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Book Review: Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase

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Last week, I suddenly remembered that you can buy signed copies of books from authors on Etsy. So, I purchased several. Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase was one of them.

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Talk about rags to riches. Cinderella had nothing on me.

I have a sparkly new crown, a remodeled ancient castle, and I’m mated to six of the most delectable princes a girl could conjure.

But my happily-ever-after honeymoon still seems a long way off.

There are plenty of magical creatures in Haret and Earth who would kill to see me dethroned – literally – and we can’t let our guard down yet.

Still, my men promised me a break and a bucket list, and my mates always deliver their goods. We’ll just have to get our sugar in small bites.

I’m Carlyle Licorne, and I’m ready for my next sugar fix.

The Sugar Bites series features Carlyle and her six men, navigating the new Haret as only she can do – with snark, sugar, and shanking.

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

my review

I am just infuriated. I can’t even tell you if this was a good book or not because I’m so distracted by, yet again, picking up a book labeled book one and finding out that THAT IS A LIE. I have complained about this before. Hell, I wrote a blog post way back in 2016 complaining about this very thing.

I started this book and very quickly sensed that I’d been dropped into a story. Characters appeared without introductions. There was no world-building or even descriptions, places were named but nothing else. And the plot was 100% based on events that apparently happened in the past, outside of this book (one presumes the previous series).

So, a quick Goodread search provided me two pieces of information. I was reminded that the blurb says,

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

And that the The Haret Chronicles is a 7 book series. And since I’m deeming the above statement untrue, that makes Mint Freeze book number 8, no matter what the cover and blurb say. Because even at page 107/130 (82% into the book) I came across quotes like this,

What we’re doing—what you’re doing—it means everything, Carlyle.

My heart gave a lurch. I knew it. God, did I know it. I lost sleep over the pressure of what I was supposed to be able to do, and the fear that I wouldn’t be enough.

But, if you’ve not read the previous books (like I haven’t, trusting that ‘book one’ on the cover) you have no idea what they were doing or what she was supposed to able to do.

The book is entirely like this. I could have chosen a hundred other quotes. I chose that one because it’s so late in the book and illustrates the point that the reader is never given the information missing from the previous series and it’s pertinent to understanding this book. YOU CANNOT READ THIS AS A COMPLETE WORK.

You, in fact, can’t read these books before The Haret Chronicles, as the blurb claims, and feel as if you’ve been given any sort of satisfying story. Period. I literally just spent 130 pages with characters I didn’t care about—since the reader is apparently expected to already know and care about the characters, that opportunity isn’t given here—chasing a plot I knew nothing about, in order to…yeah, I got nothing. I don’t even know what the end goal was. Plus, it’s a cliffie on top of everything else. I mean, I read the book. But I feel nothing but frustration having done so. And I can’t imagine that was the author’s intention.

What’s more, over half of this novella appears to just be pulled directly from past books and fed to the reader as memories. So, I don’t even think this is a new story. Having not read The Haret Chronicles, I can’t know if it’s literally a cut and paste (from previous books) job or if it’s freshly written. But it felt like a cut and paste job.

So, if you’ve read The Haret Chronicles, this is probably a fun little addendum and you’re experience with Mint Freeze was probably completely different than mine. I can see what role the ‘sugar bites’ are supposed to play, after all. If you haven’t read The Haret Chronicles, don’t believe the lie that you can read this first. Put this book down and go start at the beginning.

The writing seems fine. The three characters included here (Carlyle and two of six of her mates) seem likeable enough. The sex scenes were fine. I might have liked the series if I hadn’t unknowingly started it at book 8.

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Book Review: Her Wolf in the Wild, by Rien Gray

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I received a copy of Rien Gray‘s Her Wolf In the Wild from Netgalley, quite a while ago. I’m embarrassed to say it got lost in the digital library for a time. So, my review is super late. Which is why I’m becoming more and more reluctant to accept digital books for review. There is something to be said for a physical book that can sit on my side table and remind me of it’s existence.
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The Hounds of God MC live outside the law and protect their own. They only have three rules:

(1) look out for each other

(2) obey the club president

(3) never show a human your werewolf form.

Christiana Arjean needs to get out. She tried to fix her relationship, but making a break for it is her only shot. She almost doesn’t make it, until a butch biker with a shock of white hair tosses Christiana on the back of her bike. Micah is as mysterious as she is attractive, and Christiana wants to know what’s under that tough exterior.

Micah Nubilo knows a little bit about keeping secrets. Rescuing Christiana is a bad idea, and letting her hang around is even worse. But there’s something calling to Micah: an impossible bond no werewolf should ever feel for a human, even one as beautiful as Christiana.

Their growing intimacy is threatened when they realize their pasts are connected in ways they never could have imagined. Christiana and Micah must fight against threats both outside the pack and inside themselves for a chance at putting it all behind them and finding a way forward—together.

my review

I thought this was a super sweet romance. Though if I’m honest, the platonic love between Micah and her pack-mates was my favorite part of the book. The book is chocked full of representation. The writing is easy to follow. The editing is fairly clean. And the whole thing actually concludes, no cliffie.

However, I did feel a little bit like the villain was villainous just because. There wasn’t much steam in the book; no sex until the last chapter, in fact. There was also very little down time for the reader to get to know the main characters outside of the drama, which I found a little exhausting.

[SPOILER] Lastly, I was confused by the fact that Christina was supposed to be hiding from her crazy ex, but just went to work like normal—the most predictable place to find her. It made no sense that she would decide to do this, and having done it, it made no sense that he didn’t find her there. I was also irritated that she made no effort to inform anyone that she hadn’t, in fact, been kidnapped. I understand she was nervous about in-person police working with the ex. But she made no effort to—or even seemed to consider—informing anyone of anything and it felt like a convenient oversight for no reason but plot progression.

All in all, however, I enjoyed more of this than I didn’t and would happily read another Gray book.

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Other Reviews

Review: Her Wolf in the Wild by Rien Gray

Review: Her Wolf in the Wild – Rien Gray

Book Review: An Emperor for the Eclipse, by Eris Adderly

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I bought a second-hand paperback copy of Eris Adderly‘s An Emperor for the Eclipse at Savers. (Though the spine looked like it’d never been cracked, if I’m honest.)

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He was expendable. He was a sacrifice. He was the emperor.

Raothan Ga’ardahn wants to take his own life. Twelve years in exile have a way of beating a man down, and the shameful secrets of his past, no matter how far buried, weigh enough to keep him that way. The last thing standing between him and oblivion is a sign from the gods. That, and a unit of Imperial Guard trooping onto his farm one late summer’s afternoon.

Across the continent, the Taunai heed the warnings of their dead: act to correct an unforeseen fracture in the Pattern of events, or face annihilation. Niquel, their bravest Questioner, accepts the challenge to descend into the dangerous lowlander capital for the good of her people. A journey alone away from her snowy mountain home awaits. Any worry about the strange man in her dreams will have to come later.

When the paths of the two outsiders cross on the steps of the imperial palace at Protreo, the fate of the empire shifts. One the Novamneans call ‘exile’, the other they call ‘witch’. Neither will ever be the same.

my review

Ho, I found this book beyond frustrating. Because I almost loved it. I would have loved it, except the sex! Now, before anyone calls me a prude and asks me why I’m reading sexy fantasy if I don’t like sex in my books, let me say I have no problem with sex. I read quite a lot of it. Outside of the rapes (which I do generally try to avoid in the books I read for fun and sometimes get pissy about), I don’t even have a problem with any single element of the sex in this book. It’s just that the sex the book contains doesn’t AT ALL fit the story the book is telling.

The first one is full on m/f master/slave kink play with spanking, anal pegging and anal sex. Involving a character we’d just met long enough to have a work conversation going home to have sex with his wife, who is only introduced for the purposes of him having sex with her (and she basically isn’t in the book in any meaningful way after). Nothing in the book, up until that point, was even remotely erotic. The scene literally came out of nowhere. I spent that whole VERY LONG sex scene (12 pages) wondering what the point of it was. The characters were not important ones. The reader wasn’t invested in them or their relationship. The sex wasn’t stitched into the plot. The whole thing was jarring and out of place.

The second scene was a m/f gang rape. The third was coerced f/f sex, in which one was straight and the other basically owned her. The fourth was (m/f) forced fellatio, so rape. The fifth was another f/f scene, in which the previously straight woman ostensibly entered willingly, but only because she was told someone would kill her nieces if she didn’t seduce the other woman—so, basically another coerced scene. And the last was finally a sweet, gently love scene between the main characters (the only sex scene between the main characters).

The point I’m making is that the main couple basically have a very sweet VERY LOW STEAM romance and then the author shoved all this jarring, unpleasant sex into the plot with other characters. They didn’t fit together even a little bit. It’s not even that they were badly written. They weren’t. It just felt like the author took the sex scenes she wrote for an entirely different book and shoehorned them into this one in order to make it steamier and IT RUINED THE BOOK.

I can’t even reason that maybe she was trying to create a purposeful contradiction because nothing in the story or plot supports it. So, I’m just left scratching my head and super frustrated.

Outside of the ruinous sex, I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters. The world is complex and multilayered. There’s some humor. The writing and editing is good. I would have 5 stared this book if the author hadn’t forced it from fantasy romance into erotic fantasy. (Not erotica necessarily. The sex isn’t the point of the plot. But definitely a higher erotic rating that the story needed or, more importantly, supported.)

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Other reviews:

https://andypeloquin.com/book-review-emperor-for-an-eclipse-by-eris-adderly/