Magic-using winter sports
enthusiasts find love on the slopes.
Luc Marling is cursed to
transform into a stag from sunset to sunrise, making him vulnerable to
black-hearted collectors. Thanks to a family heirloom, Luc can contain the
change—but the magic is starting to fade. Luc intends to live fast while he can
and doesn't care who he hurts along the way… until he meets Rob.
Rob Lentowicz accidentally
broke the curse on a famous singer and became a magical reality-TV star. Tired
of having to lie to protect his bank balance, and unwilling to destroy his
family reputation with the truth, Rob runs away to France—and straight into
Luc.
They navigate slopes,
secrets, and each other. But are the feelings between them real—or just magic?
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Cat gives this one 3 Meows with a 4 Purr heat
index...
I am going to be honest up
front; I just didn’t get this one. The story isn’t bad, I just didn’t understand
most of it. I was left with so many questions at the end. It did end in a happy
for now though.
There is magic involved and
curses, curse breakers hunter and all of this good magical stuff. To me the
world building was left behind in lew of lots of sex. The story did have a lot of potential.
If you like curses, winter
solstice and lots of sex you may like this one!
Excerpt…
HE’D BITTEN through his
lip again. Blood made a Rorschach pattern on Luc’s pillow, and he flipped it
over, only to find the other side similarly daubed. His sheets smelled of blood
and the alcohol he’d sweated out overnight. Luc grimaced and shoved out of bed,
then briskly stripped the pillowcases and sheets. Laundry day was overdue
anyway.
“And vat do you zhink this
image says, Mr. Marling?” he asked in a terrible Swiss accent as he crammed his
sheets into the laundry basket. “Well, I suppose it says something about
curses,” he replied in his normal voice. He glared at the overfull basket.
“Like how, if I didn’t have one, I’d be able to spell all this clean. Hells,
without it I wouldn’t make such a mess in the first place.”
His imaginary therapist
didn’t respond. Typical. No one in Luc’s family discussed the curse, even the
members who were entirely make-believe.
After switching out last
night’s clothes for his most comfortable sweats, Luc checked the time on his
phone. Still early; he could shower and start the laundry in the main house
before his parents returned from their Saturday-morning shopping. They worried
for him, he knew. They’d worried about him for a long time.
Twenty-two years old and
still hiding his laundry from his mother. Luc rubbed his face. He needed to get
a better job, get a place, sort out his life. Maybe try writing again. He’d
moved into his parents’ garage conversion as a stopgap between university and
his glittering future, but a year later, he was well on the way to regressing
into the little cursed kid in need of shelter from the big bad magic-using
craft world.
He hated being that kid
the first time around. He had no desire to revert any further.
Yet magic seemed to be
everywhere Luc looked lately, despite users being in the minority. It was like
a song he couldn’t get out of his head, playing in every shop and bar: there
was the corner supermarket with ready-to-use charms at the checkout, the beauty
salon offering ever-growing extensions, a banner outside the local primary
school advertising a special pathway for craft-gifted kids. Luc didn’t know if
everyone noticed those things or if his curse attuned him to their presence. He
could’ve asked his family, but then they’d have to speak about the curse.
He checked the leather
cuffs around his wrist. He didn’t look. Looking made the cuffs—and the curse
they prevented from fully taking hold—too real. He traced the stitched symbols
with his fingertips and ran his thumb beneath the band, the skin sensitive, as
it had been hidden since Luc was a toddler. Present and correct. The symbols on
the cuffs were beginning to fray, and the colors fade, but that could be due to
a lifetime of accumulated sun exposure or the ingredients in his soap. Their
fading didn’t necessarily imply anything about the magic of the cuffs. Luc blew
out a breath. He’d change his handwash. Everything would be fine.
“Zis is not getting your
laundry done, arsehole.”
He grabbed a change of
clothes and his laundry and headed out.
LUC SANG along with his
phone as he showered, rinsing away his latest poor decisions. He emerged from
the bathroom in a billow of citrus-scented steam, checked the stitching on his
cuffs and yanked on his clothes, and faltered at voices from downstairs.
Holding his breath, he eased the bathroom door closed. The low murmuring
stopped, and Maman called upstairs.
“Luc? Darling? Is that
you?”
“Either him or the
cleanest burglar in Birmingham.” His sister, Eloise. She’d been tending bar in
Spain for the summer and would head to the family chalets in France for winter.
She’d worked there for years, finding something about the village charming
despite Les Menuires being so tiny they only had the one craft bar, last Luc
heard.
Although maybe a place
with only one craft bar would be better than Birmingham, which had an entire
city quarter devoted to magic users. Luc rolled his eyes. Like he needed to
stay out of trouble that badly. He could control himself. He locked eyes with
his reflection in the hall mirror, who seemed skeptical about the idea.
“What’re you doing up
there, Luc?” Eloise yelled. “Is the mirror talking to you?”
“That’s right, I’m the
prettiest of them all!” Luc yelled back. He carefully arranged his wet hair to
cover the small scars along his hairline. “Has your goggle tan faded yet?”
He grinned when Eloise let
out a squawk of protest. Eloise had returned in spring with an obvious tan line
delineating where she’d worn ski goggles for months. She was embarrassed but
justifiably smug, considering she spent the winter in a ski resort and Luc
spent it folding T-shirts at H&M.
Luc eyed his reflection.
He’d look much better with a tan. Slowly, as the seed of an idea took root in
his brain, he smoothed down his long-sleeved shirt and tugged it over his
cuffs. He pictured himself in his ski gear and thought about the cold Alpine air.
He weighed the idea against nights in Birmingham spent winding himself ever
more tightly into a knot of frustration. He didn’t need help staying out of
trouble, sure, but he did need a change.
Luc needed to take an exit
from the motorway of his shitty life. With the idea firmly germinated in his
brain, he leaned over the banister. Eloise stood at the bottom of the
staircase, battered rucksack by her feet and phone in hand. Tall and
fair-haired, Eloise took after their British father, where Luc—lean and olive
skinned, with thick dark hair—was a copy of their French mother and barely any
taller. As children Eloise drew friends and admirers without a thought, while
Luc kept his own company.
Luc had dearly wanted an
excuse to hate Eloise as a teenager. As they grew, he moved on to merely
resenting the four inches of height she had on him.
“Eloise? Can I borrow
you?” he asked.
Eloise grinned up at him.
“You forgot I was visiting, didn’t you? Or were you distracted by your latest—”
“Hilarious, I’m sure, but
seriously. A minute, please?”
“Of course, hang on.”
Pocketing her phone, Eloise came upstairs and grabbed Luc into a hug before
releasing him and leaning against the banister. “What’s wrong?”
Luc hesitated,
second-guessing his decision. But at least it would be his decision. He’d made
so few of them.
“I want to come to France
with you.”
Though Luc had braced for
dismissal, none came. Instead Eloise angled a considering look at him. Luc
shifted in place. The five years between them seemed enormous when Eloise
looked at him like that.
“I think that’s a great
idea,” she said. No mention of the curse at all.
Relief washed through Luc,
and he slumped against the wall. To his embarrassment, his eyes pricked with
tears, and Luc wiped at them, rolling his eyes self-deprecatingly. Eloise
grabbed him into another hug, resting her chin on top of his head until he
lightly pinched her side.
“Hey! We were having a
moment. And your hair’s soaking, so you know I meant it.”
“I’m allergic to emotions,
you know that,” Luc said, extricating himself from her hug. He rubbed his arms.
He couldn’t always handle physical closeness.
Eloise huffed a laugh.
“Sorry, I got excited. You know, like—”
Parker Foye writes
speculative-flavored romance under the QUILTBAG umbrella and believes in
happily ever after, although sometimes their characters make achieving this
difficult.
An education in Classics
has nurtured a love of literature, swords, monsters, and beautiful people doing
stupid things while wearing only scraps of leather. Classics also made Parker
good with dead languages but terrible with geography and politics after 300CE.
(Parker is rubbish at pub quizzes.)
Parker is usually plotting
either a story or a new experience, and has most recently tackled the ukulele,
sword-fighting, and husky mushing; Parker hopes to eventually figure out how to
combine the three—and add kissing bits—without anyone getting injured in the
process.
Currently based in north-east
UK, Parker travels on a regular basis via planes, trains, and an ever-growing
library. Parker is much shorter and less British in person.
Website Twitter: @parkerfoye
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Thank you for the review. I don't mind spice, but I do like to understand the plot that goes with it, lol.
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