Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Bound Vol. 1
SERIES: Little Goddess #3
AUTHOR: Amy Lane
PUBLISHER: DSP Publications
LENGTH: 325 pages
BLURB:
Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.
Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.
Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.
REVIEW:
First off I need to make it clear that this is not a gay romance novel. Amy Lane does write m/m as we know, but this series has all sorts of combinations. This particular book has very little gay sex in it. It’s implied, there are several fade to black moments, and some very intense moments between male lovers, but it is not explicit. The most explicit scenes do involve girly bits. So… if that’s not your thing, this is probably not the series for you! But if you can handle the girl, holy crap are these books good.
This is book three in the Little Goddess series, written many years ago and self published, now picked up by DSP Publications, re-edited and re-released. I have said before that I didn’t notice the editing issues the first time I read them, so I can’t tell you if they are technically better. The other thing that has been done is the massive books have been split in to two volumes. I see why this was done, but it does make the first volume of the split books a little incomplete. This is really part one of a story, continued and completed in the next volume.
By now, these characters are pretty established, Cory is bound with Green, Bracken, and Nicky. This book gives us a better look at how this works. Nicky the avian shifter, accidentally bonded with Cory, although he loves her, she doesn’t return love in the same way. She feels friendship love, he feels couple love. They need to have sex once a month to keep Nicky alive, he’s been pining for her a bit, spending their date night with her, but going to Green for comfort sex when he needs it. Finally he has a breakthrough in this book and turns in to sexy bird! Green spends a big bunch of this book out of town, exactly when he is needed at home. But he does rescue the saddest Sidhe ever! This leaves Cory and Bracken holding down the fort and attempting to attend college, with mixed results. There is a new character introduced, Hallow, the Sidhe counselor that the young folk visit at college, also with mixed results! Grace, the vampire mother figure to everyone at Green’s Hill has issues as well, her daughter comes calling as is mighty pissed to find her mother has been “living” happily, with a band of weirdos. So lots of little family things happen in this book…
The big plot is the appearance of a new bad thing, each of the paranormal groups being affected differently, most dramatically poor Cory who vomits every time they encounter this something! A few new characters are introduced due to this bad things appearance, and they bring enough information with them for the folks on Green’s Hill to begin to put the pieces together. This book being volume 1, doesn’t give us a resolution to the bad thing. That will happen in volume 2!
As expected the writing is flawless, I don’t even know what to say about Amy anymore. She’s just awesome. I don’t have the words to describe my love of her books….
So if you have read the other books in this series you obviously need to read this one! If you haven’t, you have to start at the beginning. They are paranormal/urban fantasy at it’s best. With girls, and boys, vampires, Sidhe, werecreatures, faeries, sprites, on and one. They have creative plots with big issues, but also small lovely little moments. I loved them five years ago when I read them the first time, and I love them this time too. I can’t wait until we get the new one!
Here are my reviews of the previous books:
RATING:
BUY LINKS:
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