Book Review: To Forge Her Fate (Hearts of Harewood #1) by Kasey Stockton

July 25, 2025June 23, 2024 GoodeyReadsLeave a comment

Rating: ★★★★
Audience: Historical Romance
Length: 358 pages
Author: Kasey Stockton
Publisher: Golden Owl Press
Release Date: March 11th, 2024
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Two worlds. Two hearts. Can they ever meld together as one?

Eliza Rose: accomplished in pianoforte, riding, drawing, three languages, and the art of flirtation using only a fan.

Jacob Ridley: skilled blacksmith, honest tradesman, appreciates a hot meal, and not susceptible to any lady’s charm.

Until Eliza needs help, and Jacob cannot turn her away. Now she has him wrapped around her dainty finger. But a union between them is forbidden on both sides of Society, and Jacob cannot afford to make enemies, or his business will suffer.

But can he afford to sacrifice his heart?

Book one in the Hearts of Harewood series, To Forge Her Fate is a sweet and clean Regency romance of unequal social status and forbidden love.

I LIKED THIS.

I love a good different stations/forbidden romance in regency books. I love seeing how the characters come together and work through the barriers before them to find the love and hopes of a future together. I love Kasey Stockton’s books and am excited to continue this series.

I loved both of the main characters Eliza and Jacob. There were POV’s from both of them which made it wonderfully easy to understand thoughts and desires and where each person was coming from. I loved that Jacob was a blacksmith too!! And I really loved seeing Eliza find her home and to reconnect with her sister. There were many good moments throughout that I appreciated the sentiment and thought behind.

Overall audience notes:

Regency Romance
Language: none
Romance: kisses
Violence: low

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ARC Book Review: A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1) by Nichole Van

July 24, 2025July 19, 2025 GoodeyReadsLeave a comment

Rating: ★★★★★
Audience: Historical Romance
Length: 380 pages
Author: Nichole Van
Publisher: Fiorenza Publishing
Release Date: July 29th, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Two ancient rivers, twin brothers, and a Scottish king who divided them. Welcome to life in the shadow of Cairnfell.

Lady Isla Kinsey knows that the animosity between her family, the Dukedom of Grayburn, and their distant kinsmen, the Earldom of Northcairn, is the stuff of legends—six generations of duels fought, ladies ruined, and gentlemen betrayed. Therefore, falling in love with a son of the enemy house would be, in a word, apocalyptic. So when Captain Tavish Balfour, second son of the Earl of Northcairn, returns home after Waterloo—distressingly handsome with eyes that see straight into her soul—Lady Isla is determined to resist his allure. She will not fall in love with the rogue . . . uh-hum, again.

Granted, the not-falling-in-love part would be a tad bit easier if Isla and Tavish weren’t already married.

Captain Tavish Balfour has cashed out of his military commission and is ready to start a new life far away from the Scottish Highlands of his birth. But before he sets sail into his future, there is the pesky matter of his marriage to Lady Isla Kinsey to resolve. As teenagers, in the sun-drenched warmth of a Highland summer, they tied the knot of their handfasting—an ill-advised decision he has regretted ever since. Thankfully, unlike their English neighbors, Scottish law allows for divorce in situations such as theirs.

Unfortunately for Tavish, Isla is every whit as captivating and lovely as his memories recall. As for Isla, she fears Tavish will reawaken the unconventional woman she was becoming all those years ago.

Yet even if they were to fall in love again, what could come of it? The history of acrimony between their families still casts a long shadow, and the forces that shredded their love in the past have not miraculously changed since. Can Isla and Tavish find a way to claim one another without betraying everyone and everything they love?

Thank you to the author for an eARC.

ALTERED MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY.

PERMANENTLY. I am not the same woman before reading this book. AND HOW DOES NICHOLE VAN KEEP DOING IT? A very incoherent review may be incoming of me just shouting TO READ THIS ONE ALREADY. IT’S A GOOD STARTING POINT FOR HER BOOKS. DO IT OKAY. CLOSED DOOR BOOKS CAN STILL BE SEXY AND HEATED.

The first chapter will take you out (IYKYK – DO NOT READ THE SUMMARY OKAY JUST TRUST ME). And then you’ll proceed to binge read this entire book because taking it slow? NOT AN OPTION. The most perfectly placed flashback chapters only added to the angst and tension between these two.

I need a new kindle too because it caught on FIIIIIIIIRE. HOT DANG THOSE KISSES. EVERY MOMENT SERVES THE ROMANCE. Seeing Tavish and Isla reconnect all over again??? Learning all of the new little things about who they’ve become??? STOP IT NOW. WHAT GEMS. I have melted. I will be thinking about this book for forever now.

I DON’T KNOW IF ANY OF THIS MADE SENESE JUST READ IT.

Overall audience notes:

Historical Romance
Language: none
Romance: closed door
Violence: mild
Content warnings: loss of a parent (recounted), toxic family dynamics, brief war themes (recounted), physical altercations

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Book Review: Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

July 23, 2025June 21, 2024 GoodeyReadsLeave a comment

Rating: ★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy/Paranormal
Length: 368 pages
Author: Kelly Andrew
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: April 2nd, 2024
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

A seductively twisted romance about loyalty, fate, the lengths we go to hide the darkest parts of ourselves . . . and the people who love those parts most of all.

Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she’s just inherited — to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement — Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead.

Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family’s property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can’t really live, either. Not while he’s bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths. There’s only one way for him to break free. He needs to end the Westlock line.

He needs to kill Wyatt.

With Wyatt’s parents gone, the spells protecting the property have begun to unravel, and dark, ancient forces gather in the nearby forest. The only way for Wyatt to repair the wards is to work with Peter — the one person who knows how to harness her volatile magic. But how can she trust a boy who’s sworn an oath to destroy her? When the past turns up to haunt them in the most unexpected way, they are forced to rely on one another to survive, or else tear each other apart.

IT STARTED OFF STRONG.

I admit to being very intrigued at the get-go. It was an interesting story and I liked the set-up. I liked the characters and wanted to see how the plot would unfold. But then it started to feel like the wheels were coming off and by the end I had the biggest head tilt while listening trying to piece together the fragments of the closing pages.

This is some kind of mash up of urban fantasy + paranormal. There’s some puzzling dynamics between the three main leads that were fun to ponder for a bit. Some of the reveals were good, and some not so much. I think the confusion of the magic and the cult group lost me. It is definitely spooky and atmospheric though.

And without spoiling the ending I am left feeling bereft with the execution. It was supposed to be neat, but felt messy and then just rushed off into the sunset. I don’t know, this wasn’t it.

Overall audience notes:

YA Paranormal Fantasy
Language: low-moderate
Romance: kisses
Violence: high
Content Warnings: animal death, blood, cults, allusions to sexual assault, elements of body horror

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ARC/ALC Book Review: Steel & Spellfire by Laura E. Weymouth

July 22, 2025July 19, 2025 GoodeyReadsLeave a comment

Rating: ★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy Romance
Length: 368 pages
Author: Laura E. Weymouth
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: July 22nd, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

A devastatingly gifted mage with clandestine romantic connections to a Royal Guard joins the court social season in an attempt to undo past wrongs, only to fall under suspicion when a creature with powers shockingly like her own begins slaughtering her fellow debutantes.

Pandora Small has two ruling objectives: first, to keep the prodigious extent of her power secret, in a world where mages are feared and governed by suffocating laws. Second, to find her wealthy and noble-born patron, a shadowy figure bound to Pandora by magic, who stole her childhood and grew her power until she became a weapon rather than a girl. To that end, she’s posing as an Ingenue, a privileged and petted young woman of strictly limited abilities, who is allowed access to the royal court’s social season in order to find a husband and patron to control her magic.

But on Pandora’s arrival at court, Kit Beacon, one of the most promising members of the Royal Guard, inadvertently learns the true scope of her power. Privately sympathetic towards mages and the difficulties they face, Beacon decides to keep Pandora’s secret. But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins slaughtering her fellow Ingenues, Beacon’s resolve to keep what he knows about her private is put to the test.

Tasked with protecting all the girls in the palace, not just one, Beacon will have to decide whether Pandora is a suspect or an ally, while to win his trust, Pandora will have to let him know more of her still—the worst of who she is and what she’s done. Because only unity between them during the social whirlwind to come will enable Pan to find her patron and Beacon the killer, and ensure they both see justice meted out.

Thank you Simon Audio for the audiobook and Simon Teen for the ARC (gifted).

WELL.

I think this was trying to do too much in a standalone. Maybe spread out across a duology would have been better? The ideas and framework were interesting and I don’t think there was anything inherently wrong with the writing style. I just kept waiting for everything to truly come together or for me to feel invested, and I never got to that stage.

I liked the characters. It is young adult appropriate which I know can be hard to find, but with kisses only and no excess language I think a younger audience would like this.

And I did enjoy the regency-esque world. I love fantasy books with that dynamic. There’s some good scenes and I don’t think it was a BAD book, just not for me.

Overall audience notes: