Last Guard

 Last Guard (Psy-Changeling Trinity #5)- Nalini Singh

Penguin Random House

Release Date: July 20, 2021

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Termed merciless by some, and a robotic sociopath by others, Payal Rao is the perfect Psy: cardinal telekinetic, CEO of a major conglomerate, beautiful—and emotionless.

For Canto Mercant, family and loyalty are everything. A cardinal telepath deemed “imperfect” by his race due to a spinal injury, Canto cares for the opinions of very few—and ruthlessly protects those he claims as his own. Head of intel for the influential Mercant family, he prefers to remain a shadow in the Net, unknown and unseen. But Canto is also an anchor, part of a secretive designation whose task it is to stabilize the PsyNet. Now that critical psychic network is dying, threatening to collapse and kill the entire Psy race with it.

To save those he loves, Canto needs the help of a woman bound to him by a dark past neither has been able to forget. A woman who is the most powerful anchor of them all: Payal Rao. Neither is ready for the violent inferno about to ignite in the PsyNet . . . or the passionate madness that threatens to destroy them both.

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As the Trinity series has grown, readers have gotten to discover more about the Psy race. But it hasn't just been their development after the fall of Silence that we've seen, it has been the disintegration of the PsyNet, the psychic network that keeps them alive. In Last Guard the secluded, nearly forgotten designation of Anchor Psy must step into the forefront to help save the dying PsyNet and give their people a chance to live. Canto and Payal were abused and terrified children when they first met but they forged a bond that, decades later, has proven unbreakable by time, Silence, and family cruelty. 

Over the arc of Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series, we've seen the Psy race go from being the big bad robots with a few dissenters to a people who got a lot of things wrong in their search for peace and safety and are now trying something new. Canto and Payal are perfect examples of the 'new' Psy as a whole: people trying to be brave enough to not only embrace change, but to try to learn new ways of living after a lifetime of abuse. Payal in particular is a person learning that there is no need to be 'perfect' and that it is our flaws and quirks that make us truly unique. Her lessons are ones we should all try to learn from.

The connections between Canto and Payal are wonderfully written, even before words like "love" became involved you could see the bonds between them and cheer them on as they discover how to support each other. By the time emotions develop to admitting they love each other, the reader feels that love as a tangible thing, wrapping around them the way Canto wraps Payal in his arms. It's a feeling that, like the hope for the Psy by the end of the book, stays with you long after the final page. 

Readers familiar with the series will enjoy cameos by characters they've met in previous books, including Arwen and Pasha and Silver and Valentine (Silver Silence). They get to further play the 'what's going on between Nikita and Anthony' game and spend more time with Ena Mercant. For readers just joining the world, while more of the backstories will make sense if you've read other books in the series, newbies won't really be lost by jumping in mid-stream. But they will become addicted and instantly need to read the entire series before ever sleeping again. So take a few days off work and make some strong coffee before diving in.

The brilliant world-building and sparkling, tangible emotions readers have come to expect from Nalini Singh are in full force here. Last Guard is a wonderful new addition to an unbeatable series. 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Incense and Sensibility

Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3)- Sonali Dev

HarperCollins

Release Date: July 6, 2021

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Yash Raje, California’s first Indian-American gubernatorial candidate, has always known exactly what he wants—and how to use his privileged background to get it. He attributes his success to a simple mantra: control your feelings and you can control the world. But when a hate crime at a rally critically injures his friend, Yash’s easy life suddenly feels like a lie, his control an illusion. When he tries to get back on the campaign trail, he blacks out with panic.

Desperate to keep Yash’s condition from leaking to the media, his family turns to the one person they trust—his sister’s best friend, India Dashwood, California’s foremost stress management coach. Raised by a family of yoga teachers, India has helped San Francisco’s high strung overachievers for a decade without so much as altering her breath. But this man—with his boundless ambition, simmering intensity, and absolute faith in his political beliefs—is like no other. 

Yash has spent a lifetime repressing everything to succeed, including their one magical night ten years ago—a too brief, too bright passion that if rekindled threatens to destroy the dream he’s willingly shouldered for his family and community . . . until now.

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Sonali Dev has been introducing readers to the powerful Raje family of California through her Jane Austen-inspired series (Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors and Recipe for Persuasion) and in Incense and Sensibility we meet golden son Yash, California's first Indian-American gubernatorial candidate. The election is coming up and the entire Raje family is pulling out all the stops to support Yash's run.  But a hate crime at a rally hurts Yash and critically injures his friend and bodyguard Abdul, and suddenly Yash feels more out of control and helpless than he ever has before. Family friend India Dashwood is asked to help him deal with his stress, but there's a lot more going on than their families know. One magical night ten years ago, Yash and India met and instantly clicked. But Yash put aside what he wanted to form an alliance with family friend Naina, and now he's keeping secrets for others that are eating away at him- not good for helping reduce stress.  India doesn't know if she can help Yash without losing her heart again, but she's determined to try.

I absolutely fell in love with India and Yash, and Sonali Dev does a brilliant job here, bringing them to life and pulling the reader into the emotional turmoil of their journey. India is calm, centered, and self-assured, she believes in herself and is determined to handle every problem life throws at her family. She's strong and carries the burdens of being the responsible one in the family without coming across as a martyr. From the outside, Yash seems the same- strong, focused, confident, and ready to use his power and influence to fix the wrongs he sees in the world. But Yash has been physically and emotionally traumatized even before the rally shooting, and has finally hit the point of not being able to push it down and ignore his feelings anymore. The contrast between who Yash presents to the world and what he feels inside as he tries to deal with everything was written with empathy and sympathy, and complete believability. But what really caught me was the emotional pull between Yash and India, the magnetic and fantastic connection between them, the yearning to be together and all of the sensible and real-world reasons why it couldn't happen.  This wasn't the class disconnect or family obligations or "I'm not good enough" made up reasons that so many books use as the angst to separate lovers until the very end, but literally Yash as a person vs Yash as a politician. Which makes way more sense when you read the book and I won't spoil it by explaining further here. 

One of the problems a lot of adaptations of Austen novels have is trying to stay too closely to the original, making the contemporary story feel forced into a mold it can't work with. Incense and Sensibility is its own story and never makes the mistake of forcing in a plot point from Sense and Sensibility that doesn't work. But Austen fans will occasionally find themselves seeing a shadow of the original story or a character in ways that will make them smile without taking away from the originality of the characters and plot they are immersed in.

Some Jane Austen books are harder to adapt than others and Sense and Sensibility always seems to be particularly difficult. Even though it isn't my favorite of Austen's books, I keep reading modern adaptations, looking for a good one and being left disliking what I read. Until now. Incense and Sensibility blew away my expectations, captured my emotions and held me in thrall until long past the final page. A wonderful, colorful, and original story full of emotion and empathy, this book is a real winner.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Bargain of Blood & Gold

 A Bargain of Blood & Gold- Kristin Jacques

City Owl Press

Release Date: June 15, 2021

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: When Johnathan Newman arrives in Cress Haven, the last thing he expects is for his life to be irrevocably changed. Sent by a clandestine league of vampire hunters to investigate a string of murders, signs point to a vampire lurking amid the townsfolk. Johnathan’s attempt to enlist the locals leads him to an unlikely partnership with Vic, the town's most eligible, enigmatic bachelor.

As the pair work to solve the mystery, Vic’s secrets come back to bite him. Revealed, the vampire fights his attraction to a man trained to destroy him, while Johnathan’s emotions land him in the middle of forbidden desires. Even if Vic isn’t the murderer, how can Johnathan yearn for his natural enemy?

As Vic leads Johnathan into encounters with terrifying beings straight from children’s nightmares, Johnathan learns that not only is the world stranger than he knew, but that those he once trusted have far darker intentions that will place hunter and vampire at the center of a conflict between realms.

Cress Haven holds more sinister secrets than its resident vampire, a secret so great, it could unleash Hell itself.

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A Bargain of Blood and Gold introduces readers to a world where the supernatural is just out of sight, and the Society has taken on the job of protecting humanity from things that go bump in the night.  For Jonathan Newman's graduation exercise into the Society he is left at Cress Haven to handle a series of reported vampire attacks in the small Maine village. But the mauled body of a young woman on his first night there proves to Jonathan that whatever is haunting Cress Haven, it is far more than a mere vampire. Johnathan teams up with slick country gentleman Vic and fiery parson's daughter Alyse to discover what is attacking the girls and learns that what he thinks he knows about the supernatural is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a hard book to review without giving away too many spoilers, which I'll try not to do. Bargain is a fast-paced book full of danger and the reader is right there with Johnathan trying to figure out what is happening.  His attraction to Vic becomes even more disturbing to him when he realizes Vic is a vampire and brings up a lot of dark memories of his tragic past. Jacques handles the romance well, with light touches and teasing/flirting as Vic and Jonathan figure out how they should handle the whole "natural enemies" thing.  Also the whole "possibly we're all going to die" thing, because while trying to understand what is happening in Cress Haven they are in non-stop danger, getting attacked from strange creatures, or healing from said danger and attacks pretty much constantly. They can be forgiven for occasionally putting the slow-burn romance on hold to see if they can survive the situation. I liked how, even before Jonathan was really sure what he thought of Vic or Alyse, he knew he could trust them and they developed into a pretty good team.

Alyse is definitely not your typical country parson's daughter. She has no qualms about ignoring convention,  matter-of-factly solving the supernatural mystery in her home town, and joining in the fight when she has to. She knows what Vic is and loves him for who he is. She refuses to stay at home and be 'safe' while the men go out to battle.  Whether it is the possibility of vampires, fairies (the Patricia Briggs kind, not the Disney kind), vampires, or humans, Alyse accepts the evil as well as the good and keeps the men in line. Jonathan takes a little warming up to, but his unbelievable stubbornness and sheer dumb luck grew on me, as did his mental flexibility when ignoring the Society's idea of 'right' and 'wrong' long before he learns to seriously question their actions. Bargain is full of excellent light sarcasm and humor-and Vic gets all the best lines. Questions about Vic and his past still linger by the end, but it becomes obvious in the last few pages we will have more adventures of Vic, Jonathan, and Alyse to look forward to in the future. The only real question by the end for me was, how will Kristin Jacques top this in her next book?

I received a free copy of this book from BookSirens in exchange for an honest review