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The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran (Review #253)

  "A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed. After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written - if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it - if she can.  Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost?' Review: Wha...
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City of Thorns by C. N. Crawford (Review #252)

  "I never thought I'd be singing happy birthday to myself in a dungeon. And yet when a sinfully sexy demon crashes happy hour, that's exactly what happens. He’s known as the Lord of Chaos, and he’s mistaken me for my succubus doppelgänger. Happy birthday to me. When he tastes my blood, he finally understands I’m mortal. And I realize we have something in common: we both crave revenge. So, we make a deal: I can stay in the forbidden city to hunt for my mom's killer. In return, I’ll help him get the vengeance he craves. I just have to pose as a sexy succubus. One problem - he's my number one suspect. And that’s increasingly hard to remember as he teaches me my role: seduction. With each heated touch I drift further into peril. And if I fall under his seductive spell, death awaits me." Review: You don't know you need a good classic smutty paranormal read until you get one, and then everything falls right into place. It has all my go to favorite tropes. Force...

Rouge by Mona Awad (Review #251)

  "For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass." Review: Alright this one, was a hard one to digest. I wanted to like it more than I did, if I'm honest. This is a fever dream reimag...

Dark Fae by Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti (Review #250)

“What do a heartless Dragon Shifter, a cold-blooded Basilisk, an arrogant Lion Shifter, and a brooding, tattooed Harpy have in common..? Me. Elise Callisto. Vampire. Angel of vengeance. And a girl on a mission to destroy one of them for murdering my brother.I just don’t know which one did it yet.  When I kicked the ass of a Werewolf who was high on a new and dangerous drug called Killblaze, his final words painted a dark reality for me. The King of Aurora Academy killed my brother. The trouble is, there’s four kings at that school, and each of them have motive and cutthroat natures. Aurora Academy isn’t a place for the faint of heart. To put it lightly, my town is the asshole of Solaria where the dodgiest Far in the kingdom reside. The school itself is divided by the two gangs who run this town, the Lunar Brotherhood and the Oscura Clan. And guess what? Two of the kings run the gangs at the school, their hatred for each other so fierce I hear a day doesn’t go by without blood being...

Goddess of Filth by V. Castro (Review #249)

 "One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely - smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else - something far more ancient and powerful. As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right." Review: A possession horror story where the entity is for the girls, and the real demon is jus...

Graveyard Shift by M. L. Rio (Review #248)

  “Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story. One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom? Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought." Review: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??????? Worst scooby-doo, half-assed mystery. AND THEY HAD ME! I was so down for a group of people brought together by nicotine (although for people who can only smoke at a graveyard, ya'll be smoking everywhere),...

All of Our Demise by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman (Review #247)

  WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT GOTTEN THIS FAR IN THE ALL OF US VILLAINS DUOLOGY, STOP NOW. DO NOT READ. THIS IS BOOK 2. CHECK OUT ALL OF US VILLAINS   FOR THE REVIEW OF BOOK 1! "'I feel like I should warn this is going to be absolutely brutal.' For the first time in this ancient, bloodstained story, the tournament is breaking. The boundaries between the city of Ilvernath and the arena have fallen. Reporters swarm the historic battlegrounds. A dead boy now lives again. And a new champion has entered the fray, one who seeks to break the curse for good... no matter how many lives are sacrificed in the process. As the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each face a dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or fight to the death as this story was always intended. Long-held alliances will be severed. Hearts will break. Lives will end. Because a tale as wicked as this one was never destined for happily ever after." Review: Dude... ...