Bloodthorn Blog. A bookwyvern's honest take on dark romance.

Bloodthorn Blog. A bookwyvern's honest take on dark romance.
Cover of Kingdom of Ash & Bone by Raven Storm

Kingdom of Ash & Bone

by Raven Storm

3 / 5

Mari is a mud quarter girl who was reaped into the Seat, the isolated royal enclave ruling over a caste-divided kingdom, and bonded to twin dragon princes, Zion and Zariah, as their mate. Book two picks up with that bond intact but the larger problem still very much alive: the queen who cursed her own bloodline into dragons, and cursed the Noble class into demons as punishment for generations of enslaving Mari’s people, is not going to give up her throne quietly.

What follows is a kingdom in open collapse: a refugee camp full of people who’ve lost everything, a half-brother running an underground refuge for the ones slowly turning into demons, and a mother-queen willing to burn her own city to the ground rather than lose control of it. Mari spends the book trying to hold together a found family that keeps growing even as the people around her keep dying, while the truth about the curse, the queen, and what’s actually still alive underneath the ruined mud quarter gets pulled further into the light with every chapter.

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Cover of One Cursed Rose by Rebecca Zanetti

One Cursed Rose

by Rebecca Zanetti

5 / 5

Plot Summary (spoiler-free) One Cursed Rose twists Beauty and the Beast just far enough to fit a dark romance next to a suspense plot, with a layer of tech on top. It…

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Cover of Grave Secrets by Cassandra Aston

Grave Secrets

by Cassandra Aston

4 / 5

Plot Summary (spoiler-free) Six years ago, at seventeen, Allie Graves made a deal to save her life: six years of service to the angels. Now that service is up, and returning to…

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Cover of The Last Immortal by Natalie Gibson

The Last Immortal

by Natalie Gibson

5 / 5

Lady Ramillia Winmoore is twelve years old when she wakes strapped to a table in a Victorian asylum for the criminally insane, told she butchered her own parents and has no memory of it. What actually happened to her, and what she is, unspools slowly and never comfortably: she is a “Carrier,” one of a hidden bloodline of the nearly unkillable, and her freedom from that asylum comes at the price of a marriage arranged since before she was born, to a man who has been shaping her whole existence from the shadows.

What follows refuses to stay a single story. A rescue becomes a trap, a trap becomes a education in exactly how deep the rot of immortality goes, and a mother’s fight to protect her children becomes something far larger and far darker: a reckoning that eventually spans continents, empires, and centuries, carried by a narrator whose own mind has splintered into pieces just to survive what was done to her.

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Cover of Ice Dragon Prince’s Mate by Danie Clark

Ice Dragon Prince’s Mate

by Danie Clark

4 / 5

Plot Summary (spoiler-free) Ice Dragon Prince’s Mate returns to the world of the Stolen Destiny series, a fantasy-romance realm of mystic creatures and human kingdoms living in strained proximity. Kael, the brooding…

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Cover of Shattered Darkness by Elyzabeth M. Valey

Shattered Darkness

by Elyzabeth M. Valey

4 / 5

Into a Darkened City: A Steamy Escape—Shattered Darkness by Elyzabeth M. Valey.
Shattered Darkness” is a Paranormal Romance that drags one right in, headfirst, into urban fantasy and forbidden desires. Shadow City is an unknown metropolis ruled by shifters and vampires, forbidding the human race. This story unfolds with Livia, a businesswoman who has get-up-and-go running in her blood, wanting to be able to prove herself. Then there is Gavin, an introverted wolf shifter with the feet of escape on his mind.

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Cover of Blood of Desiderium by Ali Stuebbe

Blood of Desiderium

by Ali Stuebbe

4 / 5

Blood of Desiderium by Ali Stuebbe—dark fantasy, court intrigue, and forbidden lust. A young fae princess, quite literally cloistered inside the palace of her father, has had the magic stripped away and replaced in her heart with freedom. Emma’s life turns into a mystery where real facts seem to raise a question mark over the security of her kingdom.

Interesting Beginning: The novel begins with a very exciting encounter. It even extends to the point of exposing what is underneath the suffocating atmosphere of Emma’s enclosure. Thus, it was this strong beginning that held the reader in suspense for the scene of exciting happenings.

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