May has been a tough month for reading for two reasons: I’ve been feverishly working on my next book (a dark paranormal MM romance) and I’ve had a couple of family crises that have eaten up a lot of my time. That being said, here’s the best of what I’ve read this month.
I was really excited to dig into RuNyx’s latest gothic romance, ENIGMA. The similarities between it and the author’s previous work, GOTHIKANA, are numerous and somewhat distracting. Among them: it’s a dark academia romance located in an exclusive remote college with a questionable history and secrets to keep. There are a series of student deaths made to look like suicides, an odd, reclusive FMC with wild hair and unusual eyes, and a mysterious and handsome MMC with his own secrets to keep.
As such, it was hard not to compare the two books, and after reading both, I still maintain that GOTHIKANA was the better of the two. Maybe that was due to it being the original or the fact that I felt the love story (and the spice) between the two main characters in GOTHIKANA was better, but it just seemed to me that the story of ENIGMA was being forced into that mold.
And that story is as follows: Salem Salazar is the black sheep of a scandal-ridden legacy family. She comes to Mortimer for one reason–to learn the truth about her sister Olivia’s death. But once she starts investigating, she uncovers more mysterious deaths and a secret society working to keep them undiscovered.
She meets Cazimir van der Waal, a teaching assistant and artist, sketching at the scene of the latest death during her first week at the college. Despite his attempts to challenge her both in class and outside, she doesn’t trust him. She knows he’s keeping secrets and has a hidden agenda, but she can’t deny her attraction to him.
Caz and Salem begin a push-pull dance as Salem edges closer to the truth, revealing more about the secret society that could threaten the safety of anyone who comes near it. The book ends on an HEA. I give it four and a half stars.
WHIT, an MM romance by Cora Rose (book 1 of the Unexpected series), is a strange little book. I say that by virtue of its beginning. Caleb van Beek is a good ol’ boy from the country who heads off to college and applies to be the roommate of Whit Christian. Caleb has always considered himself to be your average hard-partying straight man, but there’s something about the quiet, mysterious Whit that he can’t get out of his mind. All he knows about his roommate is he’s gay and likes to read. He becomes obsessed with finding out more until one night, when he comes home drunk and sick, Whit takes care of him and they end up wrapped around each other in bed.
I guess it’s the sharp left turn in orientation that throws me at first. Caleb is straight one minute and can’t get enough of Whit in the next. And while Caleb is open about his attraction to Whit, even though he doesn’t fully understand it himself, Whit is a closed book, tight-lipped and secretive.
Their relationship deepens despite Whit’s reluctance, who maintains that it’s just casual. But Whit’s secrets will come back to haunt both of them.
There’s a lot of mental trauma to process in the second half of the book, but it all resolves itself in a hard-won four star happily ever after.
I’ll treat the next three books as one because they’re part of the mafia romance Blood Trilogy from Rina Kent. This is the story of Sasha (Alesandra) Lipovsky (Ivanova) and Kirill Morozov. In the first book, BLOOD OF MY MONSTER, Sasha has enlisted in the Russian army as a man to escape the same fate as her slaughtered family, and is in danger of being outed when Kirill (Captain Morozov) intervenes. Kirill is the son of a king in the New York Bratva, who’s escaped to the army to avoid his overbearing father.
Kirill is a man who takes no prisoners, a robotic, unfeeling monster with a charming exterior. Ordinarily he wouldn’t think twice about someone like Sasha, but there’s something about the soldier that piques his interest. That’s why, when she asks him to train her, he shocks everyone by agreeing.
Sasha joins Kirill’s elite force, training with his men despite being weaker and smaller. What she lacks in strength she makes up for in skill. She’s the unit’s best sniper. But when a mission goes sideways, she’s wounded and Kirill finds himself doing everything he can to save her, thus discovering her secret.
Family obligations force Kirill to abandon the army and return to the states. At her request, he brings Sasha along with his men. A physical relationship develops between Sasha and Kirill. Both have secrets they keep from each other, with Sasha following her family’s orders to spy on Kirill. When she returns to Russia on a “vacation” to report to them, Kirill, thinking she’s going to meet a lover, follows.
The action picks up here in book 2, LIES OF MY MONSTER. Sasha’s family expects Kirill to follow her and they ambush him before she can intervene, wounding him critically. Sasha gets him to a hospital, but Kirill believes she betrayed him and wants nothing to do with her. Most of this book is spent trying to repair the damage done by Sasha’s actions in Russia.
When she finally wins her way back to Kirill’s side, Sasha realizes her feelings for him go deeper than a mere physical relationship. But when she confesses this to Kirill, he drops a bomb on her that blows up their relationship as part his plan to become Pakhan. He sends her away until he can get things set up.
The third book, HEART OF MY MONSTER, picks up here. Everything is going according to Kirill’s plan until Sasha’s brother shows up and reveals Kirill’s betrayal to her. The cabin where she is staying is attacked and Sasha fakes her own death to get away from Kirill.
Kirill, believing Sasha is dead, goes insane, punishing anyone he believes had a hand in her murder. For her own part, Sasha believes Kirill was responsible for her family’s slaughter and plans to make him pay. When her plan is foiled by Kirill himself, he captures her and brings her home. Thus ensues a struggle to win back her trust while trying to discover the identity of the traitor behind all of this.
A foiled trip to visit Sasha’s brother reveals all the players in the betrayal and nearly costs both Sasha and Kirill their lives, but the book, and the series, finally ends on a five star happily ever after.
That’s my five top reads of the month. Rina Kent’s latest book, BEAUTIFUL VENOM, was delivered this week, so I’ll have my review of that next month.