I admit this week’s update is a mini-fest celebrating Lyonne Riley. She’s becoming a new favorite of mine. I hope she’s just the start of more well-written novellas/novelettes from the Monster Romance community in the future.
Reviews From This Past Week
Healing the Orc’s Heart by Lyonne Riley
Release Date: June 23, 2023
Content Notes
Grumpy/Sunshine
Wartime Destruction
Mate bond
Touch her and die
Healer FMC
Slavery
Cat sidekick
Widow FMC
She saves his life
Then he fights for hers
Lyonne Riley is hitting a stride in storytelling with the Trollkin series and Healing the Orc’s Heart shows she’s just getting started. She writes to the point, of course. I also appreciate how she combines high stakes with a wholesome sweetness to her romance.
Riley gives us a story that spends its first part tucked in a small retreat away from the destruction of war going on around the characters. So there’s a moment we get to be cozy and settle into the couple, buying into them. Then get get pulled out of it so our characters can fight and win for that coziness again. It gets hairy in there. I cried a bit because I was worried where this was going. This is in the Romance genre for a reason though so no worries about that HEA.
This book reminded me that Riley has story-crafting chops. The plot and character development are simply done well while not devoting hundreds of pages. For this and many other reasons, Riley is becoming a favorite for me.
Capturing the Orc’s Heart by Lyonne Riley
Release Date: September 15, 2023
Content Notes
Grumpy/Grumpier
Career Oriented FMC
He falls first
FMC POC
Workplace Romance
Crushes on his boss
Lone city in the desert
She takes charge
Even in the feminist-leaning realms of indie romance, women with dominant personalities are not as prevalent as I personally think they should be. So if you’re anything like me, Capturing the Orc’s Heart by Lyonne Riley would be worth a read. Not only does Riley take a chance on a story featuring an FMC with a dominant personality, but she also sells a romance that reads as tender and authentic.
As with other books in this series, this is the sort of book that I think could be read on its own. Would you benefit from reading the previous books? Definitely. You aren’t boxing yourself in one way or another though.
This story focuses on a city not previously explored in the other series. It is connected to the others, but Riley artfully makes those details a backdrop for the main action going on.
That main action had a sort of police procedural or spy movie feel without truly diving in head-first. This is fantasy after all. That being said, FMC made me think of a young Chief from the Carmen Sandiego game and TV series. Someone could tell me this was an AU fanfic of young Chief and I’d be inclined to believe it. The Millennial kid in me loves that idea.
ARC provided and voluntarily reviewed.
To Be Read
I SWEAR I will finish up The Perished Woods series by Tracy Lauren. Later, Kate Prior is back with more monster drama in corporate land!
Housekeeping
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Love her! I’ve read everything she’s put out. If you find a similar author, let me know and I’ll read all theirs as well!!!