Rating: 4.75🌈
An Embrace To Hearten Me is the novella that’s the romance/relationship story for River/Jude/Kulani the author has been working towards in the last books.
A M/M/X , the X stands for non-binary, romance that’s been slowly building between the characters of Cheetah shifter Kulani, magi Jude (half of the dyad pair with Mads), and snow leopard shifter River. To say slow is to say that molasses runs slowly in the winter. Here it’s a absolute must that we get a three person perspective but a triad that forms at a glacial rate.
The reasons why is the tormented histories the author has created for each individual here. Ones that have damaged them to the point that trust, insecurities, and trauma are the main factors in determining their relationships to date.
Jude ,a demisexual, has a unique history. Traumatized in the compound with Mads, his other dyad half (with us now finding out the exact extent of the sacrifice he’s was forced to make), Jude’s had Mad’s feelings as his own all his life. River and Kulani had no one until Cosmo found them. That doesn’t make for easy understanding when it comes to relationships between the friends. Even with the shifter extraordinary senses, actions can become misunderstood with no real foundation for understanding the actions of others.
Notaro gives us three perspectives of friends wobbling about in the fog of uncertainty and confusion. Their new feelings , fears, and ignorance keeping them from communicating while nightmares from their past’s shut them down into their own prisons.
It’s a haunting narrative and a thoroughly disturbing story at times. But one Notaro threads with hope. With the introduction of a young child, someone from the past, and a newly formed family of three that finally finds its way together.
While An Embrace To Hearten Me has a HFN element for our triad, this is a horrific and dangerous society they all live in. One in which every single one is still tagged and registered, and regarded as disposable.
We have 2 more books to go until the end. I expect it to be bloody, heartbreaking, heartfelt, and to leave me sobbing. It’s that kind of series.
So I leave Kulani, River, and Jude momentarily happy.
I’m highly recommending this series. Read them in the order they are written for character development and events. Put some tissue near by. FYI.
The Magi Accounts:
🔹The Scars That Bind Us #1
🔹The Shackles That Hold Us #2
🔹A Date To Impress Him #2.5
🔹A Purpose That Restores Us #3
🔹A Holiday to Sustain Us: A Magi Accounts Holiday
🔹An Embrace To Hearten Me: The Magic Accounts 3.5
🔹A Ruse To Unchain Us: The Magi Accounts # 4 – TBD 2023
Buy Link:
An Embrace To Hearten Me: The Magic Accounts 3.5 (The Magi Accounts Companion Stories)
Description:
I can’t seem to choose between the two shifters who mean the world to me… but what if I can have them both?
Trying to navigate my feelings has never been easy. Growing up, I had to keep my emotions locked down and hidden from the world or suffer the consequences. But now, well, now I’ve had a taste of freedom, and with it, my heart has been running wild.
Between trying to find witches—members of the Red Cloth—at work and sifting through my overwhelming emotions, I’m a mess. And two certain shifters seem happy to help sort me out, which is great, but it’s making all these feelings hit me at once.
How in the world can I tell River and Kulani that I… that I like them? Both of them. At the same time. This is going to end in disaster with one, two, or three hearts broken. But what if it doesn’t? What if there’s a way for all three of us to get what we want?
An Embrace To Hearten Me is a MMX (male/male/nonbinary) urban fantasy romance companion novel meant to be read AFTER A Purpose That Restores Us (The Magi Accounts 3). This is Jude, Kulani, and River’s story and takes place between books 3 and 4 of the main series. It’s meant to be read as part of the series, not by itself, although the love story is resolved in this book.
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 