Book picks similar to
Charmed by Lindy Zart


young-adult
angels
paranormal
first-reads

Illuminate


Aimee Agresti - 2012
    But everything changes when she is awarded a prestigious internship at a posh Chicago hotel under the watchful eyes of a group of gorgeous strangers: the powerful and alluring hotel owner Aurelia Brown; her second-in-command, the dashing Lucian Grove; and their stunning but aloof staff of glamazons called The Outfit. As Haven begins falling for Lucian, she discovers that these beautiful people are not quite what they seem. With the help of a mysterious book, she uncovers the evil agenda of Aurelia and company: they’re in the business of buying souls. Will they succeed in wooing Haven to join them in their recruitment efforts, or will she be able to thwart this devilish set’s plans to take the souls of her classmates on prom night at the hotel?

Becoming


Raine Thomas - 2011
    Okay, not a blown-to-smithereens explosion, but whatever it is always hurts like hell and leaves her life a shambles. She’s already worked her way through five foster placements, and she’s doing whatever she can to avoid getting blasted into a sixth.As her eighteenth birthday approaches and she feels the strange and powerful energy building, disaster looms. When the inevitable explosion occurs, her life gets its biggest shakeup yet. She’ll not only learn how her fellow foster and best friend, Gabriel, really feels about her, but she’ll discover that she isn’t really without family.To top it all off, she’ll finally find out why she’s having the power surges: she isn’t entirely human.Amber must Become, transitioning to another plane of existence and risking the loss of the most important relationship she’s ever had. Her choice will impact the future of an entire race of beings, and will pit her against an enemy that will prey upon her doubt to try and take her very life.Kind of makes the explosions now seem like a cakewalk.

Soul Kissed


Courtney Cole - 2012
    With all the beauty and charm of a Siren, but cursed as a blood-sucking succubus, Empusa longs for love and a normal life. Neither of these can ever be hers, because the only thing she brings to anyone she loves is death. Em lingers in the mortal world, hiding from her father and existing in a lonely life. Until she meets Brennan. With golden hair and a radiant smile, he captures her heart and awakens it from slumber. But Brennan is more than he seems. And in a relationship where life itself hangs in the balance, is love ever really enough?

Cobweb Bride


Vera Nazarian - 2013
    What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill....Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war... A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father ... Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court.... Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living...Look closer — through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars...And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death's own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North...And everyone is trying to stop her.

Magic Born


Caethes Faron - 2016
    Kat's birth mother was a powerful mage who has just been murdered...and now the killer is after Kat. The package contains her mother's talisman: an amber necklace that latches onto Kat's neck and attacks anyone who tries to remove it. Before she knows it, ice is shooting from her hands and she's on the run from an assassin.Kat must navigate a world of magic and intrigue, fight the forces who want her dead, and protect her friends from becoming collateral damage--all while coming to terms with her new identity. She's heir to a powerful legacy, but only if she lives long enough to claim it.

Born


Tara Brown - 2012
    There are no regular people anymore."Ten years ago when the world ended she ran for her life.Five weeks ago the world she'd hidden from came knocking on the door of her secluded cabin.Ten days ago she found salvation hiding amongst the dead.Yesterday she went back for the living.Today she wonders if she will live to see tomorrow.What do you do when the world you were born to is gone?Where do you hide when even your own body isn't safe?Emma ran when her daddy told her to. She hid like he said she should. He was the first person she turned her back on. The first one she let die.Ten years has gone by and she still lives by the simple rules he taught her when she was nine years old."Don't help anyone. Don't go where other people are unless you have to. Trust no one. Always pull the trigger."Until one night she hears the worst sound in the world, a knock. A simple, timid knock, on the door to her cabin.Only the voice of the brave little girl, ready to die for her brother, persuades Emma to open the door.As her fingers turn the lock, she has a terrible feeling she will regret her decision.But even as regret fills her world, so do love and companionship. Things she never imagined she would ever have again.Everything comes at a cost; you decide what you'll pay.

Wild-born


Adrian Howell - 2013
    Adrian must discover what really happened to his missing sister. But to do this, he will first have to find his place among fugitives like himself, and protect the life of a deeply scarred child who can speak only through her mind... a child who will change Adrian's life forever.

Love is Darkness


Caroline Hanson - 2011
     In London for graduate school, Val knows she's finally free. Her father and ex-almost-boyfriend are back in California and she's out of the Vampire hunting biz for good. Or is she? She draws the attention of Lucas, a 1600 year old Vampire, and King to his kind. He’s also wicked hot. As golden as Lucifer, and just as tempting, he makes Valerie an offer she can't refuse — help him find out if the Others (Empaths, Fey and Werewolves) still exist or he'll stop protecting those she loves. Lucas tells her that Empaths were a Vampire’s biggest weakness before going extinct hundreds of years ago. While the Fey or a Werewolf might kill a Vampire, an Empath could enslave them, seducing or harming with emotions at will. The one detail he leaves out? Valerie is an Empath. And after 1600 years of an emotionless existence, Lucas wants Valerie like a recovering alcoholic wants a wine cooler. Can she keep those she loves alive, stop Lucas from munching on her, survive a fanged revolution and still find a way to have that boring, normal life she’s always wanted? Probably not, but boy is she gonna try! This is a full length novel and contains adult content.

Messenger


Laury Falter - 2014
    ​Fans of the Guardian Saga are also treated in this novel to the origins of the Book of Dossiers, how the Fallen Ones' only vulnerability is discovered, and how the first battle begins.

Better Off Dead


H.P. Mallory - 2013
    Killed in a car accident before it’s her time to go, Lily learns that the hereafter isn’t exactly what she hoped it might be. First, there’s AfterLife Enterprises, the company responsible for sorting out the recently dead and sending them on their way to the Kingdom, (aka happily ever after,) or to the Underground City, (not so happily ever after.) Learning that Lily’s death was indirectly their fault (her guardian angel, Bill, was MIA during her accident and was one of their employees,) Afterlife Enterprises offers Lily the chance to live again. But, as with most things involving the afterlife, beware the fine print. Most notably, Lily will have to become a soul retriever, venturing into the bowels of the Underground City to retrieve souls that were mistakenly sent there by Afterlife Enterprises during a Y2K computer glitch. Second, there’s angel Bill. As if risking her second life in the Underground City wasn’t enough, Lily’s guide to the Underground is none other than her incompetent, alcoholic, womanizing guardian angel, Bill, the antithesis of anything wholesome. With only Dante’s Inferno and Bill to help her in her quest, Lily’s future isn’t looking bright.Finally, there’s the legendary bladesmith, Tallis Black. As Scottish as his kilts and heavy brogue, Tallis Black is a centuries-old Celt who, for reasons only known to him, offers to train Lily and act as her escort into the depths of the Underground City. Dark, brooding and definitely dangerous, Lily knows she shouldn’t trust Tallis, but she also can’t deny her attraction to him. Between soul retrieving in hell, dealing with Bill and trying to figure out what’s in it for Tallis, Lily wonders if maybe she would’ve just been better off dead.

Awakened


Brenda K. Davies - 2012
    Traumatized by her past, and struggling to move on from it, Sera has spent the past three years of college hiding herself from the world and content to stay that way. A chance encounter with Liam shatters her sheltered world, leaving her stunned and shaken by the strange feelings and emotions he arises in her, feelings she never thought she would experience and that frighten her in their intensity. Harboring a dark and deadly secret of his own, Liam knows that he should stay away from Sera; that he will only bring her more hurt, but he is irresistibly drawn to her and unable to deny himself the pleasure that only she can bring to him. But when their pasts collide with their present, and Liam’s true nature is revealed, will their love for each other be enough, or will they be torn apart forever? Mature readers 18+ Cover art by www.EbookLaunch.com

The Emerald Talisman


Brenda Pandos - 2010
    Life has been difficult since her mother's mysterious disappearance ten years earlier - an event she witnessed, but can't remember. Julia's situation becomes more complicated after a near death experience from a blood thirsty stalker. As high school students go missing it is clear there is a connection to her own experience--past and present. Someone has to stop the madness and a chance encounter with a creepy psychic foretells that only Julia is the key to stopping the madness, but it may require the life of the one she loves.

Undraland


Mary E. Twomey - 2015
    With her heart set on college life, Lucy’s dreams of medical school are dashed when a rabid bear attacks her in the middle of suburbia. When Jens, a handsome yet irritable stranger, saves her life, Lucy’s gratitude is cut short when he abducts her, taking her to a land filled with people and creatures she remembers from bedtime stories she assumed were just Scandinavian folklore. Jens takes Lucy to a world she never expected, and cannot escape. Undraland is teeming with oversized garden gnomes, warrior elves, Nøkken, Fossegrimens, and worst of all, Sirens. Lucy goes further and further down the rabbit hole until she signs up to join a band of thieves bent on taking down Pesta, the last Siren.

Cruxim


Karin Cox - 2012
    Destined to seek redemption as a vampire hunter, he quenches his insatiable hunger on vampire blood. But when the object of his passion, the novice nun Joslyn, is turned into a vampire and enters a vampire coven, Amedeo's worlds collide. Shattered by the loss of his beloved, he vows to rid the world of vampires once and for all, even if it means destroying Josyln in the process.A Paranormal Game of Cat and MouseJoining Amedeo on his quest to rid the world of the undead is Sabine. Half-woman, half-lioness, she is a Sphinx, a Guardian who has protected humans from vampires since the dawn of time. Yet Sabine comes to this fight pursued by her own enemies. An evil scientist, Dr. Claus Gandler, knows the secret of Sabine's mythological past, vowing to torment her for eternity or destroy her forever.Immortal Ever AfterCaptured by the evil doctor, Amedeo and Sabine are paraded as sideshow freaks in the Circus of Curiosities. Only vampire Joslyn has the power to intercede. Will she prove Amedeo's redemption, or his destruction?.

The Homecoming Masquerade


Spencer Baum - 2012
    Show up to Homecoming in a black dress and you’ve entered yourself in a contest where the winner lives forever, and the loser becomes the winner’s first meal.Only the wealthiest, most connected students can hope to win, so when new girl Nicky Bloom wears a black dress to Homecoming, everyone assumes she has a death wish. They don’t know that Nicky has her own agenda. As the dance continues into the night, they will find out that Nicky Bloom is far more than she seems.