Wake of Vultures

RECOMMENDED: Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen is $2.99! This is a Kindle Daily Deal and is being price-matched! Carrie really liked this book and gave it an A-:
This book succeeds because Nettie is such a compelling character. Nettie is incredibly vibrant, prickly, compelling, flawed, exciting, and interesting. She’s compelling because all her experiences and aspects of her personality and her sharp mind come together to create a complex person who you just have to root for.
A rich, dark fantasy of destiny, death, and the supernatural world hiding beneath the surface.
Nettie Lonesome lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She’s a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don’t call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood, and he turns into black sand.
And just like that, Nettie can see.
But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn’t understand what’s under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding — at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead to her true kin… if the monsters along the way don’t kill her first.
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RECOMMENDED: Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress by Theresa Roman is $2.99! Redheadedgirl reviewed the book and gave it an A:
I really enjoyed everything about this book. The characters were fascinating and not the standard duke (I don’t have anything against the standard duke, mind, but I like reading about the 99%, too). I loved Joss’ identity issues, and the setting made me so happy. I also really liked that there wasn’t an evil villain in the background twirling his mustache and cackling. This was a delight.
This book is also nominated for a RITA and guest reviewer, LauraL, gave it an A- for our RITA® Reader Challenge:
I think almost everyone has felt to be the outsider at some point in their lives and I think everyone would love a second chance. In Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress, Theresa Romain brings together two outsiders who live in the shadows of the glittering ton during the Regency and gives them the opportunity for second chances.
One good proposition deserves another…
Heiress Augusta Meredith can’t help herself—she stirs up gossip wherever she goes. A stranger to Bath society, she pretends to be a charming young widow, until sardonic, darkly handsome Joss Everett arrives from London and uncovers her charade.
Augusta persuades Joss to keep her secret in exchange for a secret of his own. Weaving their way through the treacherous pitfalls of a polite world only too eager to expose and condemn them, they begin to see that being true to themselves is not so bad…as long as they’re true to each other…
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!What Happens in Summer

What Happens in Summer by Caridad Pineiro is $2.99! This is the second book in the At the Shore series. While some readers recommend this for a fun, cute read, other readers seemed to want more in the way of the romance. It has a 3.8-star rating on Goodreads
As the only daughter of a single mom, Connie Reyes swore she would never put herself or her child in a similar position. But when she runs into oh so tempting Jonathan Pierce at a wedding, she knows she must stay away. She’ll fall for him—hard. And he’s not the type to stick around. Ever since he left town after their teenaged fling,
Jonathan hasn’t been able to forget about Connie. He can’t wait for the wedding—to show her the man he’s become. And when the night finally comes, their mutual desire will lead to unexpected consequences neither of them were prepared for…
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Dream Hunter

The Dream Hunter by Laura Kinsale is $1.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble! This is a standalone historical romance and many reviews say this book is completely bonkers. Some also note that the audio is particularly good. Have you read this one? Is it as crazysauce as everyone says? Kinsale is on my list of authors that I need to try (and I own two books), but she keeps getting moved farther along the TBR pile.
To love him is to face her deepest fear . . .
In search of a legendary mare, Lord Winter enters the crucible of the red sands, forging unbreakable bonds of loyalty and trust with his young companion in the desert. But hidden beneath the ragged costume of a Bedouin boy is a remarkable young woman: Zenia Stanhope, daughter of the extraordinary Queen of the Desert.
Zenia wants nothing of the danger that Lord Winter lives for. She wants only to reach England, far from the blood and sand of the desert. But in one night of terror, condemned to death, their lives are irrevocably bound. Zenia escapes to an English world of elegance and comfort, leaving behind the lonely, fearless man who has changed her life and conquered her heart . . . until he returns to invade her sanctuary.
Now she must choose between safety and love, but can she find the courage to be the person she was truly born to be?
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Hello, Smart Bitches.
This is for the reviewer who has never read Laura Kinsale. OMG–she is my absolute favorite and I have been reading romance (particularly Regency) for over five years.
“Dream Hunter” is not my favorite of hers and it is kind of a wild ride, but evidently there really was a white woman living out in the middle of the desert in the Middle East way back when who inspired this story.
She is so good that I have deliberately put off reading two of her books because then I will have nothing else to read of hers….sigh.
At the very least, try “Flowers From the Storm” and “The Shadow and the Star”. “The Prince of Midnight” is wonderful as well. Laura is unparalleled at portraying wounded heroes. Her writing and plots are often quirky, but IMHO nobody writes as she does. I would compare her to Sherry Thomas who has somewhat the same style (“Not Quite a Husband” et. al.) On Sherry’s blog, I compared her to Laura, and she was highly complimented to hear that.
All Laura Kinsale books are bonkers. They make perfect sense while you’re reading them, but try to summarize them to anyone afterward and you realize how ridiculous they sound. (Especially Flowers From the Storm– “So then he’s in the asylum, right? And–“) A friend responded to my summary once as “That’s a plot with a lot of plot.”
This is in no way meant to discourage you from reading them. You absolutely should.
I am not quite as on board with Flowers From the Storm. The heroine’s religious dedication was more than I could handle. If your religion forces you to let a person be tortured or killed when you could help them it’s dogmatic and amoral.
So who is Caridad Pineiro? This question made me look up her goodreads and she has some Harlequin Nocturne books in her backlog.
Shout out to her, because I respect her working hard at Harlequin. I feel like a modern Sci-fi reading looking at Ursula K. Le Quinn.
Lizzy, I agree with your assessment of Maddie. I wanted to shake her at times. The same with Leigh in “The Prince of Midnight”. Laura’s heroines are often very strong but pigheaded women.
I think Flowers from the Storm was the only romance I have ever read where I felt the couple was fundamentally incompatible because of their characters and beliefs and hoped they would not get together at the end! I hated that book and all the crazy plot twists packed into it. I have always wanted SBTB to do an article on romance novels that are widely praised that you as an individual hate!