Five months, five books, five stars 🌟 These are the stories that made me stay up too late, feel too much, and immediately want to recommend them to everyone I know. If you’re looking for your next great read, start here.
The Scars Within by Ang T. Dalton
The Scars Within is a spellbinding romantasy packed with slow-burn heat, found family, snarky banter, and a dangerous romance that scorches through every page. The book follows Scarlet Thorne, who has been broken, burned alive and survived. Now she’s a wild card with forbidden magic and a dragon with no memories—enrolled in Mageia War College only because she has nowhere else to go. She’s supposed to stay quiet. Stay controlled. Stay away from too much power. As dark truths unravel and betrayal cuts deeper than any blade, Scarlet must confront the trauma she’s buried, the power she never asked for, and a fate that may cost her everything.
Direbound by Sable Sorensen
Meryn Cooper has never dreamed of being one of the Bonded, the King’s elite warriors who form mental links with massive, vicious direwolves. She’s made peace with her life scraping by in poverty in the shadows of the castle. But then her younger sister Saela is kidnapped, stolen across the border by the immortal monsters her country has spent centuries fighting. And Meryn’s world falls apart. Desperate to cross the front and save her sister, Meryn enlists in the army—only to discover that there are Bonding Trials this year, where all soldiers are forced to risk their lives in an attempt to connect with a direwolf. It’s too late to turn back; Meryn is thrown into the deadly competition against her will.
Deals and Dream Spells by Rachel Morgan
When Bloomhaven’s most notorious rivals accidentally bind themselves to a decades-old enchanted contract laying out the restoration of the failed magical attraction known as Dreamland, they must transform from bitter enemies to reluctant allies, staging the Season’s most shocking romance while secretly working together to resurrect the magical legacy that once tore their families apart. Let the banter-laced warfare, magically assisted sabotage, and dangerously simmering slowburn commence!
The Crimson Moth by Kristen Ciccarelli
The book follows the witch Rune who spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can’t help but find herself falling for.
Vow of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson
(spoiler alert – this is the second book and this description + review might spoil somethings from the first book)
Kazi and Jase have survived, stronger and more in love than ever. Their new life now lies before them–the Ballengers will be outlaws no longer, Tor’s Watch will be a kingdom, and Kazi and Jase will meet all challenges side by side, together at last. But an ominous warning mars their journey back, and they soon find themselves captured in a tangled web of deceit woven by their greatest enemies and unlikeliest allies, a place where betrayals run deeper and more deadly than either had thought possible and where timeless ambitions threaten to destroy them both.
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