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Review: The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1) by KJ Charles (2013)
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Mystery
Categories: M/M, Wizards/Witches, Nobility
Content Warnings: Highlight to read: Magically-induced attempted suicide, offscreen/pre-novel suicides, reference to previous rapes by now-deceased characters.
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: When Lord Crane, Lucien Vaudrey, is being forced through dark magic to attempt to take his own life, he hires a magician to help protect him. The magician, Stephen Day, has good reason to hate Crane’s family, but Stephen is devoted to his duty to protect people from harmful magic. Still, Crane is nothing like his father or brother, and as the case becomes even more complicated and unpleasant than it seemed, the two are drawn closely together.
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Review: Once Upon a Haunted Moor (Tyack & Frayne Mysteries #1) by Harper Fox (2013)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Mystery, Paranormal, Romance
Categories: M/M, Ghosts/Spirits, Psychics
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Gideon Frayne, a policeman in the little town of Dark in Cornwall, has spent nearly two weeks looking for a missing child with no leads and no suspects. When his higher-ups send in a handsome TV psychic, he’s as annoyed by the possibility of a con man playing with the hearts of the victims as he is attracted to the stranger. But Lee Tyack has true sight, and between his psychic visions and Gideon’s knowledge of the town and its inhabitants, maybe they’ll solve the crime—and solve Gideon’s loneliness, as well.
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Review: Beyond the Pale (The Last Rune #1) by Mark Anthony (1998)
Rating: ★★
Genre: High Fantasy
Categories: Fairies, Royalty/Nobility, Multiple Worlds, Witches/Wizards
Content Warnings: Highlight to read: Reference to previous child sexual abuse. Onscreen attempted rape. Some instances of homophobic dialogue. Some instances of ableist language. Only black character (also only POC) dies.
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: ER doctor Grace Beckett and small-town saloon owner Travis Wilder are both normal citizens of Colorado. They don’t know each other, and they’ve never dealt with magic…at least, that they acknowledge. But when evil attacks them in their separate towns, they find themselves transported to the fantastical world of Eldh, where they must make new, strange companions and gain powers that will help them save their new world.
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Review: An Offering of Plums by J. Emery (2018)
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance
Categories: M/NB, demons
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: When Tristan follows his boyfriend Mathias to Guardian Hill, he doesn’t expect to be made a sacrifice to the demon that dwells there. He certainly doesn’t expect to survive the experience with the demon’s help, but the fact that he does keeps drawing him back to that hill…
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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.