Mini Book Review: Fake Empire by C.W. Farnsworth

Fake Empire
Pub Date: 23 June 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

There’s rich. Then there’s the Ellsworth family. The Kensingtons. American royalty.

Money buys power, and power always has a price. The fear of those who already possess both? Losing it. The best way to ensure keeping it? Alliances. And elites don’t marry down—they marry equal.

For Scarlett Ellsworth and Crew Kensington, that leaves one option: each other. Accepting that inevitability is very different from embracing it. That’s the only thing they agree upon. It was meant to be a union for better and for business.

Instead, it challenges everything Scarlett and Crew thought they knew about themselves, their families, and most of all…each other.

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Mini Book Review: Falling for the Enemy by Katie Golding

Goodreads: Falling for the Enemy (Malibu Millionaire #2)
Published: 17 May 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

Sometimes, the perfect guy…
Is the one you hate the most.

Jasper Brooks has everything—with his smooth-talking ways and devilish good looks, he’s signed some of the hottest bands of the moment. If only he could get the wrong-number woman he’s been texting for months to reveal herself.

Blake Harris absolutely hates Jasper with every fiber of her being. Avoiding her professional rival is next to impossible in the Malibu music scene, and when a new band puts them head-to-head, their pent-up frustration explodes in a raw session of hate sex. A mistake they keep repeating.

With feelings spinning out of control, Blake bolts back to the mystery man in her phone, determined to finally meet Mr. Perfect. Not realizing that all along, she’s been secretly falling for the enemy…

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ARC Review: Defiant Heart by Brighton Walsh

Special thanks to Wildfire Marketing Solutions and Brighton Walsh for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: Defiant Heart (Starlight Cove #1)
Publication Date: 14 June 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating:

(3.75 pandas)

I’ve slapped my cuffs on Luna Lancaster too many times to count and not a single one was for fun.

As the sheriff of Starlight Cove, I shouldn’t crave her, but I do. She’s chaos, mayhem, and sunshine wrapped up in too-tight yoga pants. The lawbreaker might have the town enamored with her free spirit, but she’s a thorn in my side, even if she is the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.

I want her out of my town and out of my head.

Trouble is, she’s made it perfectly clear she’s not going anywhere. And her spree of minor infractions—who runs a yoga class without a license?—is hitting dangerously close to home. Her latest protest has her chained to a tree on the boundary of my family’s resort. The last thing we need is bad press ruining the short tourism season when the resort is already one bad month away from bankruptcy.

I’ll do whatever it takes to save Starlight Cove. Even if that means handcuffing Luna to my bed.

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Book Review: King of Battle and Blood by Scarlett St. Clair

Goodreads: King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)
Published: 30 November 2021
Genre: Fantasy Romance (Romantasy)

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

Their Union Is His Revenge.

Isolde de Lara considers her wedding day her death day. To end a years-long war, she is to marry vampire king, Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev, and kill him. ⠀

But her assassination attempt is thwarted and Adrian threatens that if Isolde tries kill him again, he will raise her as the undead. Faced with the possibility of becoming the thing she hates most, Isolde seeks other ways to defy him and survive the brutal vampire court. ⠀

Except it isn’t the court she fears most—it’s Adrain. Despite their undeniable chemistry, she wonders why the king——fierce, savage, merciless—chose her as consort. ⠀

The answer will shatter her world.

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Book Review: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

Goodreads: The Wolf and the Woodsman
Published: 08 June 2021
Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all. 

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