GENRE: Romance, Witchy, Love-the-Villain
RATING: 5/5
SPICE:  3/5

​This Witchy Rom-Com was the perfect way to start off my Spooky Season reading list. I have so many feelings, it’s so hard to get anything out that is more than just a happy squawk. I loved this book! It was so much more than I expected and I have to say its going to be a contender for one of my favorite books of 2022. Our main character Reggie, knowns nothing about magic, and responds to an add in the paper to work at her favorite card game, Spellcraft: The Magicking. It is not quite what she thought it was, because she ends up as an “assistant” for an eccentric older witch named Drew. Drew is fun and Reggie quickly takes a liking to her, but her nephew Ben is rude, dark, mysterious and insufferable! But when things go bad, Reggie has to put her feelings towards Ben aside and work together to break the curse set on loveable Drew.

Without giving anything away, Ben is everything I love in a romantic interest. He first comes off as rude and obnoxious but he is ultimately the guy who hates everyone but you. He has a dark past (yeah real skeletons in his closet) and he is grumpy but sunshine Reggie seems to pull him out of it. The novel is narrated by Reggie and Ben, and I honestly felt like Ben’s narration stayed true to his character and his gender expression.

Regardless of what the cover may depict, this book had SPICE! So if you’re looking for a tame Hallmark Rom-Com; then perhaps this isn’t for you. But, if you love rom-coms with spice, falling in love with the villain, and the meant-to-be trope; then pick up this book during this wonderful Spooky Season!

GENRE: Fantasy, Romance 
RATING: DNF

Get ready for a rant... here it comes. I had to DNF at 30% complete because it only got interesting as of CHP 8. I also want to say "interesting" is a loose term in this case. Honestly, it just felt like The Little Mermaid with extra useless steps. She starts off as a 25 year old in our modern time who is in the military. (Who by the way is in the airforce but is deathly afraid of flying, which is repeated, over and over again btw) Then she prays to a  random sea goddess while drunk on her birthday and NOTHING HAPPENS but like wind... then while on a flight the flight CRASHES, and she while drowning turns into a mermaid... but more of a freaky-friday body swap with a mermaid that makes her hotter? then the sea goddess tells her she can go to this land and if she can make a man fall in love with her then she can just stick to legs.... and then she ends up in a time period with medieval-prince-arthur-vibe people. Yeah it is alot and not in a good way. I cannot believe I got as far a I did to be quite honest. Maybe when I run out of audiobooks, I'll go back and  try and finish this but for now, its in my DNF pile. To boot, the narrator is super robotic and just... bad. I am shocked I didn't give up sooner. Like how did she get this paying job? I have been using audible for two years now, and she is by far the worst narrator I have ever had to listen to. I wont name names, I don't want to slander anyone's name, but I will be avoiding their future narrations because... omg. 

  This novel is about young viable women being part of an alien abduction. They are abducted by these aliens for their galactic sex trafficking ring.  (Knowing this, please be sure to check your triggers for this novel, there are a few) While in space, headed somewhere in the unknown, there seems to be a fuel issue. The aliens are therefore forced to dump the women they abducted, or rather their “cargo” as they refer to them, on a random planet. The protagonist, Georgie, somehow finds herself to be the leader of these women. So when they land on an unknown Ice Planet, she finds herself treading out to find help, or a way home… The story then begins when she meets this James Cameron-looking horned Avatar hunk of an alien.

  Now, as far as what to expect in this novel, there is a lot of spice… a lot. While it doesn’t overshadow the plot, because surprisingly there is a decent plot around trying to save her fellow humans and communicating with alien life, and overall survival, the story really focusses on the erotic alien sex and explicit scenes. One thing I do have to say though, is that this novel doesn’t take itself too seriously, especially with lines like: "It wasn’t a monster come to eat me. It was this monster. Who’s come to eat me out." - which was extremely hilarious. (Yeah, the alien literally starts eating her out upon saving her because apparently she smelled good? I cannot make this stuff up.) Reading this, you may be thinking… ok… then why is this a 4.5/5? Well that is sort of hard to explain, but mainly because within the structure of the novel, it doesn’t feel cringey. The style of writing is super easy to read and really follows a logical train of thought. It doesn’t feel like the author was forcing certain ideas on a character in order for the novel to make sense, but rather flows quite accurately. I am not sure if that makes sense to anyone else but myself, but oh well. The other element that made this a 4.5 for me, is while the plot is really not explored as much as it could have been, it had the basis for a very good plot even without the spice. What I mean by this is, while I do love authors like Katee Robert her novels without the spice wouldn’t have much of a plot. In those novels, the plot was the spice, which again, sometimes I really love. In this instance though, this is what makes this novel outshine the rest.
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  If you want to read this novel out in public, I recommend either and ebook or purchasing the new special edition which honestly if you look at the cover, makes the novel look like a teen sci-fi novel. Have you read this novel? Let me know what you think!

4.5/5