Hi there! It’s time for another Spell the Month in Books. This was originally created by Reviews from the Stacks, and the idea is to spell the month using the first letter of book titles. This month, I have two already released books (A & G) and four upcoming releases (U, U, S, & T) on my TBR. Let’s check them out!
A: Adversary to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
HR Update: The position of “adversary to the villain” has been filled. Evie Sage does not recall applying.
Evie has always tried to be helpful, loyal, and only mildly involved in treason. But with a dangerous prophecy threatening the very magic of Rennedawn—not to mention the race to claim its necessary artifacts before King Benedict does—things are starting to feel…less like a career path and more like a serious problem.
The prophecy won’t stop pointing in Evie’s direction. The Villain’s magic keeps choosing her. And honestly, if you’re going to be accused of evil anyway, you might as well commit.
Unfortunately, the more Evie leans into her alleged villain era, the more her boss starts acting like the hero of a completely different story. Trystan is getting closer—closer than is wise, advisable, or even remotely professional—and looking at her like she’s already chosen a side. His.
Which is deeply inconvenient, because if Evie can’t save the kingdom’s magic, she might just become its greatest threat.
The hilarious fantasy romance series doesn’t end at Adversary to the Villain! The thrilling conclusion to the series is coming soon!
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
U: An Uncertain Magic by A.M. Kvita
To save the city, Brooklyn’s most chaotic coven takes on the gods (yes, the gods) in An Uncertain Magic, the second book in AM Kvita’s award winning Green Witch Cycle. No big deal.
Joan Greenwood has been adjusting nicely to her life away from her powerful family of witches. She has an apartment full of friends, her dream job at an architecture firm, and a constant companion in the sentient magic that makes up New York City. For once, everything’s coming up Joan.
Until her best friend gets possessed.
There’s a god wearing his skin, a new cult springing up around him, magic is going haywire, and things go from bad to worse when Joan’s rival-turned-crush Astoria Wardwell arrives from California with the news that her best friend is also possessed. That’s one hell of a coincidence, and the strange dreams they share just might hold the key to saving their best friends before these gods corrupt them. Unless their pesky feelings for each other get in the way.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
G: Gingerbread Bones by Lindsay Lovise
They’re being hunted…
When sixteen-year-old Georgie and her troublemaking brother are shipped off to the wilderness for their stepmother’s newest reality show, Georgie is convinced it’ll be the worst experience of her life. Two weeks. No phones. Hiking. Camping. Cameras catching every humiliating second.
Then she meets Mack Gray. Tattooed, unreadable, and—among a cast of kids already branded as trouble—he’s the one she’s sure is dangerous.
One night, the counselors are chanting affirmations around the fire. By morning, they’re gone.
But the kids are not alone.
Georgie can feel it, stalking them from the shadows—watching, waiting, picking them off one by one. Whatever it is, it isn’t just hunting.
It’s playing.
And in this game, there seems to be only one ending: no one gets out alive.
Five Survive meets Yellowjackets in this pulse-pounding YA paranormal thriller romance.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
U: Under the Iron Sky by A.T. Emerald
A fallen empire. A warrior determined to protect her people. And the masked soldier who captures her behind enemy lines. The first novel in a dark, seductive, and all-consuming trilogy where hope is fickle but the fight is never over.
Vordell was beautiful once. Its people lived in harmony, and their civilization flourished as they learned to harness and control the power of Light.
Then the darkness came.
The Iron Sky unfolded dark clouds across the land, thick enough to choke out the light of the suns. The ground cracked, releasing vicious creatures that looked like humanity’s oldest fears. The Dar’rak—an enemy long believed to be buried and forgotten—returned to claim the world above.
Soraya Tollmere has spent most of her life on the front lines of the brutal war that followed. Now a high-ranking commander, she knows loss better than anyone.
By day, she leads troops across ruined landscapes and guides covert teams through enemy territory. By night, she meets with a Dar’rak defector who has kept humanity alive with his steady stream of secrets.
On a mission to investigate his latest lead—one that could turn the tide of the war—Soraya is captured by The Demon, the Dar’rak’s most feared soldier, his true identity unknown.
His orders are break the human commander, uncover where the humans are keeping a weapon that could win them the war, and bring it to the Dar’rak. But as he gets to know the fierce warrior, the lines between interrogator and enemy, prisoner and ally, begin to blur.
As devastating truths surface and loyalties shatter, Soraya must decide who to trust in a world where light is dying—and where her greatest enemy may be her only salvation.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
S: Sold to the Dark Vampire Prince by Kat Kinney
To save her sister, she’ll make a dangerous bargain with the heir to the vampire throne.
Daniela Girard understands all too well that ever since the fall of the human race, survival has meant making yourself indispensable to one of its new masters. The fae and the wolves can mostly be avoided, but the vampires thirst for human blood, and at a terrible price.
Dani despises none of them more than cold Crown Prince Alexander Visconti, who insists on making announcements about his impending royal engagement ball while she and her two sisters slowly starve.
In the dark of winter, her ten-year-old sister Ava’s chronic illness reaches a breaking point. With her father gone and her stepmother lost to the ravages of blood addiction, Dani has to find a way to obtain the medicine she needs. And she has nothing left to sell but herself.
But when she’s saved from the blood auctions and her rescuer turns out to be none other than Alexander, Dani doesn’t know what to do. Each time he feeds from her throat, she cannot deny the dark yearning she feels, the unexplained connection to a prince she knows she should get as far away from as possible, and a man who she is discovering is anything but what she initially believed him to be.
Neither of them anticipates the connection that forms.
Every taste of her blood, every stolen kiss she knows she shouldn’t allow, buys her sister a few more days. Every time Alex feeds from her, the bond between them grows harder to sever.
A bond that could prove very dangerous for her if discovered.
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon
T: To Dream in Darkness by Ann Liang
Two gods strike a bargain that leads them on a journey with devastating consequences in this lush historical fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Ann Liang.
China in the age of brilliance, where gods freely wander the three realms. Amongst them is the cruel and beautiful Death God, who has never failed to collect a soul on time. Until now. For when he seeks out Rujia, the noble god of healing—and the only god he is fated to kill with his own hands—she makes him an offer he can’t she will help lift the excruciating, century-old curse placed upon him if he gives her a one-month reprieve.
Rujia knows she isn’t as noble as everyone believes. Her deal with Death is merely an excuse to buy herself time while she figures out an escape plan. But when her plan causes the Celestial Palace’s collapse and the beloved crown prince’s disappearance, she and Death are both held responsible. The only way to avoid the wrath of all the other gods is to travel across the realms and safely retrieve the crown prince themselves.
Yet the journey proves far more treacherous than expected. As the unlikely alliance between them blooms into more, and Death’s resolve to kill Rujia weakens by the day, neither can outrun their intertwined fate without devastating A mysterious plague. An empire-destroying flood. A thousand deaths—and rising—to restore the balance Rujia’s disrupted. And if Rujia continues to live despite the will of the Heavens, this is only the beginning…
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
