Book picks similar to
To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker
fantasy
romance
retellings
fantasy-romance
The Lord of Stariel
A.J. Lancaster - 2018
Long live the Lord of Stariel. Whoever that is. Everyone knows who the magical estate will choose for its next ruler. Or do they? Will it be the lord’s eldest son, who he despised? His favourite nephew, with the strongest magical land-sense? His scandalous daughter, who ran away from home years ago to study illusion? Hetta knows it won’t be her, and she’s glad of it. Returning home for her father’s funeral, all Hetta has to do is survive the family drama and avoid entanglements with irritatingly attractive local men until the Choosing. Then she can leave. But whoever Stariel chooses will have bigger problems than eccentric relatives to deal with. Winged, beautifully deadly problems. For the first time in centuries, the fae are returning to the Mortal Realm, and only the Lord of Stariel can keep the estate safe. In theory. The Lord of Stariel is the first book in the Stariel quartet.
The Surface Breaks
Louise O'Neill - 2018
On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans. A book with the darkest of undercurrents, full of rage and rallying cries: storytelling at its most spellbinding.
Pawn
Karen Lynch - 2020
Jesse’s only concern is how to pay for college, but that changes the night her parents disappear.Equipped with her parents’ weapons and her own smarts, Jesse enters the dangerous world of bounty hunting in search of her mother and father. In her quest, she encounters all manner of Fae, but the scariest is Lukas, the mysterious, imposing faerie who offers to help her find her parents.But there are powerful forces at work, and Jesse is about to become a player in a dangerous game that could decide the fate of everyone she loves. In this world of magic and deception, it’s hard to tell her allies from her enemies in the race to find her parents before their time runs out.
The Will and the Wilds
Charlie N. Holmberg - 2020
When one tries to kill her to obtain an enchanted stone, Enna takes a huge risk: fighting back with a mysting of her own.Maekallus’s help isn’t free. His price? A kiss. One with the power to steal her soul. But their deal leaves Maekallus bound to the mortal realm, which begins eating him alive. Only Enna’s kiss, given willingly, can save him from immediate destruction. It’s a temporary salvation for Maekallus and a lingering doom for Enna. Part of her soul now burns bright inside Maekallus, making him feel for the first time.Enna shares Maekallus’s suffering, but her small sacrifice won’t last long. If she and Maekallus can’t break the spell binding him to the mortal realm, Maekallus will be consumed completely—and Enna’s soul with him.
Half a Soul
Olivia Atwater - 2020
Dora’s only goal for the London Season this year is to stay quiet and avoid upsetting her cousin’s chances at a husband… but when the Lord Sorcier of England learns of her condition, she finds herself drawn ever more deeply into the tumultuous concerns of magicians and faeries.Lord Elias Wilder is handsome, strange, and utterly uncouth—but gossip says that he regularly performs three impossible things before breakfast, and he is willing to help Dora restore her missing half. If Dora’s reputation can survive both her ongoing curse and her sudden connection with the least-liked man in all of high society, then she may yet reclaim her normal place in the world… but the longer Dora spends with Elias Wilder, the more she begins to suspect that one may indeed fall in love, even with only half a soul.
Thorn Jack
Katherine Harbour - 2014
These words from Lily Rose Sullivan the night of her death haunts her seventeen-year-old sister, Finn, who has moved with her widowed father to his hometown of Fair Hollow, New York. After befriending a boy named Christie Hart and his best friend, Sylvie Whitethorn, Finn is invited to a lakeside party where she encounters the alluring Jack Fata, a member of the town's mysterious Fata family. Despite Jack's air of danger and his clever words, Finn learns they have things in common.One day, while unpacking, Finn finds her sister's journal, scrawled with descriptions of creatures that bear a sinister resemblance to Jack's family. Finn dismisses these stories as fiction, but Jack's family has a secret—the Fatas are the children of nothing and night, nomadic beings who have been preying on humanity for centuries—and Jack fears that his friendship with Finn has drawn the attention of the most dangerous members of his family—Reiko Fata and vicious Caliban, otherwise known as the white snake and the crooked dog.Plagued with nightmares about her sister, Finn attempts to discover what happened to Lily Rose and begins to suspect that the Fatas are somehow tied to Lily Rose's untimely death. Drawn to Jack, determined to solve the mystery of her sister's suicide, Finn must navigate a dangerous world where nothing is as it seems.
Captive of Wolves
Eva Chase - 2020
and my ruin.For years, the monsters who killed my family have held me in a cage. Brutalized and half-starved. Only kept alive so they can steal my blood.Until one evening when four eerily gorgeous men break me out of my prison.They give me a soft bed and delicious food. They say they'll protect me—but their generosity may come at a price.My rescuers are monsters like my captors: fae who shift into wolves. A curse gripping the faerie realm turns them wild under the full moon. Only my blood can cure their rage.These fearsome men need me, and not just to lift the curse. A tragedy left them outcasts, and offering me to their rulers could win them back the home and the power they lost.No matter how kindly they treat me, no matter how their smoldering eyes and strong hands stir unfamiliar desires in both my body and my heart, their castle is just another prison. As long as I'm a prize more than a person, my life will never be my own.I've survived this long without giving up. I won't roll over now. But how can one damaged human girl hold her own against the savage fae?*Captive of Wolves is the first in a new paranormal romance saga featuring possessive wolf shifters, fraught fae politics, and a wounded heroine coming into her own. Grab it now and get swept away in the fantasy!*
Flock
Kate Stewart - 2020
I gave into temptation and fed the beating beast, which grew thirstier with every slash, every strike, every blow.Triple Falls wasn’t at all what it seemed, nor were the men that swept me under their wing. But in order to keep them, I had to be in on their secrets.Secrets that cost us everything to keep.That’s the novelty of fiction versus reality. You can’t re-live your own love story, because by the time you’ve realized you’re living it, it’s over. At least that was the case for me and the men I trusted my foolish heart to.Looking back, I’m convinced I willed my story into existence due to my illness.And all were punished.
Among the Beasts & Briars
Ashley Poston - 2020
It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king made a bargain with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden. Cerys knows this all too well: when she was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse—the magic—in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything. The most danger she faces now, as a gardener’s daughter, is the annoying fox who stalks the royal gardens and won’t leave her alone.As a new queen is crowned, however, things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run, her only companions the small fox from the garden, a strange and powerful bear, and the magic in her veins. It’s up to her to find the legendary Lady of the Wilds and beg for a way to save her home. But the road is darker and more dangerous than she knows, and as secrets from the past are uncovered amid the teeth and roots of the forest, it’s going to take everything she has just to survive.
A Kingdom of Exiles
S.B. Nova - 2017
Serena Smith is unusual. Growing up in a backwoods village, her life is lonely and dull. Then, on her eighteenth birthday, she's gifted a magical heirloom only to be snatched by fae and condemned to a lifetime in chains.Dragged to Aldar, a fae kingdom ruled by a tyrant witch, Serena discovers a forbidden love, and meets fellow outcasts, each with their own dark secrets. As the lives of warriors, rebels, and witches clash, they find a shared destiny. For only together, and with Serena's unique gifts, can they survive long enough to build the flames of a revolution. Only together can they go to war ...
Silk & Steel
Ariana Nash - 2019
Humans have vanished under the rubble of their world and if the queen has her way, elves will be next.
Eroan, one of the last elven assassins, lives for one purpose: kill the queen.
He would have succeeded if not for her last line of defense: Prince Lysander. Now, captured and forced into the queen’s harem, Eroan sees another opportunity. Why kill just the queen when he can kill them all? It would be simple, if not for the troubled and alluring prince. A warrior, a killer, and something else…, something Eroan finds himself inexplicably drawn to.
Trapped in a life he despises, Lysander knows his time is running out.
If the queen doesn’t kill him for his failures, her enemies will. There’s nothing left to live for, until an elf assassin almost kills him. A stubborn, prideful, fool of an elf who doesn’t know when to quit. An elf who sparks a violent, forbidden desire in Lysander. If Lysander can’t save himself, maybe he can save the elf and maybe, just maybe… one stubborn elf will be enough to bring down the queen before she kills them all. Duty demands they fight for their people. Love has other plans. Warning & Reader Advisory:This series is a DARK FANTASY intended for mature readers. Silk & Steel features a gay dragon shifter, a bisexual elf, and adult themes. There is triggering content that some readers may find distressing, including implied incest, abuse, violence, dubious consent, and on-page sex. None of these instances are gratuitous. There is heterosexual sex and gay sex. The intense and star-crossed romantic relationship between the two male leads develops over three books.
His Darkest Craving
Tiffany Roberts - 2018
But from the moment she arrives, she’s not alone. She glimpses dark shapes from the corner of her eye, feels phantom touches, and her dreams are filled with seductive shadows. What she first mistakes for delusions of her traumatized mind soon prove to be so much more… An ancient, mysterious, dangerous entity lurks in the woods — and it wants Sophie. ---------- **Trigger Warning: This book contains sexual explicit scenes and violence, including a history of domestic abuse.**
Spindle Fire
Lexa Hillyer - 2017
A princess sleeps. This is no fairy tale.It all started with the burning of the spindles.No.It all started with a curse…Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood—and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape…or the reason for her to stay.
Deathless
Catherynne M. Valente - 2011
But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.
A Cursed Kiss
Jenny Hickman - 2021
it’s a nightmare.After Keelynn witnesses her sister's murder at the hands of the legendary Gancanagh, an immortal creature who seduces women and kills them with a cursed kiss, she realizes there’s nothing she wouldn't do to get her back. With the help of a vengeful witch, she’s given everything she needs to resurrect the person she loves most.But first, she must slay the Gancanagh.Tadhg, a devilishly handsome half-fae who has no patience for high society—or propriety—would rather spend his time in the company of loose women and dark creatures than help a human kill one of his own.That is until Keelynn makes him an offer he can’t refuse.Together, they embark on a cross-country curse-breaking mission that promises life but ends in death.Perfect for fans of Holly Black's Folk of the Air series and The Falconer, A Cursed Kiss is the first book in a series of interconnected novels and novellas set on the mythical island of Airren. (This book rates a 6 on the Romantic Content Rating System (RCRS))