Hart of Winter (Dreamspun Beyond) by Parker Foye | Cat’s Review & #giveaway @Dreamspinners @parkerfoye @TTCBooksandmore

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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