By Belle Blakley
Rated 5 out of 5 Stars
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
First of all, Belle Blakley, how dare you. How dare you make me want a magical house. Like, it is 2024 and magical houses should be a thing by now. Also, how dare you make me want my own incubus. Purely for research purposes. Purely.
I really enjoyed the Her Monster for the Night short novellas…you can check out my reviews for those as well as I reviewed them earlier this month. I found myself begging and wanting more in those stories, and here we have one. (completely unrelated to Her Monster for the Night, just not a short little story but an actual book almost 200 pages!)The start of a trilogy. It ends on a HEA, but the stories will mingle with other characters and essentially follow different witches summoning their fated mates.
In this series, to protect their coven during the Salem witch trials, the coven leaders had made a deal with Hecate to help protect them and they were mated with a specific clan of shadow demons, incubi. On Samhain, the witch could cast the summoning spell and it would launch their fated mate from the shadow realm they lived and boom! Mated. I wont go into the full specifics, you should read those for yourself. The witches and their mates (and eventually families) live in bespelled magical houses that have their own personalities. Alexis (Lex for short) found herself having to go to trial after hexing her former boss after being harassed by him. You know the type I mean. She was given this old house to stay in while she awaited trial and the house forced her into summoning her mate, which she had no intention to. The rest of the book basically is about her resisting mating at first, and slowly her and Lochran getting to know each other. Lex wanted to focus on healing while she prepared for her trial.
Everyone’s personalities were so unique and fun. I want to live in the community that houses Briar Coven. I can’t wait to read the next stories….I especially can’t wait to read Hell’s Gate series that follows a pack of werewolves. One of the werewolves, Billy, is Lex’s best friend. Billy, a female wolf, from a very hidden (spelled hidden) wolf pack, slowly starts becoming an alpha. Lex and Lochran find themselves being packed up with Billy while she is becoming an alpha. I will leave the other twists for you to enjoy 🙂 I can’t wait to read her story with Jake!
Belle Blakley has such a unique writing style, that reading her books does not feel like work. They just flow so well. There was a good amount of spice, and early on so you don’t have to wait. No third act break up, though her trial and after affects occur in the third act of the book. It was just such a well thought out book. It was both plot heavy and had a good amount of spice, that even if the characters weren’t actively engaged in spicy acts, boy were they thinking them! You won’t be disappointed if you read this book.
