemporary romance (not fantasy or a literal retelling) and the fifth complete standalone in the Never After series: fractured fairy tales inspired by our favorite villains. It features mature themes and content that may not be suitable for all readers. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. Detailed TW can be found on the author's website. This series can be enjoyed in any order.*
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1w
The Sirens
Emilia Hart
A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine
2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever.
1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies.
A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.
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spicysweetpotato wrote a review...
1w
Surprisingly fun read for how much grief and mental health awareness was involved. I think the premise itself could have been more (just delved into deeper and made into a longer novel), but I do feel it's still well written as it is.
The ending felt kind of unsatisfactory, though. A little bit vague and flat. The bonus content on the author's website did help round out the ending a bit more.
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1w
Death's Obsession
Avina St. Graves
He’s coming for you.
Death is meant to come on a chariot of broken dreams or in the dark trenches of a storm, not in love letters and gifts.
He did not take my soul when I was meant to die. He did not want it all the other times that I’ve offered it to him on a silver platter. Yet, time and time again, he reminds me that I am his: His night monster, his dark love, his perfect other.
Death was the only thing keeping me alive. He watches me from his corner, taunts me with sweet messages, marks my body with his touch as I sleep.
He took the people that I love away from me. Still, no one believed me when I said that I saw the faceless man on the night of the accident.
No one can escape death.
Me? I’m chasing it.
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1w
Crossed (Never After, #5)
Emily McIntire
From bestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimagining of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
He is righteousness. She is sin.
Father Cade Frédéric is a holy man. Brought up in the streets of Paris, he has dedicated his life to the church. But there’s a monster that lingers just beneath the surface. A sickness. One that bleeds darkness and feeds on the damned. When he’s tasked to become the priest in Festivalé, Vermont, a town both beautiful in architecture and riddled with despair, his sickness sings, demanding he rid the place of evil.
Amaya Paquette is Festivalé’s beautiful mystery. She spends her days caring for her younger brother and her nights transforming into Esmeralda, dancing for greedy eyes and shameless lips. Although she longs for love, she shies away from companionship, afraid of being abandoned again.
When Father Cade lays eyes on Amaya, he finds himself ensnared, convinced she’s using witchcraft to lure him to her. He can’t eat. Can’t breathe. Can’t think unless it’s of her.
And temptation is a devastating mistress.
She’s his weakness, so he decides he’ll be her demise…even if it means killing the only woman he might ever love.
***
*CROSSED is a dark, contemporary romance (not fantasy or a literal retelling) and the fifth complete standalone in the Never After series: fractured fairy tales inspired by our favorite villains. It features mature themes and content that may not be suitable for all readers. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. Detailed TW can be found on the author's website. This series can be enjoyed in any order.*
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1w
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
N.K. Jemisin
This is the way the world ends. Again.
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
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spicysweetpotato wrote a review...
1w
I think I enjoyed this one more than the first actually! I liked the diversity and representation, none of the characters felt forced. The relationship was to die for! I'm a sucker for a second chance trope apparently. And I loved how it set up the 3rd book so seamlessly. Can't wait!
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spicysweetpotato finished a book
1w
Caught Up (Into Darkness #2)
Navessa Allen
From the viral TikTok author of the stalker romcom, Lights Out, comes Navessa Allen’s second book in bestselling The Into Darkness Trilogy, upping the ante with voyeurism and play club kink.
“I wanted this woman, and I was a man who always got what he wanted.”
Nico “Junior” Trocci knows Lauren Marchetti is off limits. She is sweetness and laughter, whereas Junior exists in a world of violence and depravity. Men like him don’t get to have women like her. It’s why he pushed her away back in high school and kept his distance ever since.
But when Junior looks Lauren up online, he discovers the shy, bookish girl he remembers is gone. In her place is a strikingly beautiful woman whose social media is filled with scantily clad pictures of herself and a connection to a nearby play club. Junior’s innocent curiosity quickly turns into a dark obsession. Watching Lauren from a distance isn’t enough; he needs to make her his.
“He’s ruthless; a walking red flag. Good thing red is my favorite color.”
Lauren is intrigued by the mystery man who keeps showing up at her club, who tempts her white-hot desires. But as their flirty online messages stir up a deeper form of connection, Lauren worries she’s developing real feelings for this brooding stranger. As their combined desire ratchets up to a breaking point, who will seduce who?
Caught Up is a fast-paced dark romance with a morally grey male lead. Some themes and scenes may be disturbing to readers. Please check the content warning at the beginning of the book.
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