Genre: Short Stories


Friday, November 23, 2018

New Beginnings: Diamond Fire by Ilona Andrews

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I received this book for free from Avon in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

New Beginnings: Diamond Fire by Ilona AndrewsDiamond Fire by Ilona Andrews
Series: Hidden Legacy #3.5
Published by Avon on November 6th, 2018
Genres: Adult, Short Stories, Urban Fantasy
Source: Avon
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four-stars

Nevada Frida Baylor and Connor Ander Rogan cordially invite you to join their wedding celebration. Summoning, weather manipulation, and other magical activities strictly forbidden.

Catalina Baylor is looking forward to wearing her maid of honor dress and watching her older sister walk down the aisle. Then the wedding planner gets escorted off the premises, the bride’s priceless tiara disappears, and Rogan's extensive family overruns his mother’s home. Someone is cheating, someone is lying, and someone is plotting murder.

To make this wedding happen, Catalina will have to do the thing she fears most: use her magic. But she’s a Baylor and there’s nothing she wouldn't do for her sister's happiness. Nevada will have her fairy tale wedding, even if Catalina has to tear the mansion apart brick by brick to get it done.

I’ve been obsessed with the Hidden Legacy for years now so I was more than a little sad when it came to an end. OF COURSE, they announced a spin off and we got the first hint of that in this little novella.

Nevada and Rogan are getting married! FINALLY! And of course, given how things just happen around them, the wedding planning isn’t going as smoothly as anticipated. A family heirloom goes missing and there might be someone plotting a wedding murder.  In comes Catalina (also the narrator of the spin-offs I believe) who is put to the task of solving this mystery without alerting Nevada to the on-going shenanigans.

So, I went into Diamond Fire with no idea what the novella was about or that it wasn’t even narrated by Nevada. If I had known it wasn’t narrated by her, I might not have read it which would have been the gravest mistake ever made because Catalina is an absolute cinnamon roll.

She is younger so she is more angsty than Nevada but angst isn’t a bad thing. CATALINA JUST HAS A LOT ON HER PLATE, OKAY? And we must form a bubble around her to protect her. Of course, her powers being what they are don’t really help her with the whole opening up thing.

In this novella, we get to see a glimpse of the kind of stuff we will see Catalina struggling with in the spin-off series and I am honestly so ready for it. It is also a wedding novella so we get to see a little bit of Nevada and Rogan, some of their fams and some of our old Baylor favs. For all current fans of this series, you are not gonna be disappointed by this novella, for everyone who hasn’t read this series, READ IT FOR Mad Rogan the Baylor fam’s general awesomeness and a wonderful, exciting, magical world.

four-stars

4 Hot Espressos

Good to be Reunited With Some Beloved Characters: Star-Touched Stories by Roshani Chokshi

Posted by on 08/28/2018 • 2 Comments

Roshani Chokshi has already earned herself a place on my auto-read list so it is unsurprising that even though I am a shit head who hasn’t read A Crown of Wishes, I still needed to read Star-Touched Stories. Chokshi has a distinguished writing style that just calls out to me, I guess.

Short stories set in a favorite world are always fun and I love how Chokshi really does somehow manage to bring the Star-Touched queen world to life even through this short snippets into the lives of beloved characters. WHICH. I know I’ve read Star-Touched Queen so I have some context but its been two years so I really didn’t remember much and yet, THE STORIES WERE SO WELL WRITTEN that I didn’t really need to remember…