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

Just Another Season

Just Another Season (Blizzard Chronicles #1)- Avery Longley
Pronoun
Release Date: March 15, 2017

Rating (out of 5):
📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers 

Synopsis: Emma is just another sports reporter...except she hates sports. Ryan is just another hockey goalie...except an injury has his career in doubt. What happens when these two are forced to live with each other over the course of the year? Will it simply be Just Another Season or will sparks fly?

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Just Another Season, the first book published by Avery Longley, follows New Englander Emma Connelly, newly minted journalist who ends up as the sports reporter for The Kansas City Times in Missouri.  Emma knows nothing about sports, doesn't care much about sports, but is determined to do the best she can at the job.  New best friends Devin and Gabi Malone pitch in to teach her what they can and get her ready to report on the newest minor league ice hockey team, the Blizzard.  Turns out they have a little insider help- Gabi's brother and cousin, Ryan and Luke Perrault, have just been signed to the team!  What starts out as a rocky relationship slowly evolves into friendship with the Perrault boys and when goalie Ryan is injured, Emma agrees to let him stay with her in her ground level apartment.  Romantic feelings develop.  This causes some problems with teammate Trent, who might have feelings for Emma and had no idea how to act on them when he had the chance, but now is jealous.  Further complicating matters is that Ryan is also attracted to Trent, who is also attracted to him.  Sparks fly but will they light fireworks or burn things down?

I'm starting this review off with a warning: when you get towards the end of the book and start worrying about how will everything get resolved by the last page: it won't.  While the ending isn't a cliffhanger, it is definitely a "to be continued".  Though Longely's next book Too Many Men will be released April 2017, so we won't have long between installments.

Just Another Season is a hockey player romance that tackles some tough issues.  Ryan and Trent both struggle with their sexuality, and with how society will view them if they come out.  Athletes are the macho men of society and hockey players are the toughest of athletes- will their friends, families, teammates, and Emma still see them as "real" men if they admit to being bisexual? What does it mean to be a "real" man? There's a great scene late in the book where a player gets nasty with Ryan about his sexuality and the team and coach stand with Ryan to send a message: a person's sexuality is their own business, doesn't affect how they play hockey, and hate and intolerance have no place with the Blizzards.  When the threat comes that Ryan's sexuality might go public, you get the interesting "how do we get ahead of this and focus on the message of tolerance and support" spin.  As Emma points out, currently no hockey players have come out as part of the LGBTQ community.  By the end of Season nothing has reached the public at large, but you get the feeling it's only a matter of time.  It will be interesting to see how Longley envisions the outcome.

Season is a romance where none of the main characters seem to have enough experience with relationships to avoid making plenty of classic relationship mistakes- lying, avoiding tough issues, and running away from problems being top of the list.  Ryan, Emma, and Trent all have their moments of cowardice and the reader has to hope that they will learn from their mistakes as they get to Too Many Men.     

A sports reporter who doesn't know a baseball from a hockey puck and ends up romantically entangled with hockey players is a great premise.  The story drags occasionally, for the most part we don't get much depth on any of the characters, and there are some things that flip from one extreme to another for no discernible reason (Luke is a complete jerk when we first meet him, pegging Emma as a "puck bunny" before they are even introduced, complains without evidence that she's just out to bag as many hockey players as she can, then turns into a reasonably decent guy who's bedroom is a revolving door for women).  But overall a good story with some memorable scenes, like the rather emotionally touching and well written ending to the book.   It will be interesting to watch Longley develop as a writer and grow into her full potential.

Just Another Season and Avery Longley show promise to develop into a series (and writer) that is far from "just another" hockey romance, unafraid to tackle the everyday and the tough issues side by side.

NOTE: New edits were made to this book after the review copy was released