Tag Archives: Fae

Book Review: War of Hearts, by S. Young

In 2021, I picked S. Young‘s War of Hearts up as an Amazon freebie. I finally got around to reading it.

Thea Quinn has no idea what she is. All she knows is that her abilities have been a plague upon her life since she was a child. After years of suffering at the hands of a megalomaniac, Thea escaped and has been on the run ever since.

The leadership and protection of his pack are of the utmost importance to Conall MacLennan, Alpha and Chief of Clan MacLennan, the last werewolf pack in Scotland. Which is why watching his sister slowly die of a lycanthropic disease is emotional torture. When Conall is approached by a businessman who offers a cure for his sister in exchange for the use of Conall’s rare tracking ability, Conall forges an unbreakable contract with him. He has to find and retrieve the key to the cure: dangerous murderer, Thea Quinn.

Thea’s attempts to evade the ruthless werewolf are not only thwarted by the Alpha, but by outside dangers. With no choice but to rely on one another for survival, truths are revealed, intensifying a passionate connection they both fight to resist. At war with themselves and each other, Conall and Thea’s journey to Scotland forces them to face a heartrending choice between love and betrayal.

I enjoyed this. It reminded me a lot of older PNR, except that it didn’t have a toxic alpha a-hole MMC, and the FMC isn’t a doormat. (Yes, that’s a generalization about gender tropes in older PNR and doesn’t always hold true. But it was definitely the fad for a while.) I mean, it’s not wholly free of the icky genderings. The FMC still finds love but has to give up much of her power, as they so often do (and he doesn’t). She also gets awfully weepy as soon as she accepts him. But, honestly, it was so much less than is common. I’ll take any improvement I can get in this direction.

All in all, I liked the characters a lot. The world and the larger plotline seem interesting enough, and the writing is clean and easy to read. Plus, it didn’t end on a cliffhanger! The villain is pretty cliched, and the whole thing is largely predictable. There are no surprises here. But if you like earlier 2000s PNR, this one, published in 2019, will still serve the purpose.

Other Reviews:

5 reasons to read War of Hearts by S. Young

Book Review: Splintered Sight, by W.R. Gingell

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I contributed to the Kickstarter for W.R. Gingell‘s Splintered Sight and therefore got an early e-copy of it. It is book three of the Shattered World Series. Here you can find reviews of books one and two.

Viv has been living alongside behindkind and fae in the Historic Renner Tea House in Melbourne for nearly a month now. In that time, she’s been almost killed by friends and enemies alike, discovered that the human world is not the only world on the edges of her reality, and become a glorified babysitter for Luca, an unstable assassin of otherworldly creatures who has nightmares that are a bit too…real. She has uncovered mysteries and murderers—and discovered just a bit too much about herself into the bargain.

Now a small selkie has turned up on her windowsill, while a nightmare has begun stalking the floors of the Tea House, and Viv is certain the two things are connected. The selkie’s human sponsor has disappeared, as has his pelt, and there’s no help to be had from the selkies, who won’t interfere with a traditional sojourn of one of their own on solid land.

Between her boss Jasper’s dislike of doing anything he doesn’t get paid for, and Luca’s disinclination to do anything to help behindkind rather than humans, Viv is finding it hard to get to the bottom of the disappearance. But if she doesn’t, the nightmare that has infiltrated the Tea House might burgeon into daylight reality, and the little selkie won’t get his pelt back. And without his pelt, it’s just a matter of time before Kyma crumbles away into dust…

There are very few authors whose books I enjoy so much that I am willing to read them as they are published, rather than wait for the series to be complete so that I can binge (my preferred reading method). Gingell is one such author. I contribute to the Kickstarters for her books as soon as they are posted, so that I can get them as quickly as possible, and then I devour them. Which is what I did with Splintered Sight.

I love Viv and Luca as a duo. I like all the sundry side characters and get a little thrill when there is a bit of crossover from Gingell’s other related series. I’m invested in the secrets that are slowly being revealed, and I like the bit of mystery each book presents. And I adore Gingell’s sense of humor and writing style. All in all, I was thrilled with this book and am now back on the edge of my seat waiting for the next one.