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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: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain #1) by Margaret Killjoy (2017)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Horror, Eldritch, Paranormal
Categories: F/F, Queer, Ghosts/Spirits, Demons
Content Warnings: (Highlight to read) References to a character’s previous suicide (off-screen).
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Itinerant traveler Danielle Cain arrives at the “ghost town” of Freedom, Iowa, a haven for squatters and anarchists living off the grid. She’s looking for an explanation for why an old friend of hers died after living here; what she finds is a guardian god who was summoned a year ago, and a town split in two between whether or not they should overthrow their oppressors via this summoned god which has begun to turn on them, or whether they should try to get rid of it entirely and live on their own.
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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: The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (2016)
“Strange he hadn’t had a premonition of what this place would become to him all those months ago. But maybe not. So much of magic—of power, in general—required belief as a prerequisite.”
– The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Urban fantasy, YA
Categories: M/M, M/F, YA, multiple narrators, wizards/magicians, mythology, ghostsContent Warnings (highlight to read): N/A
Description: A sharply-written YA series about slowly uncovering the magic underneath the mundane day-to-day world. The series follows Blue, slightly put-upon daughter of a house of psychics, and her adventures with the Raven Boys—private school boys with their own evolving mysterious pasts and destinies. Boys that could be kings, men that might be trees, magic dream worlds, ghosts, fortune-telling, high-maintenance murderers, cars, and bees?—There’s a lot there.
“For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.”