Category: M/M Supernatural Fiction

A MelanieM Pre-Release Review: Dragon Home (Supernatural Consultant #5.2) by Mell Eight

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

With Rios happily mated and planning an entire future, Aqua can’t help but feeling left out. The brother that was always been his chief playmate and best friend is going to leave him behind, which isn’t at all acceptable. The obvious answer is to leave first, so Aqua packs a bag to go on an adventure. But this adventure isn’t anything like his last one and the chances of him returning home alive dwindle every moment.

I actually liked Dragon Home better than its previous story, Dragon Adventure, which I thought was really cute.  Here in Dragon Home (Supernatural Consultant #5.2), Mell Eight goes into a little more depth into her universe by revealing wonderful unknown details about  characters and dragon growth we hadn’t known before. We also meet some new supernatural creatures are introduced as well when Aqua, like Rios, sets off to find new friends and perhaps a mate like his twin.

When we begin this story, Uncle Willy himself seems to be undergoing a physical change which I found interesting although not explained exactly.  I’m hopeful that Mell Eight will find a mate for William as well and his change will be a part of that. He deserves one for his accepting attitude and loving behavior towards his “wards” and their antics.  Intriguing bits like this keep me thinking throughout the story.  Dragon Home (and indeed all of Mell Eight’s stories) is full of things of a similar narrative nature tucked here and there, just waiting for the reader to notice them and wonder.

Aqua is lonely and unhappy with his twin now spending all his time with his mate and his new found interest in the Coast Guard.  Rios has shot up physically with his mental and emotional maturity. Not so poor Aqua.  Now they don’t even look like twins, making him feel even more isolated, something William is aware of.  It’s adventure time for Aqua, he needs to see what it’s like to get out there by himself and he does in a big way by going where no water dragon should.

I won’t go further but this story has some surprising depth here.  The place Aqua “falls” into is a tumultuous one. It will take bravery, maturity and respect for others to see Aqua and others safely through.  That he does so is no surprise.  But the companion he brings home?  A delightful surprise, especially at the end which left me charmed and smiling as it did William.   Plus this story gave us a whole new side of William still to be seen.  I hope that book is coming.

Who knew I would love William and his kits as much as I do Dane, Mercury and their bunch?  Turns out I certainly do!  I just loved Dragon Home (Supernatural Consultant #5.2) by Mell Eight.  It’s not a standalone story, you really need to read the others.  Luckily they’re short and you can catch up quickly.  Read the entire series.  It’s a joy! I recommend not only Dragon Home but all of the Supernatural Consultant series.

Cover art by Aisha Akeju is one of my favorite in this series.  Dramatic and speaks to the story.

Sales Links:   Preorder at Less Than Three Press

Book Details:

ebook
Expected publication: June 21st 2017 by Less Than Three Press
ISBN139781684310333
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesSupernatural Consultant #5.2

An Alisa Review: Darien’s Omega (Dire Pack Reborn #4) by Stephani Hecht

Rating:  2.75 stars out of 5

 

Blaze’s dreams just may come true when the top Beta, Darien, finally notices him.

 

For years Blaze had a crush on Darien. Yet, the Beta never looked twice at the shy, small Omega. Why would he? After all, Blaze is the packs’ art teacher. He was never anything special and Darien was way out of his league.

 

Darien spots Blaze in the cafeteria and instantly drawn to the Omega. At first Darien thinks he’s blown things when he’d forgotten that he had known the Omega when they were both young. Luckily, Blaze forgives him. But, just as they are getting close, a danger looms, threatening the entire pack. Has Darien found love only to lose it? Or will they overcome the evil is out to get them?

 

This story did not really click for me.  Darien notices Blaze when he is bullied in the cafeteria and wants to take care of him.  Blaze has been the “useless” omega for so long he can’t believe that anyone would really want him especially his long time crush.  Darien does everything he can to show that his intentions are real.

 

We get to see both of the characters’ thoughts and feelings throughout the story so we know how they were reacting to everything that was happening around them.  Darien is so lost in how to actually date someone it’s pretty bad and not adorable like it usually comes off in books, it takes him basically getting told what to do in order for him to actually ask for a date.  Blaze has to see how true Darien is before he can fully commit himself.  There were so many references to the couples from the previous books but the couples were mixed up within the first few pages of the book and I had to keep looking back at previous book descriptions to make sure I remembered who the characters were.

 

The cover is nice and gives a great visual for the Beta.

 

Sales Links: MLR Press | Amazon | B&N

 

Book Details:

ebook, 107 pages

Published: May 12, 2017 by MLR Press

Edition Language: English

Series: Dire Pack Reborn #4

Release Blitz for RJ Scott’s Kingdom Series vol 1

 

Buy Links: Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2srlI6P

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2t0Oto0

 
Cover: Meredith Russell
 
Length: 81,000 words
 
Blurb
 

The Vampire Contract


A vampire guilty of murder on the run from justice to prove his innocence. A werewolf sent to retrieve him with one thought ~ that only the guilty run.


Vampire Micah Jamieson is found guilty of killing his human husband. He runs from the execution he is facing to get home. He just has to pray he’ll reach home before supernatural law enforcement, in the shape of a Glitnir Court Retriever close in on him.


Wolf shifter and Retriever, Connor Strand easily captures Micah and he’s fully prepared to take the runaway in. But his wolf has other ideas.


Something about Micah challenges Connor and his long held beliefs. What if Micah is actually innocent? Will Connor put to one side his own prejudices, and then risk both his life and career to keep Micah safe?


The Guilty Werewolf


Declan Finlay is the best Retriever that Glitnir has.


Well, he is now that Connor Strand has gone rogue.


He is sent to find Connor – the guilty werewolf. But he doubts that his best friend could ever be guilty and he resolves to track him down and find out why he ran with the renegade vampire.


When the Fae Alliance, reporting to Glitnir, demand that he not go alone he is forced to accept the Incubus, Levi Tiernan, an assassin, as his companion on the journey. If Declan doesn’t kill Connor, then Levi will.


What happens when old lust and love dictate action and suddenly Declan is questioning everything he loves.


The Warlock’s Secret


In a world where magic is rare, Joseph Jamieson is one of the most powerful holders of power. Orophin Tiwele, or Phin to his friends, is the son of the Elf King and has magic of his own. The rules say two supernatural beings with magic cannot be together and Joseph and Phin have lived by that rule despite their attraction to each other.


The resistance is growing larger each day, but traitors threaten everything Joseph has built. He wants peace, but soon comes to realize the way to peace, is through war.


When the only thing that will save lives is Joseph and Phin working together, it becomes impossible to see where magic and passion end and where love could begin.

 



Author Bio


RJ Scott is the bestselling romance author of over 100 romance books. She writes emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, millionaire, princes, and the men and women who get mixed up in their lives. RJ is known for writing books that always end with a happy ever after. She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn’t with family either reading or writing.


The last time she had a weekís break from writing she didn’t like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a bottle of wine she couldnít defeat.


mailto:rj@rjscott.co.uk
www.rjscott.co.uk/
www.facebook.com/author.rjscott?ref=ts&fref=ts
www.goodreads.com/author/show/3432558.R_J_Scott
twitter.com/Rjscott_author
www.librarything.com/author/scottrj

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An Alisa Review: The Running Fields by Sydney Presley

Rating:  3 stars out of 5

 

Fate brings them together in the end…

 

Ansgar wakes to find himself outside—somewhere he’s never been before. He’s scared out of his wits and wonders whether The Scientist is conducting another experiment. Is Ansgar naked, leaning against a large building so The Scientist can monitor his reactions? Ansgar doesn’t know, but what he does know is that the black wolf staring at him from the darkness isn’t something he expected to see.

 

The black wolf is Ben, and he didn’t expect to see a naked bloke on a cold night, sitting on his bare arse beside the old abandoned bread factory a mile or so away from town. Ben had only come out for a run, yet there he was, facing a man who clearly didn’t belong in these parts.

 

After taking Ansgar to his home, Ben discovers more about the big man—where he’s been, what he’s endured, and a few other things to boot. Things no one should have to go through. Ben’s determined to help heal Ansgar, to teach him the ways of not only the shifter world but the human one, too. Except there’s a human they need to be wary of, a man who calls himself The Scientist, and protecting Ansgar from him is Ben’s main priority.

 

The past holds a slew of secrets, ones that come tumbling out of hiding at an alarming rate. Ben and Ansgar need to face each one head on—although at times they’re overwhelming and relentless in their attack. The two men dream of living a life without fear in it one day, but unfortunately, dealing with the horrors from Ansgar’s old life have to come first.

 

I’m not quite sure what I thought about this story.  It kept my attention and I wanted to see what happened but it felt disjointed and not fully resolved by the end.  Ansgar is scared when he wakes up in an unknown place outside and even more confused when Ben shifts in front of him, he didn’t know anyone other than him could do that.

 

Ben can’t believe that the man he found in the running fields is his mate but he will accept this gift no matter what.  There was a lot that happened in a short period of time but I had some trouble understanding the characters actions, sometimes so accepting and other times just wanting to forget what happened.  It left me scratching my head.

 

We see the story from both Ansgar and Ben’s points of view and can see what some of their concerns and feelings are.  Ansgar has essentially been held captive his whole life and when he is suddenly free he is happy but doesn’t know what to do, he only knows bits and pieces of things he has been taught throughout the years.  Ben wants to protect his mate but isn’t sure what to do, with all that Ansgar has been through he doesn’t want to make anything worse.  I felt, even though he was with Ben all the time, than Ansgar was kinda left on his own to adapt and they both just mated without really talking.  Ansgar seemed to know somethings quickly or without being told but they were so random I would just get confused.

 

Cover art is very nice and catches your eye.

 

Sales Links: Pride Publishing | Amazon

 

Book Details:

ebook, 113 pages

Published: June 6, 2017 by Pride Publishing

ISBN: 9781786515759

Edition Language: English

Selina Kray on the Historical Background for ‘Stoker & Bash: The Fangs of Scavo’ (author guest blog and giveaway)

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Selina Kray on her Stoker & Bash: The Fangs of Scavo tour. Welcome, Selina!

Hi, romance lovers! I’m Selina Kray, and this is the latest stop on the Stoker & Bash blog tour. A huge thank you to the lovely people at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words for hosting me today. I thought I’d talk a little bit about some of the historical details in Stoker & Bash: The Fangs of Scavo, in which burlesque isn’t really burlesque.

Say the word “burlesque” nowadays, and your mind conjures images of Dita von Teese in a giant champagne glass; sparkly, barely there outfits capped by a giant feather boa; or the camp-tastic film with Cher and Christina Aguilera. Erotic dance as reclaimed by fierce feminists unafraid of expressing their sexuality.

But back in the Victorian era, burlesque titillated both your body and your mind. It started as a way for working class audiences to poke some fun at the classics of theatre, opera, and ballet. The plays of Shakespeare, for instance, would be:

“…adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiching text or music from the original work.” (source: Wikipedia: Victorian Burlesque)

The actors would sing or speak in rhyming couplets, rife with bad puns, and the action of these parodies would often be set to the popular music of the time. Gender-swapping some of the characters was the norm. One of the most popular burlesque performers, Nellie Farren, starred as The Gaiety Theatre’s “principal boy” for over 20 years.

Eventually, theatres combined burlesques with more standard music hall fare, such as singers, comics, skits, dramatic monologues, and dances, into evening-long extravaganzas. The idea was not only to mock the haughty airs and impenetrable verses of classic plays and operas, but to dull some of the sharp-edged plot points of the tragedies. With names like The Bohemian G-yurl & the Unapproachable Pole and Cinder Ellen Up Too Late, you get the sense that audiences and performers alike had a wild, bawdy good time.

In Stoker & Bash: The Fangs of Scavo, one of my characters is a burlesque performer at The Gaiety Theatre, which specialized in burlesque for 30 years. While I did research what parody was playing in that theatre in October 1873—only to be disappointed when I found out it was based on an opera—I decided to make up my own.

A performance of Robbing Hood and his Mercenary Men sets the stage for one of the most important encounters between the novel’s two leads, Tim and Hiero, and is the background for a lot of the action. So in addition to transporting you back to the Victorian era, Stoker & Bash: The Fangs of Scavo will also take you to the punny wilds of “Sure Would” Forest.

 
Length: 100,000 words
 
 
Blurb
 

At Scotland Yard, DI Timothy Stoker is no better than a ghost. A master of arcane documents and niggling details who, unlike his celebrity-chasing colleagues, prefers hard work to headlines. But an invisible man is needed to unmask the city’s newest amateur detective, Hieronymus Bash. A bon vivant long on flash and style but short on personal history, Bash just may be a Cheapside rogue in Savile Row finery.


When the four fangs of the Demon Cats of Scavo—trophies that protect the hunters who killed the two vicious beasts—disappear one by one, Stoker’s forced to team with the very man he was sent to investigate to maintain his cover. He finds himself thrust into a world of wailing mediums, spiritualist societies, man-eating lions, and a consulting detective with more ambition than sense. Will this case be the end of his career, or the start of an unexpected liaison? Or will the mysterious forces at play be the death of them both?


And just who is Hieronymus Bash?

 

 

Author Bio
 

Selina Kray is the nom de plume of an author and English editor. Professionally she has covered all the artsy-fartsy bases, having worked in a bookstore, at a cinema, in children’s television, and in television distribution, up to her latest incarnation as a subtitle editor and grammar nerd (though she may have always been a grammar nerd). A self-proclaimed geek and pop culture junkie who sometimes manages to pry herself away from the review sites and gossip blogs to write fiction of her own, she is a voracious consumer of art with both a capital and lowercase A.


Selina’s aim is to write genre-spanning romances with intricate plots, complex characters, and lots of heart. Whether she has achieved this goal is for you, gentle readers, to decide. At present she is hard at work on future novels at home in Montreal, Quebec, with her wee corgi serving as both foot warmer and in-house critic.


If you’re interested in receiving Selina’s newsletter and being the first to know when new books are released, plus getting sneak peeks at upcoming novels, please sign up at her website: www.selinakray.net

 

 

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A MelanieM Recent Release Review: Dragon Adventure (Supernatural Consultant #5.1) by Mell Eight

Rating: 3.75 stars out of 5

Aqua and Rios are bored, which is always a recipe for disaster. They decide that taking a trip to visit Nickel would be a ton of fun, so they hop on a boat and go sailing down the river. Niagara Falls separates the two kits from their destination, not that they’re aware of that fact, and their fun adventure quickly turns into a desperate fight for survival.

Dragon Adventure switches families from the huge family of Mercury and Dane to that of William, the head of a neighboring Land Region and his two fosters/sons Aqua and Rios, two very active water dragons.  We had met them before when William came for Council meetings and sought Dane and Mercury’s help with bringing up his two young dragons (a rare feat as young dragons have a tough time reaching maturity).

Here its that very immaturity that gets them into trouble and sends them off on an adventure to visit Nickel.  William makes for a great scary and understanding father  figure and the two maturing kits are endearing and great to get to know on a deeper level.

I loved that Mell Eight brought her readers a better understanding of why the dragons aged so slowly (staying young or small as a matter of survival didn’t occur to me until she laid out a perfectly logical explanation.   There’s also another cute character introduced here as well.

The story breezes along as it should for 34 pages.  Its cute, sweet and a  great side adventure to the main body of stories in this series.  Loved it.

Cover art by Aisha Akeju contains part of an element of the story. I like the dragon footprints.

Sales Links:  Amazon |   Less Than Three Press LLC 

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 34 pages
Published May 15th 2017 by Less Than Three Press, LLC
ASINB071Z85M57
SeriesSupernatural Consultant #5.1

A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: Draakenwood (Whyborne & Griffin #9) by Jordan L. Hawk

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

It’s difficult to imagine that a person can have such a fertile imagination that she can create characters and situations, not only set historically in the turn of the twentieth century, but also consisting of unfailingly original paranormal beings and activity, but Jordan Hawk pulls it off every single time. This is no exception. To top it off, running through these stories is a love that grows stronger with each installment—Griffin Flaherty and Percival Whyborne—two men who hold a very special place in my heart.

In this installment, someone is killing off members of the founding families of Widdershins, sucking the blood from their bodies until only the husk is left, and it looks like Whyborne is the murderer. Now, he’s going to have to get involved in finding the culprit before the monster gets to his father. Griffin, of course, is by his side and they’re joined in the adventure by two new members of the Endicott family—Whyborne’s distant, and estranged, relatives.

Whyborne’s twin sister, Persiphone, and their mother, Heliabel, both of whom are now ketoids who live in the sea also join in. And one of the funniest, laugh-out-loud moments of the story occurs when Percival comes upon Persiphone and her lover—his secretary, Miss Parkhurst—engaged in a sexual act on his desk in his office. The scene is priceless and I’m laughing even now as I write this review. Poor, unsuspecting, naïve Whyborne had no idea up to the moment he opened his office door. Hilarious!

In the usual way the author builds these stories, there’s plenty of background information and the suspense continues to build as the story unfolds—to the point where I was madly and avidly reading every word as quickly as I could devour them. This was quite an adventure as the maelstrom fought to take care of those whom it had collected for Widdershins, including Griffin, whose life is in deadly peril when he’s taken by the monster into the Draakenwood. The only available person to lead the battle to save his family and friends is Percival and he rises to the task, most ably assisted by both the police force and the gang of librarians who’d helped him in the past.

Honestly, there are barely words to describe how ably the author weaves the tale and instills it with both humor and terror alike. There are definitely more adventures awaiting our guys in the future, however, as the setup toward the end of this one indicates. Have no fear—Whyborne and Griffin are together again at the end of this book—along with a new piece of office furniture for Whyborne. (That original desk had to go!)

I highly recommend this book and this whole series to all lovers of MM romance and paranormal adventure. It’s simply wonderful.

~~~~

This cover by Lou Harper, though done in a similar style to the others in the series, is much more colorfully attractive than the ones previously done and features two characters from the story. To be honest, though I know one is Whyborne, I’m not sure who the other is since the features don’t look the same as past covers featuring Griffin. So overall, it’s attractive, but leaves me wondering who it represents.

Sales Links

Amazon | Amazon UK | Kobo | Smashwords | Nook | iBooks

Book Details:

ebook, 246 pages
Published June 2nd 2017 by Widdershins Press
ISBN139781941230251
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesWhyborne & Griffin #9