These are not recommendations, they aren’t opinions. This is a convention. A tried, true, and CORRECT way of doing things. I know in the writing community we say “break the rules”! But we’re talking about adding more adverbs and gerunds, not BREAKING GENRE VOWS.
Romance has hea. Love story no hea.
A vow is the finding out who the killer is in a whodunit. It’s seeing the creature in a creature feature horror. It’s the hockey player in a hockey romance. It’s an action-adventure WITH action and adventure. The romance vow is a promised and EXPECTED HAPPILY EVER AFTER OR HAPPY FOR NOW. This is non-negotiable. But play with romance readers if you want to. Travel on down the edgelord path and see where it takes you. Good luck, honey. You gon’ need it.
I made it, I’m here y’all! Six days late but here we are. I’m still getting the hang of this blog thing. Anyway! August was DARK! I read a ton of horror that involved darker themes such as murder, death, and trauma. An honorable mention is Briardark, but it didn’t quite make it on the list. Now, before I crown my number one pick let me tell you to read all content warnings. If you’d love to read Library At Mount Char but have triggers i will give you a heads-up. Intense acts of violence, violence against kids, murder, gore, blood, death, assault, SA (caught me off guard)
i don’t have triggers and don’t read them, so I just grimaced and turned the page. LAMC is a horror book. I know some will say it’s dark sci-fi fantasy but there are horrific moments )in my opinion) that catapult this into the horror genre. It’s by no means extreme horror but it toed the boundary.
Midnight Rooms is another you must understand from the beginning, it is gothic horror darning on the jagged rim of Dark Romance. Which remember, is seldom healthy. If you don’t read said sub-genre great, move along. The other two are light romance reads I thoroughly enjoyed. No complaints. There might be one or two acts of violence in each book but nothing heavy.
I adored these books for my emotional response. Each novel pulled a visceral reaction from me and that’s what I call good storytelling. It’s my type of glorious word weaving. I will say the ending in LAMC left a sour taste on my tongue, and maybe that’s what the author wanted, I have no idea. I wanted blood-stained justice and didn’t get it. BUT! My expectations are a me problem, not an author problem.
With the talking bits done, I wanna give that five outta five, number one spot to Midnight Rooms. I have to! I was smelling mold and drinking down honey thick tea. it was a terrific dive into a surreal fantasy world with many secrets and some were left shrouded in mystery. Whatever this author writes i will buy!