However, despite being at times turned on by what she’s witnessed, Finley wants Nyfain’s body rather than those that she sees writhing in the rooms. We learn the world, the people, the plot (which yes, seems to differ a little from what you might expect). Because if Queen Breene weren’t one of the craziest authors I know, we wouldn’t have A Ruin of Roses, and we wouldn’t have had Demon Days, Vampire Nights ( DDVN), either, or Bria, or Daisy, or or or. Now, as the story developed there was a ton of secrecy from other characters and conveniently placed restrictions on what they could say, explain, or share.

Those eyes glowed in the semidarkness, seemingly soaking up the moonlight showering its dull, murky black scales. Lyfain, our beast and a dragon shifter, is growly, jealous, possessive and dominant with baggage for days.

Yes, the book does end in a cliffhanger, but don’t go berating the author for that, either, because it is in the warning, too!

She says what she thinks is her final goodbyes to her family–after all, the beast has never let anyone leave the premises of the forest alive. He’d essentially taken over for Mom, cooking and sewing and woodworking and doing all kinds of other handy stuff—he was the master of all trades.I love that you dig in and push back when I try to dominate you, challenging me to be better, stronger. We all have our own gardens, but during the winter months, as you must know, the everlass hibernates. Just because I hadn’t seen the beast in any visits since the first, that did not mean he’d given up hunting trespassers. Apparently in his eyes, and in the eyes of most of the people in the village, a proper wife didn’t hunt better than her husband, or at all. In short, don’t think “rainbows and unicorns”, for there are none to be found in Breene’s retelling!

F. Breene got lost admits writing this, because after the first third of the book, it goes off the rails.The sound of a wailing baby tore through the night air, desperately close, twenty yards or so to my left. Because of it, and because I’d given the recipe to the village and helped them learn to make it, we’d only lost one person so far this year. The alternative to walking was to stand my ground with a half-starved body from years of barely getting by and a medium-sized, somewhat dull dagger. Finley grabs the everlass leaves that she wants and makes her way back, when the hooting intensifies and she picks up on the fact that the beast is nearby.