Review: A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

Disclaimer: Thank you to Nyx Publishing for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Left for dead by the soldiers who pillaged her village, a peasant girl is given the gift of eternal life by consuming the blood of a stranger. Raised from near death and renamed Constanta, she becomes the bride of an immortal king, the unnamed Dracula.

In the ensuing centuries together, Constanta becomes jaded and bored with their life as aristocrats. Tired of all of the time alone while her husband studies both the living and undead for answers to their very being. Traipsing throughout Europe and fleeing wars, he seeks to add more brides to their relationship, the beautiful aristocrat Magdalena and the gorgeous and fiery Alexei, much to the initial dismay of Constanta. What starts out as anger and jealousy, quickly turns to love and passion and a sense of family between the four characters.

Still not sated with his brides, the never named Dracula becomes increasingly violent and cruel to those he professes to love. That cruelty creates consequences that force Constanta to chose between love and devotion to her husband or to protect lives of those who she has also grown to love.

The novel is told in first person point of view from Constanta's viewpoint. It is clear that the story itself is being told to the never-named Dracula.

This is a gorgeous piece of gothic horror- it is dark, tortured, blood drenched, and has steamy sex scenes between all four characters. Each character was well fleshed out and interesting in their own right. I would love to read this story from the point of view of the other characters.  A lush retelling of the brides of Dracula story with a polyamorous relationship, A Dowry of Blood is the spiritual successor to Anne Rice's Vampire series, in my opinion. 

With the blessing of the author, I am adding the trigger warnings that she included for the novel. A Dowry of Blood contains depictions of  and/or references to: emotional, verbal, and physical intimate partner abuse, gaslighting, war, famine, and plague, blood and gore, consensual sexual content, sadomasochism, self harm, body horror, violence and murder, alcohol use, depression and mania, sexual assault, drug use, and drowning.

 5/5 Stars

Review: Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Polis Books for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Detective Lauren Medina, reeling from the recent death of her father and an impending divorce, is called out to a murder scene of a teenaged girl. Expecting but not finding evidence of gang violence, Medina is stunned to see a piece of graffiti that reads PIED PIPER. Her partner thinks nothing of it, insisting that it is a new tagger trying to get his name out, but it stirs feelings of dread in Medina as that same symbol was seen at the scene of her younger sister's tragic death years before.

As there are cases of kids killing other kids, and more and more sightings of the PIED PIPER graffiti all over Chicago, Lauren is racing to find out how the cases of murdered kids are connected and how the Pied Piper is connected to it all.

This book is Cynthia Pelayo's love letter to her beloved Chicago. It is honest and unflinching, invoking both Walt Disney and Frank L. Baum in contrast to H.H. Holmes and The Chicago Strangler. The way she weaves the history of the city in with the stories of crime gives Chicago itself the feeling of a gritty fairy tale.

The book is gripping and fast paced and there are dark, gory elements that will get your heart pumping. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark, gripping story and didn't want it to end. 

5/5 Stars

#ChildrenofChicago #NetGalley

 

 

Review: Moon Child by Gaby Triana

Thank you, Gaby Triana, for the eARC of Moon Child in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

From the first time I saw the cover of Moon Child on Twitter, I was intrigued. When I read the description of The Craft meets The Shining, I was sold. When the opportunity came up to be able to review Moonchild, I jumped at the chance and I'm so glad I did.

Moonchild, is the story of Valentina Callejas, known to family and friends as Vale, and her struggles to free herself from her strict matriarchal Catholic upbringing, while embracing her growing connection to the occult. In a move shocking to even Vale herself, she abandons her yearly Catholic youth camp stay, and returns home to face her mother and grandmother's anger and concern. Tired of their controlling nature, their aversion to her growing interest in the occult, and the secrets they keep regarding her father's death, Vale turns to the only other person she can trust, her illegitimate half-sister, Macy.

At Macy's home in Central Florida, Vale finds peace and freedom to explore her growing psychic powers. One night, she is visited by a wolf and led through the woods to the derelict Sunlake Springs Resort, where she finds four young clairvoyant squatters who claim that they have been awaiting her arrival to complete their circle.

As she jumps into learning about her psychic powers, she is subject to terrible sights and experiences, as well as threats from one of the Clairs she is seeking to help. She in a fight to learn the truth about her father and his mysterious death, the truth of what the Clairs are seeking from Sunlake Springs Resort, and in the end, what Sunlake Springs Resorts wants from them.

Right off the bat, I am a sucker for Southern Gothic horror, and Gaby knows her stuff.  I live close to the area where the novel is set in Central Florida and she 100% has her descriptions of the weather and appearance of the areas around Vale and her friends down.

One of the main aspects of Moon Child that I loved was the amount of representation in it. The main character and her immediate family are Latinx, her half-sister is also a woman of color, and there is LGBTQIA representation within the group of Clairs. I hope more books take Moonchild as an example of how to make their books more inclusive.

 The story has a slow growing sense of dread and the tension is palpable right up to the very last page.  I was hooked from page 1 and finished in one sitting because I had to know how it ended. 

5/5 Stars