Kai Hayashi, heir to the earth dragon clan, already lost his mother to the rebels threatening to overthrow the council. When his grandfather suggests an arranged mating with not one, but two men, each with certain skills to help protect Kai, the young dragon prince doesn’t exactly need persuading.
Retrieval expert and leopard shifter Jace Dashwood has worked for the Hayashi family for a year now, helplessly in love with his employer’s grandson. Kai is all the things that Jace could never be, innocent and gentle. He had thought to keep his feelings to himself until the dragon king made him an offer too good to be true.
Having worked as a mercenary for too long, bear shifter Ted Graves finally decided to put down roots. He thought that joining a mating agency meant he was going to get the normal life he thought he had been craving but instead he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Review
The Happily Ever After Mating agency is designed for shifters who haven’t found their mates and want to settle down. In this case Kai’s uncle uses it to help find Kai the right mate to protect Kai as well as mate him.
Jace has already been working with Kai’s family and his uncle identifies Jace as a mate/protector right away.
Ted is tired of being footloose so he signs up to the mating agency and is pleased to hear from Kai’s family. He’s a bit surprised to find out it’s to be a three way mating and that his alternate duty will be protection but after meeting both men he’s very willing to continue with the plan.
Jace and Kai have been mutually crushing on one another for the last year, but not acting on it. When their third joins them they all acknowledge a mutual attraction that sets them on fire.
In addition to the immediate bonding that takes place, there is danger. Someone wants to take Kai out of the picture and replace him as the future dragon king. There is also the pesky little thing about Kai maybe being more than “just” a dragon shifter…
**
This is one of those surprise reads that you stumble upon every now and then. (I have to admit a weakness for cheesy shifter romances – the ones where the plot is thin but the sex is hot and the storyline light and usually full of fun. Nothing too angsty and nothing too stressful.) I thought this was one of those, but it is surprisingly more. There is a rich story line and compelling drama but also some real emotion and depth to the love story as well.
I thought the ménage was very believable and though I could feel bad for Ted at first- he seems odd man out to the couple of Jace and Kai – it was quickly made clear that he was integral and equal and definitely well loved.
I really enjoyed this and the others in this series and highly recommend them!
The war is at a fever pitch with both sides stretched to the limit, when the dark wizards score a shocking victory and capture Orlando St. Clair. Haggard with worry and grief at the separation from his lover, Alain fears that even if they find Orlando, the vampire’s heart and mind may be far too broken to save.
Knowing the Alliance teeters on the brink, Christophe Lombard, the oldest, most powerful vampire in Paris leaves his self-imposed seclusion to join the fight. Alain’s lost friend Eric Simonet, who betrayed him to join the dark wizards, is faced with a choice between revenge and redemption. And Jean, enraged by Orlando’s capture, faces the most agonizing decision in his unlife as the final battle looms: Will their actions lead to the shattering of the Alliance or the salvation of the world?
Review
This is the finale (sort of) to the Partnership in Blood series. Really, it’s the end of the war, there is still some relationship stuff to be dealt with in 3 more books that follow.
Essentially, we see the various couples moving through their relationships some more. Some more sex. Some more angst. Some more drama.
Orlando goes missing. This is a huge hurdle in this book. It takes a lot of cooperation to get him back.
After the war dies down, the focus is on the couples and what will happen next.
If I could I would tell you to NOT READ THE EPILOGUE. Personally, it really didn’t need to be there and just made me cry and cry. I got kinda mad in fact… I can’t understand why it was necessary, unless it was just one more bit of proof of the devotion between these two characters…
Anyhow, I was glad to see the war finally end and know that in the upcoming books we get to see more of these wonderful characters that Ariel Tachna has done such an amazing job of creating.
If I had to give an overall summary for the series it would be this: If you enjoy very detailed stories, with an abundance of central characters, if you don’t mind f/f and m/f storylines and you don’t mind a good cry, you’ll find this series highly satisfying.
I had to round this book down to 3.5 of 5 hearts for the Epilogue alone. Personal preference. I guess I just enjoy living in ignorance sometimes…
Waikiki vampires Tem and Jimmy Thunder are happily undead and married, about to celebrate Christmas when their cat Moontime brings an unusual treasure to the door…a baby in a box. But this is no cute, cuddly kid. It’s a demon baby with red eyes and razor sharp teeth. Jimmy, hopelessly besotted with his hot and sexy husband, sees his new life of man-on-man fun being wrecked by this snarling, spitting, forked-tongued little incubus that has apparently won Tem’s heart.
With half of Waikiki’s wacky residents coming to Christmas dinner, what’s a devoted husband to do? Jimmy calls in all kinds of favors to figure out the identity of the kid, how he got to them, and how to ensure this will be a merry—not marred—Vampire Christmas.
Review
This is the short, funny, kinda bizarre and very steamy next installment in the Vampire in Waikiki series.
Tem finds a cursed baby and wants to keep it and name it George… ok not George but Beezlebub. Div is worried about raising a baby and losing some of Tem’s attention. But it becomes clear that the baby needs their help so they enlist the help of some more of their strange acquaintances and… hilarity ensues.
Interspersed with the hilarity is all the way-hot-vampire-porn-star-sex and it’s both sweet and raucous.
If you enjoyed book one in the series you will want to keep going. This is better (in my opinion) than book one as it seems to have found more focus and since the characters are already developed we get to simply enjoy them.
After his sister’s death, businessman Marshall Hunter gains custody of his niece. Unused to children, Marshall struggles to connect with her. In an effort to make her more comfortable in her new home, he hires professional muralist Pace Barlow to personalize her room.
Pace is intrigued by his tiny client, and even more interested in her handsome uncle, but Pace isn’t certain he’s ready for the commitment of an instant family.
When Marshall decides to move for the sake of his niece, will he be able to keep his relationship with his young artist, or will he have to give up love to become a good father for a lonely little girl?
The love baked into an old-fashioned recipe might bring the two men together, but some things take more than magical cookies to fix.
Review
This is another installment from the magical cook book that helps people in need. In this case Marshall is a lonely, suddenly single father who needs someone in his life and help with his niece whom he is now guardian to.
Pace is the carefree artist he meets to help paint her room but finds he’s ridiculously attracted to.
Together they rapidly move through “getting to know you” to hitting the sheets to moving in together. It’s a short story and we have to just accept that between the magic in the cookies and suspending our disbelief, these men can find a deep and abiding love in a very short time.
Their chemistry is excellent and the story is short and sweet.
Overall I thought it was a nice, “light” story and if you don’t take it too seriously, a lot of fun.
With the battle of Egypt behind them, Alec and Cronin are enjoying the thrill of new love. Though fate doesn’t wait long before throwing them back into the world of weird.
They know Alec’s blood is special, though its true purpose still eludes them. And given Alec’s inability to be changed into a vampire, Cronin is free to drink from him at will. But the ramifications of drinking such powerful blood starts a ripple effect.
With the help of Jorge, a disturbing vampire-child with the gift of foresight, Alec and Cronin face a new kind of war. This time their investigations lead them to the borders of China and Mongolia—but it’s not what lies in the pits beneath that worries Alec.
It’s the creator behind it all.
In the underground depths of China, amidst a war with the Terracotta Army, they will find out just what the Key is, and what Alec means to the vampire world.
Review
Wow – oh wow! Alec is back and he and Cronin are so – so – so hot together!
Alec and Cronin face Genghis Kahn and the Terracotta Army as well as some others… to be named later… for the answers they need to save the world as well as to save Alec’s eternity.
Something strange is going on in Alec’s physiology that makes him and Cronin insatiable for each other. They can’t bear to be separated for even a moment. They need one another desperately and succumbing to their need has an unpredictable and sometimes terrifying result.
They must answer riddles and dig deep to find the truth that will set them free, but once they do – WOW – is it ever an amazing ride.
I really, really, really loved this sequel to Cronin’s Key. It was very satisfying and action packed as well as amazingly touching and sweet.
There was a lot of hot smexy times, though many were only hinted at. What I really loved was the desperate need and devotion the two shared. It was very passionate and all consuming and really drove you to keep turning the page to seek the solution along beside Alec, Cronin and the team they assembled.
I loved the new powers we see in the other vampires as well as the crazy interesting Jorge and all he has to “show” Alec about his future.
This was a terrific sequel and in my opinion an even better book than the first. I highly recommend it and the series … well and the author!
5 of 5 hearts
PS When oh when do we get these and other NR Walker books on audio? Soon isn’t soon enough!
Robbie MacIntyre manages a small post office in the old Station House on the outskirts of sleepy Barton Hartshourn northwest of London. He’s stunned when the owner, Maggie, a close friend, bequeaths him not only the post office, but also Station House.
The rest of her estate is left to an American writer, Jason Young, and when he moves to the village, Robbie is thrown by the attraction he has for the man who has more of a claim on the Station House than he does.
Then there is a box that holds several rare first editions and a cookbook. Only when the secrets of the ingredients in a particular recipe are finally revealed does everything begin to make sense, and a love cut short seventy years earlier is finally discovered.
Review
Robbie and Jason are thrown together by a magical cookbook and a “fairy grandmother”. Robbie is alone in a small town in Britain, Jason comes from America to get some background for his book.
Their love story is a quietly, sweet, almost old-fashioned one. With the British countryside as background and all that that entails.
It’s short, maybe too short, but as always RJ Scott writes so well that we are assured to get a warm feeling from her stories, even in brevity.
I wish that there was more character development and maybe some more smexy times, but it was an enjoyable, light, fun read.
Tiernan Guaire was exiled from the Fae Realm a century and a half ago for his brother’s murder. His soul torn in half, he lives by his vows—never to trust, never to love. And if he can only be whole by finding and loving the human with the other half of his soul? He’s content to live broken and half-souled.
Kevin Almstead’s future, the career he’s worked for as long as he can remember, has been taken away by a vote of the partners at his law firm. Chance brings him to Purgatory, the hottest all-male nightclub in Washington, D.C., to a meeting with a Fae, with long blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and a smile promising pleasures he’s never dreamed of. But there’s no such thing as chance.
But Tiernan isn’t the only one to find Kevin in Purgatory. The most ancient enemy of the Fae race sees in the handsome lawyer a way to destroy the world from which it, too, was exiled. And only the strength of a true SoulShare bond can keep it from what it seeks.
GALE FORCE
Conall Dary is the mightiest mage born to the Fae race in more than two thousand years, ever since the Sundering of the Fae and human worlds. But that power condemns him to an untouched, virginal life—sex calls to power, and his power is enough to drain the magick, the life, from his entire world. Exiled from the Realm for refusing to turn his talent to service a Noble’s petty revenge fantasies, his soul is torn in two and his magickal gifts blocked.
Josh LaFontaine is a gifted tattoo artist with a heart of gold. While doing a good turn for an ex-boyfriend, he’s stunned when a gorgeous red-haired twink appears out of nowhere at his feet during New York City’s Pride march.
The Marfach was thwarted in its first attempt to capture a Fae. But when a terrible accident separates Conall and Josh before they bond, it’s a race to see who finds the mage first, the monster who will use him as a weapon to destroy his race, or his SoulShare.
DEEP PLUNGE
More than two thousand years ago, the healer Lochlann Doran was the first Fae to leave the Realm after the Sundering of the Fae and human worlds. After centuries of wandering the human world, seeking his SoulShare, he has spent all his magick, and lost all his hope.
Garrett Templar is the star pole dancer at Purgatory, the hottest gay nightclub in Washington, D.C. If his past hadn’t taught him the futility of hope, his present surely would; HIV-positive since age 18, his illness has suddenly and inexplicably mutated into drug-impervious AIDS.
A SoulShare bond with Garrett may give Lochlann back his magick, his gift of healing. But it also might kill him. And if he survives the return of his magick, the Marfach and its host are waiting to use the dancer as bait in a deadly trap. Only an impossible love can save them both.
And everyone knows Fae don’t love….
FIRESTORM
Rian Sheridan is a foundling, a Falls Road corner boy, whose world went up in flames beside an Orangemen’s bonfire of hatred last July the Twelfth. A pain he barely remembers is a siren’s call, taunting him, daring him to find its source and lose himself to it. And he searches in the only place he knows, the S&M underground of Belfast.
Cuinn an Dearmad is the last surviving Fae Loremaster. He’s just seen the beginning of the death of the Realm, the home of the Fae race and their haven from the twisted evil of the Marfach. The only hope of saving the Realm starts with finding the Prince Royal of Fire he himself stole from the cradle, sent through the Pattern, and lost in the human world, many years ago. He has a few guesses about where that hope ends, none of which bode well for him.
Rian and Cuinn are an impossible pairing, two SoulShared Fae. Any two Fae strike sparks, but these two Fae are an explosive combination. Drawn into an escalating series of sexual collisions, their passion will save—or destroy—two worlds.
Fingertips stroked the back of his hand, gently, possessively, and Kevin fought to suppress a shiver. Not hard enough, though, because there was that smile again. A lazy, sensual smile that absolutely should not be on the lips of anyone he hadn’t spent at least twenty-four hours having mind-blowing sex with. Which short list did not include anyone of this seductive blond’s gender.
Yet.
As if he’d heard Kevin’s thought, the man arched that ringed eyebrow; the grip on his hand tightened, a thumb slid around to stroke his palm. “You don’t even know why you’re here, do you?”
“And I suppose you do?” His voice came out gruff, harsh; the air thrummed around the two of them, tingling with a dark electricity.
The blond chuckled, a sound like warm honey. “You’re buttoned down tight, lanan. And you came in here because…”
Shit.
“Secretly, you want someone…”
Damn, damn, DAMN…
“Someone like me…”
Long thick blond hair. Black leather jacket, gleaming with a sheen like melted butter in the flickering light from the bar. White muscle shirt. Jeans first painted on and then sliced half off. God damn.
“…to unbutton you.”
s majored in creative writing, back when Respectable Colleges didn’t offer such a major, so she had to design it herself. Her university boasted one professor willing to teach creative writing, he being a British surrealist who went nuts over students writing dancing bananas in the snow but did not take well to high fantasy. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa at the age of nineteen despite him, sent off her first short story to an anthology being assembled by an author she idolized, got shot down in flames, and found other things to do, such as going to law school, ballet dancing (at more or less the same time), and nightclub singing, for the next thirty years or so, until her stories started whispering to her. Now she’s a legal editor and the mother of a budding filmmaker, and is busily wedding her love of myth and legend to her passion for m/m romance.
Sequel to Covenant in Blood
Partnership in Blood Volume Three
As the Alliance wizard-vampire partnerships grow stronger, the dark wizards feel the effects and become increasingly desperate to find enough information to counter them, unaware of the growing strain of the blood-magic bonds on the wizards and vampires alike.
The conflict is spreading. The strife of uncomfortable relationships, both personal and professional, is threatening to tear up the Alliance from the inside, despite the efforts of Alain Magnier and Orlando St. Clair, Thierry Dumont and Sebastien Noyer, and even Raymond Payet and Jean Bellaiche, leader of the Paris vampires, who is fighting to establish a stable covenant with his own partner so he might lead by example.
As the war rages on and heartbreaking casualties mount on both sides, the dark wizards keep searching for clues to understand and counter the strength of the Alliance, while the blood-bound Alliance partners hunt through ancient prejudices and forgotten lore to find an edge that can turn the tide of the war once and for all.
Review
In this, the third installment of the Partnership series, there is more conflict between the dark wizards and the wizard/vampire alliance.
As in book two the various couples have their own emotional hurdles to overcome and their relationships change and develop.
They develop a new way to counter the magic imbalance – through sex – of course!
**
This book still has the problem of balancing all the various couples (including m/f!) and the war. There is slightly more relationship building in this book (yay!) and each couple seems to be moving forward nicely, though there isn’t much dramatic change in the way of the war, yet.
Overall a nice, if perhaps overly long, addition to the Partnership series.
If you’ve been caught up in books one and two you will undoubtedly want to keep going…
Months after being forced to leave his lover and mate Ari Jannsen behind, Hunter Devin settles into his role as Enforcer for the newly formed Deagan Clan under the rule of his new Alpha and best friend Tristan “Trip” Hagan. Along with Hunter’s brother Boone, their nephews, sister, and mother, Hunter finally has the family he’s always wanted, but without his little rebel Ari, his heart is incomplete.
The Hagan Clan is unable to accept the Deagan Clan’s betrayal for walking away and taking the clan’s pups with them. War looms. As both clans plan their attack, a greater enemy plots against them. But Hunter is determined to get his Ari back. Bonds are put to the test and unexpected alliances are made as Hunter and his clan set out to protect their own and end the spreading heartache.
Review
First – you MUST have read book one for this book to mean much to you.
We met Hunter and Ari in An Intrepid Trip To Love, the mates who couldn’t mate because of politics and were then separated by an evil mother and a clan war.
This book is about their back-story and their coming together.
**
Charlie Cochet has to be one of my favorite authors! She is so witty, so giddy and yet careful with her dialog. I adore her characters and find her creativity astonishing.
I was so glad to see that she didn’t keep Ari and Hunter apart for long in this book and was grateful for the back-story – it was sexy and hilarious at the same time.
The evil in this book is REALLY evil and I am looking forward to seeing more about this clan war and possibly another match with our wolf leader in the future.
It’s tough being a vampire. For one thing, there’s so much time on your hands. And for another, being undead for centuries means that you meet way too many stupid people…
Socrates Delis, since he has to be awake at night, wonders why he shouldn’t make better use of his time. So to ease his loneliness and hopefully meet a more educated group of people, he enrolls in night school at UCLA’s extension courses and quickly finds that poetry isn’t the only thing on the agenda. Somebody is killing off young gay men around town, and students are nervous. And by the way, didn’t Socrates swear off love? So why’s he finding himself attracted to his hot, human teacher?
Devin Gold loves his work. The great poets are his favorites to share with his English lit students, and while teaching, his life often seems just about perfect. But holy heck, his crazy Uncle Vince just blew into town and has even invaded Devin’s night classes, disrupting his life. Uncle Vince and Devin’s mom think they’re vampire hunters. Devin knows there’s no such thing, and has lived with the shame of their insanity all his life. Now his uncle swears that LA, even night school, is swarming with fangers.
How can Devin keep his sudden attraction to his handsome new student, Socrates, a secret? He’s not sure, but he has to try, especially since his obsessive uncle will undoubtedly insist that Socrates is a vampire. It’s tough being a sane human in La La Land…
Review
Socrates is an old vampire living in LA. He wants to be as “mortal” as possible and has always enjoyed writing, so he decides to spend some of his time at night school learning how to be a better writer.
There he meets the delicious teacher, Devin, but also runs into the crazy Ivan – a vampire hunter out for his and his friend’s heads.
Turns out there is more to Devin than just a dreamy teacher, he has connections with Ivan and Devin that could make a lot of trouble for Socrates. But that doesn’t stop the pair from connecting…
**
This really wasn’t my cup of tea. I thought I’d like it at first – Socrates is a great character – funny, clueless, sincere, sexy… but Devin is too wishy-washy and I really felt uncomfortable with the sort of love triangle that gets formed between Devin, Socrates and the mutal “ex” Lucky.
I enjoyed the dark humor but found the romance lacking and the ending… not really a HEA, maybe a HFN…
Anyhow, I give it 2.5 of 5 hearts for the character building.
Blurb
