I loved this! Such good angst! And action and mythology and hot sext! I only wish it had been a full-length novel (4.5 stars) ( )

I loved this! Such good angst! And action and mythology and hot sext! I only wish it had been a full-length novel (4.5 stars) ( )

I have been a big fan of Brook’s Irons Seas series for years and ran into this fun little paranormal romance while I was browsing on Amazon. This a quick and fun paranormal romance novel that deals with a type of paranormal creature I haven’t really read much about, ice giants.

Olivia Martin is a civil engineer who is on her way home for Christmas but she has a little errand to do first. Her boss at work wants her to stop by his son’s (Erik Gulbrandr’s) house and have some papers signed and drop them in the mail. Olivia agrees because it’s on her way home despite the fact that Erik and her have some history. Well actually it was more of a brief romance that Erik abruptly cut off. As you might imagine there are complications; Erik seems to be suffering from some strange ailment and there are these strange Hounds hunting in the area.

This is definitely heavy on the romance (in fact it borders on being a bit trashy) but there is some good action and some neat mythology backstory. The two characters, Olivia and Erik, definitely have some smoking hot chemistry going on.

Olivia has a mother who is a witch (she can see the future sometimes) so she is no stranger to things magical. However when she finds out Erik is cursed (with a curse that basically turns him into an ice giant)...well...that’s a new one for her.

There is some well done back story here that pulls from Norse mythology. Erik’s family is cursed but is also stuck in an eternal battle with some trickster Hounds. To protect the world from himself Erik locks himself in a giant fortress/castle in the middle of nowhere. It had a little bit of a Beauty and the Beast vibe to it.

There were some things I really liked about this book. I enjoyed that Olivia is an engineer (I am an engineer as well) and it was fun to read about a strong female lead working in a primarily technical male dominated field. It’s just something you don’t see much in paranormal books. I also liked that Erik and Olivia have a history and shared interests (I hate insta-love). I also enjoyed the whole mythos behind the story.

There were also some things I didn’t like. The whole premise is that Erik is going to go insane and sexually assault Olivia because of the curse, this came off as a bit..well...trashy. Then there is a lot of time spent discussing the poor communication between the two; this was weird considering they generally seemed pretty open with each other.

Overall a decent paranormal romance with some creative elements. The chemistry between the two characters is well done and I enjoyed the mythology driven back story. I thought the whole drive behind Eric’s curse was predictable and trashy, but I guess this is meant to be primarily a romance. I would tentatively recommend; it wasn’t a bad read but it wasn’t great either. It was a fun little romantic diversion. ( )