Dragonfire by Donna Grant 5 ✭

Title:	Dragonfire
Author:	Donna Grant
Publisher:	St. Martin's Paperbacks
Series:	Dark Kings
Genre:	Romance, Paranormal Fantasy, Shifter
Publish Date:	October 30, 2018
Sold by:	Macmillan
Pages:	400
Ages:	18+

Rating: ✭✭✭✭✭

I was lucky to receive an ARC of Dragonfire from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. 

Dragonfire begins with a girl talking to her grandmother about her mom taking her away from her gypsy family. They have gifts and the family has been hiding a secret. For generations, the story of why they're on the run is passed down. There was a dragon king who had a magnificent battle sword. But one of the gypsies saw that he would use that sword to kill all the people in the village. So six families took waited and stole the sword from him, and split up. Always on the run. That is just the prologue too. 

That was right before Sabina and her family to leave the caravan because townspeople were after them and murdered her father. Her grandmother had the "Sight" and could see the future. It was a gift that was passed down through the family lines. Both Sabina and her brother have the Sight. Now Sabina and her half-brother live alone in the country. The rest of the gypsy family have moved on. Sabina and her brother Camlo also have the Sight. Camlo can communicate with animals and is gifted with wood. But even though he has grown to the size of a man, he has kept the mind of a child. Camlo is an important character in the story, and I just adored him. Sabina was a strong character too. She has to change within the book. Her fears end up being used against her, and there is a little twist/reveal. I like her, I want more of her and Roman. I honestly wished the book didn't end. 

Roman is a whole lotta hunk. The book starts with V and Roman going to Romania where V, aka Vlad, use to rule to search for his sword. Well, that's where Sabina and Camlo are at, so the obviously run into each other. This part made me adore Camlo because of his childlike excitement of knowing who the Dragon Kings are. As it continues we see more Druid and Fae involvement and that they need to search Roman's homeland, Iceland. This is where it gets all Indiana Jones with magic. Maybe not quite Indie, but it's the best example I could think of at the moment.

We get like one scene with Con and Rhi development. It isn't enough. It's just enough to tease. Whenever they get their book it better be 600 pages and amazing. I am glad there isn't too much bouncing around to other side plots in the world. This really focuses on Roman, V, Sabina, Camlo. I think V's sword is such an important part of the world that you need to focus on them and the challenges that they face. 

I loved this book. It was hot and it was serious. Fire & Ice indeed. If you decided to just pick this up off a shelf you wouldn't be too lost. There are minor references to previous books and if you haven't read them it will trip you up for like a couple pages but it's easy to move on. Like I said this focuses on a select few rather than everyone in the world. This series is really vast and I love it. I want to soak in it and just enjoy this massive world that Donna Grant has created. 

Please, do yourself a favor, check out Donna Grant's Dragonfire. Read a Free sample below without leaving the page. 

Heat by Donna Grant 4 ✭

Title: Heat

Author: Donna Grant

Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks

Series: Dark Kings

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Publish Date: January 30, 2018

Sold by: Macmillan

Pages: 330

Ages: 18 +

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

I received a free E-galley of Heat from St. Martin's Paperback to review and I am very thankful for the opportunity to read Donna Grant's book. I have not read any of the previous books in the series. It is totally something that I would be interested in reading, and I am definitely adding them to my "need to pick up" list. I will say that this book is very busy and I wouldn't recommend picking it up alone. You can read it as a stand-alone, I did, but you miss a lot of the family connections that you are supposed to be feeling amongst everyone. This is totally a series that you could easily eat up. It reminds me of Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed series, except with dragon kings, druids, and the fae.

Without reading the previous books you miss all the intricacies in the relationships. You get a few references to previous events and a few other characters pop up here and there, but you don't feel any connection to them. If you had read the 11 books prior it would totally be different. You would know what Nikolai was like before the book, where it feels like when you start they're already in love with each other. Stuff like that. It isn't bad at all though. This is a great way to get yourself connected to the world and then continue from here on out. I think you would be able to get a good feel for the rest of the stories progression and want to continue.

Esther is a fun character in this book. She is haunted by the fact she doesn't remember events in her life since her memory has been erased. That's where you pick up, so you have to piece what's been going on from there. You make this discovery that she is a part of this magical world with Dragon shifters and the fae in more ways than one. Once her issues are resolved the book really comes together in a sweet way. I feel like Esther and Nikolai's connection was a fun and sweet one. After that, I was invested in Esther's character. I liked who she was after everything she has gone through, and I didn't even know half of what she went through because it was written earlier in the series. That just makes me more interested in the series.

I went with a 4-star rating because I think whether you have or haven't read the earlier books the characters are interesting and all the different side plots are interesting enough that it felt worthy of a four star.

If you would like to read a free sample of Heat by Donna Grant you can check it out below without leaving the page!

*Editted to fix post formatting issues.

Her Dark Half by Paige Tyler 4 ✭

Title: Her Dark Half

Author: Paige Tyler

Series: X-Ops

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Supernatural Romance

Publish Date: September 5, 2017

Pages: 354

Ages: 18+

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

Her Dark Half was a little hard for me to get into at first. This is also the seventh book in this series and I have read none of the previous ones. I got this copy of the book from NetGalley for review purposes. I will say that by 28% (thank you kindle) I got HOOKED into this book. The mystery of waiting to see how they get the baddie was a lot of fun to read. The events that occur within the book flow naturally. Thanks to the author's skillful writing tying you in. So if you haven't read the previous books like me, you will be fine to pick this up. You get a feel for the world and previous events pretty early in the book.

I love shifter style books because the idea is just magical. Who wouldn't want to be an animal right? In Her Dark Half, there are some who are born as shifters. And then there are some who were kidnapped, tortured and, turned into shifters with science backed by a shady congressman. Thorne is an evil man, and it is left to the only shifter left in the DCO to ferret out the truth of all the previous events from other books. Trevor is a coyote shifter and he only has a few friends left that are helping out. Thorne thinks he is slick and hires a former CIA agent who is skilled at getting traitors to be Trevor's partner.

Alina is a bad-ass with a past. She quit working for the CIA because she been obsessed in finding a criminal. The criminal had once been her team member who betrayed her whole team killed. Alina was so obsessed with finding traitors that it became her specialty. Alina got sick of doing that job. Always looking for people in your own ranks who are traitor's has got to wreck your emotions. So Alina saw a new opportunity to work with the DCO and took it. The problem was she didn’t' realize that she would be watching her new partner Trevor to see if he is a traitor. 

To start these two do not trust each other at all. Alina is under the impression that Trevor is probably a traitor. Trevor knows that Alina is most likely a plant to keep an eye on him so he can't bust Thorne and Dick. Dick is the current head of the DCO and he is definitely shady. There are a bunch of shifters who are on the run, one is even pregnant. And they are all trying to survive and find out what Dick and Thorne are up to. There are a lot of people in this story that are from the earlier books and you get to see parts of them but not much. There are more books in the series and this series seems pretty solid from what I have read. It had solid action and solid action.

For a Free sample read check out below. You don't even have to leave the page.