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Book Review: Fire Heart, by Emma Hamm

I purchased a copy of Emma Hamm‘s Fire Heart.

They handed her a sword and bid her to take a throne…Lorelei is half elf in a kingdom where that bloodline is synonymous with “slave”. The Umbra King holds everyone captive with his pet dragon who knows no mercy. She hides in the shadows and steals to stay alive, until a rebel group gives her an offer she can’t refuse.

The King seeks a bride. If she can get close enough, she could drive a dagger into that wicked man’s heart. But the bridal games are more difficult than most. Lorelei must prove herself not only beautiful, but talented, poised, and deadly as the king. However, the closer she gets to saving her kingdom, the more she realizes a singular problem stands in her way.

The dragon.

The King’s bodyguard is more than a slathering beast. He’s a man. And the longer she’s near him, the more she realizes that perhaps the king isn’t the most dangerous person in the kingdom. Perhaps she had to guard not only her body, but her heart. For a dragon mates for life, and they’re hard pressed to give up their treasures.

My experience with Emma Hamm’s books has been inconsistent. I’ve read some that I absolutely loved (such as the Otherworld Series) and others that I’ve just been bored silly by (Bleeding Hearts). This was one of the latter. Maybe I just need to avoid any of her titles with Heart in it.

The writing in Fire Heart is good, and I liked the characters well enough. But the plot just left something to be desired. The main character was little more than a patsy. The main love interest was bland, though I did appreciate his fatherly attributes. The villain was a caricature. The side characters were largely uninteresting. It was all just kind of mid.

Maybe, despite the heroine being a couple of hundred years old, the story just felt too YA for me. Maybe I just expected more from this author. Who knows? All in all, I probably won’t pick up the next in the series unless it’s a freebie. But I’m still open to trying others of Hamm’s books.

Other Reviews:

ARC Review: Fire Heart by Emma Hamm

The Rambling Book Nerd: Fire Heart, by Emma Hamm

Book Review: Suddenly Summoned, by Beatrix Hollow

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I have a signed copy of Beatrix Hollow‘s Suddenly Summoned. However, I cannot remember if I got it in a subscription book box or bought it during an online author-signing event.

Luckily, it doesn’t take much social confidence to plot a massacre. All you need is an ancient ancestral grimoire, a shameful obsession with demons, and the proper motivation. Check, check, and check.

Yep, I’ve raised a demon from Hell. The first person that dared to summon in three hundred years. I gave him my eternal soul and in exchange he gave me a vicious bloodbath.

The world knows me as Beauty, the coven massacre slayer, and I’m stuck living out my pathetic life at the supernatural prison, Dreary Isle.

Now I have a savage demon magically chained to me–petting my hair and rasping in my ear how he wants to kill me. I’ve also got Max, my frustratingly platonic best friend who I’m responsible for getting locked up. Then there’s my broody leprechaun with mischievous eyes, who makes a lot of flirty promises–including escape.

Lastly, there’s the warden. He’s insane and has a grudge against my ancestors. A devil owns my soul but the warden is what frightens me. He’s something more heinous than a violent demon…

He’s a psychotic god.

I thought this was an OK read. I liked the main characters and where the story seemed to be going. But it was also far too slow a burn for me. I don’t just mean for my preference, either. The slow-slow burn made the book feel like it dragged, not hitting the expected plot points when expected. (There is no sex, for example, because no relationship has progressed far enough.) And while that isn’t necessarily bad, there wasn’t really enough other stuff to fill the void. So, it felt a little mid.

All in all, however, I liked it enough to try and buy the next one in the series. Unfortunately, there isn’t one, and isn’t likely to be one. The author appears to have pulled it from publication and has it listed on her website as something she intends to re-edit and re-publish, but she has no ETA for when that might happen. (And obviously, there is also no apparent work on the rest of the series.) So, I suppose here ends my Faustian adventure.