Overall: 🐢🐢🐢🐢
Storyline:
Writing Style:
Character Development:
Enjoyment:
“People like us are not victims. We’re someone’s nightmare.”
Rhapsodic by Laura Thalassa
The Story:
Callypso Lillis is a siren with a very big problem, one that stretches up her arm and far into her past.
For the last seven years Callie has been wearing a bracelet of black beads up her wrist, magical IOUs for favors she once received. Only death or repayment will fulfill her obligations.
Everyone knows that if you need a favor, you go to the Bargainer to make it happen. He’s a man who can get you anything you want … at a price. And everyone knows that sooner or later he always collects. But for Callie, he’s never asked for repayment. Not until now.
When Callie finds the Bargainer in her room, a grin on his lips and a twinkle in his eye, she knows things are about to change. At first it’s admitting a truth—a single bead’s worth—acknowledging the attraction between them. But the Bargainer is after more than just rekindling their connection. Something is happening in the Otherworld. Fae warriors are going missing one by one, and only the women are returned, each in a glass casket, a child clutched to her breast.
For the Bargainer to save his people, he’ll need the help of the siren he spurned long ago. If she can forgive him.
Key Elements:
Fiction, Romance, Paranormal, Deals, Debts, New Adult, Siren, Fae, Magic, Shifters, Enemy-to-lover, Night, Fantasy, Bargains, Kingdom
Others in Series:
Book 2: A Strange Hymn
Book 2.5: The Emperor of Evening Stars
Book 3: Dark Harmony
Why This Rating?
Oh goodness, I enjoyed this one! Not quite sure if the title is all that fitting for the story that we are given.** The story did have a bunch of stereotype moments for our paranormal world and some cheesy/corny moment also, but I didn’t care one bit. This was a great read! The story was interesting. Loved that the magical and monstrous world was mixed within our own world. I saw a good growth in the characters. The smuttier moments that made me snap my hanging mouth closed because I was reading in public. But the romance that is stirred up in the book is just a burn waiting to ignite. LOVED that pull our two main characters have in this book! *Calming Breaths* Okay, now that I got myself under control again after that start off for a review let me give some more insight as to why my rating.
The characters were fun to read all about. You’re introduced to Callypso Lillis, aka Callie, who is a stunning siren and her best friend Temper who is a wicked powerful sorceress. – See, I probably have your attention already. I know the book certainly had mine – I loved the fact the Callie is such a strong, independent woman. She is a force of nature and lets very few things break her spirit. And for those few moments when it does happen, she is still fighting tooth and nail. She is dark, sexy, and willing to kill. Callie has only gotten stronger with all the things she has endured through her past. Trust me, it hurts my heart the things she has endured – character or not. Warning for you all. Although nothing is written in detail nor even enacted in this story, Callie has survived sexual abuse and physical abuse as a part of her background. She makes it through all of it with so much strength and has the protection of the Bargainer behind every step. It makes me so happy to see that she has grown through the pain and will not allow herself to be a victim ever again. I freaking love that growth!
But boy does she love to antagonize the Bargainer, Desmond Flynn. Des *groan* good gracious I have a love for the dark and brooding types in my books. I don’t want to spoil too much of his juicy details, but snap, he is a character that I can’t believe I haven’t heard about before reading this book. I love that he is unabashedly true to his nature in front of Callie in all of his vicious, dark, mysterious sexiness that is Desmond Flynn. And the fact that they both equally see each other for who they are and what they have each lived through makes me so ridiculously happy! This is finally a book where the main character just says the shit we as readers are yelling for her to say and shit happens! Hell Yes!
That ending! I was feeling so much in the last stretch of the book: Happy, Elated, Terrified, Heartache, Grief, Happy, Holy Shit. It was like a Sarah Maas emotional train decided to swing through Thalassa’s book there. Reading the second book pronto!
So, you’ve probably made it through all of that and went “but why only 4 turtles if you enjoyed it so much?” Sadly, the thing that got it knocked down was a writing technique that I just have a hard time sticking around with which is jumping back and forth through time. I say it every time, I know that it is important and one of the best was to convey background moments for characters. I get it and I think if the author does it well than great job! But that doesn’t make it any less of an ugh moment for me. I really dislike having to constantly pause present moments, bounce back in time live through somethings to learn why a character is/does/thinks stuff, then fly forward to present time to unpause and move forward with the story. I think Thalassa does the layout really well and for the most part I wasn’t groaning too much when that inevitable chapter title said “7 years ago…” But once I realized it was going to be a normal occurrence for this book it lost the full 5 turtle potential.
** For those of us who are absolute nerds and wanna know what Rhapsodic actually means here’s your definition! It is the adjective form of Rhapsody:
Rhapsody – extravagantly enthusiastic; ecstatic. 1.) an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling. “rhapsodies of praise” 2.) (in ancient Greece) an epic poem, or part of it, of a suitable length for recitation at one time.
Time to get lost in the next story!
