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. So fun! I found some great titles on my TBR for this. Let’s check them out!
N: Night Tide by Lexi Ryan
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Fantasy / Romantasy
Synopsis: Aurora Evanselier’s graduation from Invictus Mage Academy is meant to be the most unforgettable night of her life. The glittering ball is supposed to begin with music and dancing and end with a single which of the empire’s four ruling kingdoms she’ll serve with her formidable magic.
As the emperor’s daughter, everyone expects Aurora to choose Daybreak, the most powerful kingdom in the empire. But when her father collapses, only one man can save him—Malek Ravenstorm, the brooding, magnetic prince of Night Tide. Malek has never forgiven the emperor for executing his brother, but he offers Aurora a his healing magic, in exchange for her allegiance. Desperate to save her father, she agrees.
Now Aurora is bound to a kingdom rumored to harbor witches and vampires, where the castle hides forbidden wings, and nothing is what it seems—especially Malek. He’s infuriating. Irresistible. Dangerous. And determined to keep her in the dark.
But Aurora didn’t trade her freedom to become a pawn. As whispers of a curse stir and Night Tide’s mysteries deepen, she uncovers a truth that threatens everything she thought she knew. Because the darkest secret of all isn’t Malek’s. It’s hers.
Night Tide begins a steamy, high-stakes romantasy trilogy where magic is power, desire is dangerous, and the shadows hold answers that can’t survive in the light.
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon | Bookshop.org
O: Of Blades and Wings by Eliza Raine
Genres:Fiction / Romance / Fantasy / Romantasy
Synopsis: If I am to survive Valkyrie training, I must earn my wings. If I am to survive Kain, I must make a choice that could burn our world to ash.
I’m broken. My fae magic doesn’t work and nobody knows I exist.
My sister, on the other hand, is bound for glory. She has been selected to train to be a Valkyrie at the mythical Featherblade Hall. I am destined to die alone, in my tower.
Only, when the Valkyrie come to collect my sister, they take me instead.
I’m not the only one who thinks they’ve made a terrible mistake. Every other fae here is waiting for me to die.
Except one.
Kain, the disgraced fire-fae combat trainer. The gods took his wings away, he can’t leave Featherblade, and he makes no secret of his blazing desire for revenge.
And somehow, he knows I’m the only one who can help him. He doesn’t know my secret, thank the fates, but his burning gaze never leaves me.
I know I should avoid him. I can’t think straight when he’s near me, and he’s as lethal as Featherblade is.
But, the only thing harder than earning my wings and becoming a Valkyrie?
Conquering my searing obsession with the unhinged fire-fae, before it gets everyone killed.
Fae Vikings meet romantasy in this enemies to lovers series in an academy/war college setting. If you love villain gets the girl stories and obsessive burn-the-world-down-for-her MMCs then this is for you.
The spice is deliciously slow-burn and builds with each book.
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon | Bookshop.org
V: Vanishing Beauties by Becca Fitzpatrick
Genres: Young Adult;
Synopsis: A teen beauty queen has vanished from Tea Kettle Island, and all evidence points to the girl’s ex-boyfriend, Sascha Sinner.
With a bounty out on Sascha’s head, seventeen-year-old Bunny decides to go after it – and him. But Sascha insists he didn’t do it, and wants Bunny’s help to prove his innocence.
Her search for the truth takes her to the very edge of the island, into its darkly magical past, revealing secrets the town has tried to push down. There are devilish creatures haunting the woods, a handsome man at the centre of a cult-like following, and a hidden history of missing girls – a history that includes Bunny’s own mother.
Can Bunny figure out who, or what, is taking the girls of Tea Kettle Island, before she is lost herself?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
E: Emily Wilde’s History of Dark Faerie by Heather Fawcett
Genres: Fantasy/Cozy Fantasy/Romance
Synopsis: Driven by an insatiable scientific curiosity, Emily Wilde has made a name for herself as the world’s foremost scholar of faeries. Along the way, she’s rescued a faerie kingdom and helped her now-husband—fellow professor Wendell Bambleby, dashing and infuriating in equal measure—regain his throne. And while understanding her fellow mortals has never been her strong suit, she’s also made a small number of friends.
But two years later, one of those friends goes missing in the beautiful but faerie-haunted Black Forest in Germany, a region of picturesque villages and sinister Folk. And if she’s to save him, Emily will have to reckon with the darker side of her own nature, and how ruthless she’s prepared to be to solve the most tantalizing of scholarly mysteries: the history of the ancient and long-lost realm she’s named Dark Faerie, the only place the Folk fear.
But Emily is not alone—she has her beloved Wendell, and her niece Ariadne, who hopes to follow in her footsteps. Told from the perspective of all three characters, this installment of the Emily Wilde series opens a magical portal to the most wondrous and dread faerie realm of all.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
M: Mariposa by Lexie Axelson
Genres: Romance/Contemporary/Military/Dark
Synopsis: I made it into the Special Forces course, but there are three problems.
Problem number one? One of my instructors is the infamous Special Operator Beast—a man everyone fears due to his cold heart and polished career. He loathes being away from his team, which makes graduating nearly impossible for all of us, mainly for his least favorite me.
Problem number two? My heart skips a beat whenever I look into his cruel eyes, and my blood heats whenever he’s near me. He’s tall, scarred, and a devastatingly irresistible man who never smiles.
Oh, and problem number three? He’s my ex-boyfriend’s dad.
We try to stay out of each other’s way to make our reckless forbidden attraction fade, but fate keeps bringing us together. The military calls me The Unbreakable Soldier, but falling for Kade O’Connell might be my undoing.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
B: The Beautiful Heir by Vanessa Montalban
Genres: Young Adult; Fantasy; Romantasy
Synopsis: The dashing eldest prince of a fae kingdom must work with a no-nonsense professor’s daughter to woo a foreign princess—only to start falling for his tutor instead—in this first book in the young adult fantasy romance Heirs of Westemere series perfect for fans of Holly Black.
Nineteen-year-old Prince Harmon—known as “Fitz” to his many admirers—is the first heir to the throne of the fae kingdom of Westemere. Widely considered the handsomest person in the realm, Fitz enjoys hopping from bed to bed and leading a soft life of drinking, feasting, and raking from dusk ’til dawn.
But not everyone is charmed by his rollicking ways—especially his father, who has a reputation for cruelty and banishing his children to the most desolate corners of the land when they displease him. So when the king issues an ultimatum to court and marry a visiting princess from a neighboring kingdom of Alanza or else, Fitz knows he must accept his fate. There’s just one how can he seduce a woman whose language he doesn’t speak?
Enter Ava Lemontree, the whip-smart, sharp-tongued daughter of a celebrated professor of Alanzan language, history, and culture. Well aware of and thoroughly disgusted by Fitz’s playboy reputation, Ava nonetheless agrees to tutor the prince in hopes of receiving a royal magical boon to save her dying father.
Forced to work together to secure their futures, Fitz and Ava have nothing but hostility between them until their verbal sparring melts into something sweeter. But as secrets from Ava’s past and expectations for Fitz’s future collide, their love—and their lives—might be in more danger than they know.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
E: The Emperor’s Enemy by Jasmine Mas
Genres: Fantasy/Romance/Romantasy
Synopsis: Welcome to the Unsurvivable Love Duet, the all-new series by Jasmine Mas, bestselling author of Blood of Hercules. The limited deluxe edition features beautifully designed sprayed edges, a foil-stamped case, and full-color character art endpapers—available while supplies last!
Zora Ravenal didn’t join the Crimson Army to be a hero. She joined to destroy the empire.
A skilled hunter hardened by loss with a concerning capacity for stubbornness, Zora claws her way into becoming a Knight Mage: the Commonwealth’s deadliest defense against the Empire’s storm magic and her people’s only hope.
It almost works.
Now she’s stuck in a war she can’t walk away from, hiding dangerous secrets, and shoved into very close quarters with the one man she should never be alone with.
He’s a Royal Mage with a body count, a temper, and an unsettling obsession… with her.
Now they’re partners.
Sort of.
If “partners” means being forced to train together, trust each other with their lives, and somehow not kill each other in the process.
But the Royal Mage isn’t just dangerous—he’s paying attention. And the longer they’re forced to remain in each other’s orbit, the more twisted everything becomes. Who’s hunting who?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
R: Rising Thunder
Genres: Young Adult; Sci-Fi; Fantasy
Synopsis: Discover Thunderhead’s origin—the fragile moment before the world changes forever and the hidden forces that set the storm in motion—in this long-awaited prequel to the New York Times bestselling and Printz Honor–winning Arc of a Scythe series by Neal Shusterman.
And of course, as every school child knows, December 2042 marks the end of the Age of Mortality.
What no one has ever fully understood is how the world reached that moment.
As death begins to seem optional, humanity looks for ways to bend the rules of existence. Twi-life centers begin storing the nearly-deceased, while eco-nihilists destroy civilization’s icons and threaten to end the human race entirely. Public opinion fractures. Systems strain. The world feels…unstable.
Behind the scenes, two powerful and diametrically opposed artificial intelligences set out to optimize, stabilize, and protect—each with its own idea of what that means. But in a world already tipping toward transformation, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Meanwhile, in an obscure online chatroom, a small group of teenagers from around the globe debate both the glorious and the terrifying prospects of the future, never realizing that they stand on a very literal cutting edge—and that their conversations, their choices, their very existence matter far more than they realize.
Because when humanity stands on the brink of immortality, someone must decide what survives…and what must be cut away.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
