This book was fabulous! It was well written, it was spicy, it had cowboys, it had insane tricks on horses. The MMC, Brock is a family oriented guy, overly motivated to keep his family’s farm. His family? So delightful. I absolutely adored every one of them and I can’t wait to see them all fall in love throughout the Wild Sage Ranch series.

The FMC, Sienna was a fun character to follow, watching her adapt from Chicago to the middle of nowhere and have to transform from business attire to cowboy boots and tank tops. As a girl who enjoys both, I support this.

The siblings dynamics from both families felt so real. Sienna was paying her sister’s tuition and Brock was trading insults with his siblings with a grin. Both are perfectly normal amongst siblings and it was highly entertaining to read.

Watching Brock and Sienna find their dreams and each other was honestly a great experience. Unfortunately I felt like some of the issues they ran into were glossed over and some of them were ridiculous in my opinion. Sienna’s boss, who sent her from Chicago, also occasionally felt inconsistent in her character.

Overall, wonderful book and I look forward to reading the series! 

I would like to start this off by mentioning that I do not think I am the correct audience for this book. It was good it just wasn’t my thing. I’m sure that there are many, many people out there who would adore this story.

Sweetberry Bay, where Maya is staying over the summer, is a cute, wonderful little English seaside town. You can picture it, and they have cute festivals and market days and things like that. Everyone thinks she should get with Ethan the second he sets foot in the store too.

Maya is staying with her “aunt”, her mom’s best friend, and I love when people call non blood relations relatives. It’s so cute!! My kids will definitely be calling my two best friends aunt. Anyway, it’s great to see the support system show up for her.

He falls first and it’s a slow burn (as much as a novella can be) because she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her and so she’s resisting Ethan.

Unfortunately there were just some things that bothered me, and it just didn’t have the spark I wanted, but as that’s my opinion, I am sure there are plenty of readers out there who would love it. I felt like Maya’s heartbreak was used as a plot point, not something she actually felt. She seemed to forget it all the time, which sort of bugged me. She thought she was with her dream man and he cheated on her, and she brushes it off all the time. The other thing, which is totally a me complaint and most people won’t care about, is that she immediately just “knows” Ethan. She spends like an entire paragraph describing the kind of man that he is but she’s only had one conversation with him? I didn’t like that, but I also know it’s a novella and sometimes you gotta speed things up.

Anyway, a good book, just not my type. 

I will start with the one issue that I had so that I can spend all of my time listing why I loved this book. In this book they didn’t really have female warriors. At all. So of course, the MMC was thrown when this woman showed up and could fight. That’s fine, I get it, a lot of fantasy novels do that. What bothered me about this was that they were referred to as “his males”. The soldiers were “his males” which threw me so badly that it was actually a struggle to get through the beginning.

Now, speaking of the beginning, when the FMC was introduced? I was immediately in love with the two of them. She stole from him, got his horse to like her more than him and absolutely called him out on his shit. Just slaughtered him and it was fabulous. He needed to be taken down a notch and she continues to do it, putting him in his place and reminding him he isn’t perfect.

However they also build each other up. All of the characters in this book go through some sort of development and watching their relationships grow and change was amazing. There were so many good characters, even if they were only there briefly, they were stunning.

The plot is just amazing, I can’t talk about it enough! There are vampires, werewolves and fae, all without a cliche. Their existences are explained, there aren’t really any prejudices against any race and it’s great. The humans are looked at as the same level as all of these immortal creatures and the journey they’re all going on is amazing. Riveting.

Look out for this book, it is so good!! 

I think that the main thing here is that I was unfortunately not the target audience for this book. It has an interesting plot and it has a good presence for the “Mothers” (the gods in the book).

The sibling dynamics are so accurate to real life that I did enjoy that quite a bit too. The bickering between the sisters and the way they could read each other’s minds felt very accurate to my real life and my relationship with my siblings.

Unfortunately that is not what I look for in a book. The whole thing never slowed down. The actual story has no exposition, you’re just launched into it. I felt like I didn’t get to know the characters at all at the beginning. It felt like a lot of the relationships didn’t develop on paper as much as they should have. All of the characters just sort of said “sure, okay” when their whole life was upended by gods they barely even believed in.

It just felt unrealistic to me and frustrating because I didn’t know the characters well enough to understand why they would do that.

I think I’m just too much of a character driven reader to have enjoyed this story that is very, very plot driven. 

This book was wonderful, it’s a romantic suspense. The two main characters, Eloise and Weston seem absolutely made for each other. They are both super close with their sisters and while Eloise doesn’t really talk to her parents, she and her sister found a family in West’s family.

Eloise has a niece who calls her Wheezy which is absolutely adorable, especially to be close enough to a 14 year old niece that she still calls you that. You can really see how close knit all of the families are.

West and Eloise meet when he gets stung by a bee and she saves his life, and somehow they just fall in love right then. The way that they fall in love, but then hesitate because they think it isn’t the “normal” pace is so honest. Everyone has their own pace and I think that this book really shows that, and reassures readers that there is no normal and everyone’s pace is the right pace for them.

However, in a couple of the suspense parts I don’t like how the characters reacted. I don’t want to give anything away because I hate when reviews have spoilers (especially in a suspense). There are just a couple of decisions that are made that feel artificial, like most people wouldn’t actually do that, and it felt a bit out of character for them. Beyond that, great book and I can’t wait for the rest of the series! 

It was well written, the characters had lots of interesting backstories that made sense and got to influence their lives.

The idea of a soulmate that she used was good, and it was obvious that the characters who were soulmates were actually soulmates, not just claiming it. They matched well.

The suspense part of it was well planned, you only started suspecting people as the author wanted you to start taking extra notice of them and it kept it from feeling boring.

Now, my issue is that it still felt a bit extra. There were things in their past that felt unnecessary to me, and a therapist who occasionally broke the rules, but his when and why baffled me. I didn’t know when he was going to tell something and sometimes he just never did.

The side characters were mostly good, but I also feel like we didn’t get to know some of them very well and it would’ve helped some plot points to know them better.

So, it was a good book, just not my thing. 

I could not put this book down! I’m such a character driven reader that it’s becoming a problem, like I will DNF a book just because the MC bothers me, but this book? People you’re supposed to hate are well developed. You aren’t just told to hate them you see why you need to hate them. Random side characters that are there for five pages? I miss them as soon as they’re gone.

Every single character in this book felt like a fully formed character and I loved it!!! Plus, the plot? Fascinating. Riveting. So well executed that I am absolutely obsessed with it at every turn. There are little foreshadowing bits (okay, is it foreshadowing if it’s explicitly stated?) that make it impossible to out this book down.

I don’t think I can sing its praises enough, but I cannot wait for it to be released for the whole world to read! 10/10, would recommend. No notes.

Now, honestly this book was well written. The magical university has interesting professors, new ideas on magic, and fascinating side characters.

The characters are clearly well developed and planned out, good for their spot in the plot and to move Benji, the main character, forward through his journey. They all have their quirks and the reasons why Benji continues to hang out with them (even when he probably shouldn’t).

Unfortunately the pacing made it not the right book for me. It felt like it dragged and I kept setting the book down and having to circle back to it. I think there are many people out there would enjoy the book, it just wasn’t right for me.