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Review: Darkling by Brooklyn Ray (2018)
“I don’t know what to do. One day I’m doing a reading with Liam, the next he’s going down on me on the hood of a car and I’m sucking his soul out of his body. What the fuck, Jordan? What do I do?”
– Darkling, Brooklyn Ray
Rating: ★★★½
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Categories: M/M, Trans, Witches, DemonsContent Warnings (highlight to read): Scenes of bloodletting and death (and resurrection) of an MC.
Description: A paranormal romance set in a small town where most of the characters are queer, witches, or (more often) both. In this world, there are clearly-delineated “types” of magic and the witches who practice them; the main character, Ryder, learns that he’s a necromancer, and has to tackle what that means for him and his circle-mate and best friend who is also all caught up in this strange magic with him.
Ryder is a witch with two secrets—one about his blood and the other about his heart. Keeping the secrets hasn’t been a problem, until a tarot reading with his best friend, Liam Montgomery, who happens to be one of his secrets, starts a chain of events that can’t be undone.
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Review: Possibilities (A King’s Council #1) by Nicole Field (2018)
Rating: ★★★½
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Categories: Non-binary (genderfluid), Trans, Royalty & Nobility, Arranged Marriage
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Less Than Three PressDescription: When Prince Ernest unexpectedly becomes King Ernest, he quickly finds that it’s lonely at the top — until the appointment of his new court jester, Drel, gives him some company. But he quickly finds himself deeply attracted to them. Would an affair with the Court Jester weaken his reign? Or can they find a way to make it strengthen it instead?
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Review: Threshold (Whyborne & Griffin #2) by Jordan L. Hawk (2013)
Rating: ★★★★½
Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Romance
Categories: M/M, mystery, eldritch
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Having survived one eldritch horror already, philologist Percival Endicott Whyborne and his lover and partner, private detective Griffin Flaherty, are two of the few people able to answer his father’s request to investigate paranormal happenings in a mine in Threshold, West Virginia. But what they find in the mine is much older, and much more horrific, than simple tommyknockers or other such mine superstitions.
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Review: Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin #1) by Jordan L. Hawk (2012)
Rating: ★★★¾
Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Romance
Categories: M/M, ghosts/spirits, mystery, eldritch
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy It At: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Description: Repressed scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne prefers to hide away in his museum office with books in dead languages to avoid any and all attention—and so, when attractive ex-Pinkerton private detective Griffin Flaherty asks for the help of the museum’s ciphers’ specialist to translate a book that his employer thinks might be a clue to a case he’s working on, Whyborne would rather not have anything to do with the gorgeous man—especially since the time is such that his own attraction is illegal, which is rather dangerous when the man he’s attracted to is a detective! But despite his misgivings, the two are drawn very close together on the case, which goes deeper than a mere murder and into realms of necromancy and Lovecraftian horror.
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Review: Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (2015)
Rating: ★★★★½
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance, Drama
Categories: M/M, hidden identity
Content Warnings (highlight to read): Deals with homophobia & includes homophobic slurs.
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Simon, a high schooler in a small town, is gay, and nobody should know except for the mysterious boy with whom he exchanges anonymous emails. Except someone else does know—and that person has decided to blackmail him for his help in hooking up with one of Simon’s friends. How can Simon keep his grades up, decide how to come out to his friends and family, act in the school play, deal with high school friend drama, try to track down the boy he’s pretty sure he’s falling in love with, and negotiate the shady territory of being blackmailed into manipulating his own besties, all at the same time?