A Dark Fae King Walks into a Small Town...

That's not a joke. It's the beginning of an adorably cozy and spicy story that hits all the right notes. Cozy romantasy? With a morally gray shadow daddy MMC? And a kind competent FMC? Yes please!

Hannah is the mayor of a small town that is slowly dying. She also recently found out that she's a witch, but can't figure out what her magic is.

Then Severin, king of the shadow fae and a former bad guy (now in his redemption era), shows up one day promising Hannah that he will help her bring businesses and tourism back to her town as well as protect it. All she has to do is marry him for a year and agree to let the shadow fae stay in earth. Oh, and win the fae bride contest.

Their romance, though starting out as fake, quickly becomes more and more real, with Severin realizing that for the first time in his life he is caring for someone other than himself and Hannah seeing the good man that has been hidden for years under the mask of terrifying warlord.

If you love:
-shadow daddy fae
-competent and kind FMCs
-magic lessons
-cozy small towns
-smallfae hijinks
-adorable fox familiars
-grand gestures
then you will adore Faking with the Fae King.

Love Is a War Song

This is the first NetGalley ARC I have received that made me shout with joy when I got the acceptance email.

It's purely coincidental that I am reviewing Love is a War Song so soon after that absolutely vile/heinous anti-Indigenous tweet was posted by a certain far-right talking head (I started reading it the day before that wretched woman tweeted).

Now, back to the good stuff.

Avery Fox is a former child star-turned-rising pop star whose career is imploding due to taking bad career advice. Her Muskogee heritage is being questioned and online denizens are lobbing threats her way, so her mother/manager's solution is to ship her off to her estranged grandmother's failing horse ranch in Oklahoma and to wait for everything to blow over.

Floundering in unfamiliar surroundings, Avery eventually convinces the ranch hand Logan to teach her what it means to be Muskogee, because Averey's mother never taught her anything at all about her heritage. Avery finds herself falling in love with her new found family, her new community and with Logan.

All too soon Avery is faced with a difficult choice: will she go back to her old life as a vapid pop star now that the storm of bad press has passed or will she fully embrace her new life in Oklahoma?

I usually don't gravitate towards cowboy/small-town romances because I have known far too many problematic cowboys/small-town residents IRL, but I am so glad I read this one. Viewing a small-town through the eyes of an Indigenous author made me remeber all the things I really did love and miss about growing up in a small, close-knit community. And that's as big a part of this story as the romance is: Avery learning about and becoming a part of a community that she had been deprived of her whole life.

Ruthless Devotion

"...his soul and mine were cut from the same shimmering fabric, hewn from the same rock, dipped from the same pool. Wherever souls come from, we share the same source. I am Heathcliff, and he is me. Anger and arguments, terror and tragedy, chaos and pain — none of that will change what we are to each other."

Ruthless Devotion is the 3rd installment in the Gilded Monsters series by Rebecca Kenney. It's her southern gothic take on Wuthering Heights and takes place a short while after the events in Charming Devil. She takes the dangerous, obsessive love between Cathy and Heathcliff and gives it a happier ending.

Cathy has never felt like she belonged in her insular, cultish South Carolina community. Her banshee heritage has made her a pariah, a threat to everything her community has stood for. Nobody understands her until he shows up: Heathcliff, brooding, powerful, tempting.

Rebecca Kenney really ups the dark Southern Gothic vibes of the Gilded Monsters series in Ruthless Devotion. Horrific monsters of myth are deftly woven together with insular communities, tortured souls and desperate romance to create a completely captivating tale.