#paranormal star reviews

[books-in-a-storm]

Paranormal Star Review

Title:The Wolf Born Trilogy #1 Hidden Mate

Author: Jen L. Grey

Pages: 246

Rating:⭐⭐⭐(3/5)

Synopsis: Finding my fated mate could bring death... or worse.

I was born to one day lead our pack, but the current alpha—my father—doesn’t think I'm worthy.

Going to college offers an escape, a chance to make a new beginning, to prove myself.

On my first day, though, I find far more than I bargained for.

My fated mate. Something that any wolf rejoices in finding.

Except he’s forbidden.

Choices must be made, and loyalties will be tested. With everything on the brink of destruction, only one thing is certain - my life will never be the same.

[yourfavebooklrsfavebooklr]

Dying Inside by Pete Wentz & Hannah Klein, illustrated by Lisa Sterle

3.5 stars

This was a fun read! Lisa Sterle's art was beautiful, I liked the story for the most part but thought some bits seemed a little random (why did they have a friend breakup for like 3 pages which literally affected nothing...). I liked the twist and ofc witchy stories are always a fun time. I thought the romance was sweet, I thought they saw each other as best friends a little too quickly for my taste but it developed well after that. I also like how this book combined ideas of autonomy with mental health and different forms of ethics, and I really liked the happy ending. I also thought the darker humor came across well in my opinion, it was pretty funny at times.

I'd recommend this for people who want a fun paranormal read for Halloween, fans of witchy books, and people looking for graphic novels with dark humor. However, if you struggle with mental health, definitely check the content warnings first!

[melaniem54]

Review:  A Highland Gargoyle's Lucky Star (Tales from the Tarot story) by Chloe Archer

Rating: 4🌈 A Highland Gargoyle’s Lucky Star, while definitely in the Tales from the Tarot multi-author series, is firmly rooted in Chloe Archer’s Monster Hollow universe and her latest novel from that, The Gargoyle and the Romance Writer.   The main gargoyle characters here (and an unfortunate member under going punishment here), are met for the first time in that book. And in a delightful…

[lilibetbombshell]

[giannabooknook]

Attention: New Blog Post!!!!

All the books you've never stumbled upon before…

[andreai04]

Bruises from those who should love you sting more than others. Deep and lasting, they bleed into your spirit, no matter how common they become. Something shatters with each strike, and it isn’t always bone.

[somewherelostinbooks]

The Witch Queen of Halloween- Review

The Witch Queen of Halloween By Kresley Cole Genre: Paranormal Romance Series: Immortals After Dark #20 Publisher: Valkyrie Press Publication Date: March 26,2024 Source: Received an ARC in exchange for an honest review Rating: 4.75 Stars Amazon Description: Take a spooky Halloween tour of the mysterious Lore in this stand-alone installment of the Immortals After Dark series by #1 New…

[alexislunacreations]

Tomorrow is the official release day for Love in the Occult Traumatic, and the first review is five stars. I couldn't be happier 🥹 Stay tuned for tomorrow's announcement to find out where you can get your own copy!

[lifesarchive]

THE BURNING GIRLS by C. J. TUDOR (REVIEW)

quickly: a woman of the cloth relocates to small-town England and uncovers a long-kept community secret. (single mom with a repressed past and a rebellious teen daughter / creepy blair witch stick dolls / ghostly apparitions / family secrets turning into community secrets / rich men controlling local government / a random spree killer).

quaint, quiet English towns are some of the most dangerous places on Earth. this is what The Burning Girls confirms in a story that feels like the UK version of a Fear Street novel. the chapters are short and quick, often ending with a cliffhanger. ‘good vs. evil’ and ‘nature vs. nurture’ are major motifs in this story, sometimes stereotypically so, sometimes uninspired. i wish there was more thrill and horror… with the lore behind what a ‘burning girl’ represents, there was the potential to go so much further. while i love the author’s tone and style, the substance lacked.

★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I picked this book out based on a search I did for ’theological horror’. I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to read the non-fiction book “Heathen: Religion and Race in American History”. As I’m already reading a non-fiction book on Indigenous American history, ”Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America”, and I just completed the lengthy “The Books of Jacob”, I was hesitant to read another lengthy non-fiction book.

My thought process was… I can soothe my horror itch and my religious history itch by reading a book that combined both. If the book was intriguing enough, then I’d move on to Heathen by Kathyrn. I found several books that fell into the theological horror genre, and ‘Burning Girl’s’ was a newer one, so I picked it. Sadly, it did not inspire me to reach for non-fiction theological history. While not bad, it didn’t capture what was interesting about the religious lore of Sussex England that the title and cover art so openly refer to.

The title is what truly caught my eye: THE BURNING GIRLS. That, paired with the promise of uncovering church mysteries, pulled me in.

The story opens with Reverend Jack, short for Jacqueline, who is being informed that she is being relocated to a distant Sussex community after an unfortunate occurrence at her church in Nottingham. Essentially, she wasn’t able to save an abused child from their parents and was partially blamed when the parents murdered the child. 

She moves to Chapel Croft with her 15-year-old daughter, a small village where everyone knows everyone, and her arrival is big news. Immediately, both mother and daughter have separate encounters with appearances of ‘burning girls’, ghostly apparitions who appear to be on fire, and missing bodily limbs. Reverend Jack is coincidentally informed that the creepy stick dolls everywhere are to commemorate the girls and families burned during religious wars back in Olde England. She’s also informed that seeing a ghost of a burning girl is a warning of impending danger.

As the story goes on, Revered Jack’s back story is unfurled. She comes from an abusive home with a psychotic spree-killing brother who is responsible for the death of her husband (who was also a pastor). Just before her move, she was informed that her brother was released from prison. While she thinks she is evading him by moving to Chapel Croft, unbeknownst to her, he is ruthlessly and methodically making his way to her and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

All the characters are dealing with some form of ‘good vs. evil’ struggle, most evident in Reverend Jack’s brother, who seems to have a voice within that he compels him to do evil deeds. There are also several references to the great question of whether or not people can be born bad, and what it means to be bad vs. being a good person doing a bad thing. To be honest, the word count could’ve been better spent exploring the wild history of the burning girls. 

Anyways, fast forward past two girls who went missing long ago being discovered in a well, the dead body of a missing priest being found buried under the church, a devious teenage boy found living with the dead body of his mother, and that same boy plotting the killing of Revered Jack’s daughter simply to please his equally devious killer girlfriend. Oh yeah, I forgot, did I mention that randomly, in the background of the main events, Reverend Jack’s brother has been traveling the countryside on foot and killing anyone who crosses his path?

The story ends in the loud gory cacophony of noise and violence that most B-level thrillers tend to end in. The psycho-killer teens confront Revered Jack and her daughter in the church for the big climax, which results in Jack killing the teens, and the church being set on fire in the process. At the last moment, just before Reverend Jack is engulfed by the flames, her psycho-killer brother rescues her. The people he killed to get to her kind of fade into the background as if his character’s sole purpose was to represent the bad person who does a good thing (in contrast to Reverend Jack being the good person who does a bad thing).

The miasma of “Good and Evil” that this story exists in is muddier than it is inspiring. Too many angels and devils in this garden if you ask me. And again, the gem, the burning girls, barely get any page time! Three stars. Not horrible, but not anything I am compelled to recommend. That said, I’d still love to try THE CHALK MAN, by this author, and give her another chance.

[gahmah-raan]

This is my art summary for 2023.

I made a lot more pieces than I did last year, and I gained some new tools to work with near the end.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Book Review: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (🇺🇸 United States)

[image 1: book cover: from far away a girl with black hair in a red-brown coat turns toward us, she is surrounded by running ghost-dogs; image 2: the Kunetai, or the Rio Grande, at sunset]

YA World Challenge read for 🇺🇸 United States

Elatsoe

Author: Darcie Little Badger

As I did with Canada, for US and other Anglo-colonized countries I'm reading a Native book.

When I first saw this cover small, I thought the character was caught in a snowstorm and that it must take place somewhere north. Nope! It's in Texas, and the snowstorm is actually ghost-dogs which is so much more awesome.

Review

Ellie (short for Elatsoe) is just a normal, everyday asexual Lipan Apache teen who can raise the dead. The technique is a family secret and she lives in the shadow of her 6x great grandmother's legendary powers. She resides in a normal, everyday contemporary United States where there are laws governing things like vampires and fairy ring transports, and scarecrows might eat you in Iowa. When Ellie's cousin Trevor dies in a car accident, he tells her he was murdered, and Ellie and her family and bestie Jake must investigate what happened.

This is a cozy mystery that is just so wholesome and a little quirky. You'd think throwing vampire people as an aside into an indigenous family's story would be kinda jumping the shark, but I like how the "melting pot" of America is reflected in the imported magic. And we get to view this from an indigenous perspective, like when Ellie mourns killing a Lipan monster that is probably the last of its kind.

But the mystery is the main focus of the story, and we get both amateur sleuthing and antics along with more serious reflections on both death and grief. Ellie's family is loving and supportive and wholly functional and that's refreshing to read. The characters are down-to-earth and funny. Also, she has a pet ghost-dog named Kirby!! [spoiler: the dog doesn't die, well, except for being already dead]

This was a fun and sweet read with just the right amount of seriousness and action.

★  ★  ★  ★  ★    5 stars

Other reps: #indigenous #asexual #vegetarian

Genres: #contemporary fantasy #paranormal #mystery #family

Read it at: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

[books-in-a-storm]

Paranormal Star Review

Title: The Chaos of Foxes #3 What the Fox

Author: Emma Dean

Pages: 312

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐(4/5)

Synopsis:

Kenzie is a void witch. Only a handful have ever existed. And now she's trying to find out where she belongs in the paranormal world. Thankfully her mates have never cared about her witch status. They love her for her - even if one of them is playing hard to get. Kenzie plans to make Hunter beg.

Meanwhile they still have to bring down Bradley Davis. But there are complications to their plans no one could have foreseen. Will Kenzie be able to handle her newly discovered abilities and any threat until she can master them? Will they be able to take down the jerk who cursed her sister after finding out what he's really after?

[mandyloves2read]

🩸ARC Review 🩸

The Coven by Harper L. Woods

Coven Of Bones duet book 1

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+

This was such a good story from the first chapter to the last I couldn’t put it down it completely captivated me and took hostage of me from the amazing world building to the intriguing complex characters this is every fantasy romance lovers dream the chemistry between Gray and Willow was so amazing and that brutal shocking ending I can’t wait for the next book! This is going in my favorites of 2023 list !

⠀

⠀

Thirteen promising students destined to change the world.

If the ghosts of Hollow’s Grove's victims don’t kill them first.

⠀

The Coven, an all-new gothic, dark academia, paranormal romance and book one in the Coven Of Bones Duet from USA Today Bestselling author Harper L. Woods is available now!

⠀

Revenge.

⠀

Raised to be my father’s weapon against the Coven that took away his sister and his birthright, I would do anything to protect my younger brother from suffering the same fate.

⠀

My duty forces me to the secret town of Crystal Hollow and the prestigious Hollow’s Grove University—where the best and brightest of my kind learn to practice their magic free from human judgment.

⠀

There are no whispered words here. No condemnation for the blood that flows through my veins. The only animosity I face comes from the beautiful and infuriating Headmaster, Alaric Grayson Thorne, a man who despises me just as much as I loathe him and everything he stands for.

⠀

But that doesn’t mean secrets don’t threaten to tear the school in two. No one talks about the bloody massacre that forced it to close decades prior, only the opportunity it can afford to those fortunate enough to attend.

⠀

Because for the first time in fifty years, the Coven will open its wards to the Thirteen.

⠀

Thirteen promising students destined to change the world.

⠀

If the ghosts of Hollow’s Grove's victims don’t kill them first.

⠀

Start reading today!

Amazon: http://bit.ly/thecoven

Amazon Worldwide: https://mybook.to/thecoven

[twochicksobsessed]

Love for the Reaper (The Elite Book 1) by Charlie Cochet: New Release Review

Love for the Reaper (The Elite Book 1) by @CharlieCochet: #NewRelease #BookReview #lgbtq #mmromance #gayromance #romanticsuspense #4stars

.                                       . Devlin “Dev” Espinosa lives in the shadows of the criminal underworld. As a Ferryman, his job is to safely transport “the dead” to their new lives, no questions asked. With no one to answer to, lots of cash, and access to The Anonymous–an exclusive club for the elite–Dev is loving life. Until Remy Corbin gets into his car. Remy is just a regular guy…

[lilibetbombshell]

[hannahwatcheshorror]

THE EXORCIST (1973)

Slow movie but ultimately a fun romp through the paranormal! This classic exorcism movie sets the standard for all the rest, each next possession is like Regan and her demon(s). A must watch for horror fans and movie fans alike.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trigger warning sexual themes with children, projectile vomiting, suicide

Regan was once just a regular little girl but suddenly she begins spouting obscenities and being violent (pay absolutely no attention to the floating/moving furniture though, I guess). They spend a lot of time doing normal medical testing on the child but ultimately it is ruled that an exorcism is going to be the best idea for her and the final choice left for poor Regan. While maybe not everyone believes she is infected with a demon, they agree to do the exorcism on her because of how much pain her family is in.

I think it is just a regular demon inside her and I think it is a liar because it reacted to the fake holy water as if it were real holy water and burned him even though it wouldn’t have? This is never explained, why Regan reacted to the tap water, and it confused me a bit. The exorcism itself is pretty violent, Regan is all cut up in the face before the priests even arrive and is vomiting a lot of goo when they do get there. The floating and speaking in another voice is something else entirely but the priests are just kinda vibing and yelling about how the “power of Christ compels” her but it really doesn’t seem to.

The ending kind of threw me, the older priest dies and in his rage Damien grabs Regan and begins to beat up the child (wack). I get that there is a demon in there but just a few moments ago the guy was worried about Regan’s heart and now here he is beating her up! It felt really dangerous to the child trapped by the demon but, okay I guess. THEN he gets the bright idea to invite the demon into his own body and boy is it happy to get out of that helpless child body and into a vessel that can do some real damage. But Dimmy boy is too strong for the demon and suppresses it before it can hurt Regan (any more) and throws himself out the closed window (goodness knows windows back then weren’t so strong). Damien tumbles down the staircase right next to the window and dies, taking the demon with him. A very noble thing to do, Dimmy, thank you.

Regan is all better now and she even kisses the next priest she sees on the cheek which didn’t feel ominous at all (it really did). And then the detective tries to find a date to the movies but fails. Really a must watch classic film after all is said and done.