Tag: Alyssa Day

Sunday Spotlight: Bane’s Choice by Alyssa Day

Posted October 18, 2020 by Casee in Features, Giveaways | 4 Comments

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we began in 2016. This year we’re spotlighting our favorite books, old and new. We’ll be raving about the books we love and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

We have not one, but two giveaways for you today! Don’t forget to enter using the widgets below.

Sunday Spotlight: Bane’s Choice by Alyssa DayBane's Choice by Alyssa Day
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: October 27, 2020
Point-of-View: Third Person
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 400
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books

When a centuries-old vampire in search of redemption meets a doctor who’s on a mission of her own, a searing, world-destroying passion is the last thing on either of their minds.
Minds can be changed.
A doctor with secrets of her own is drawn to a dangerous predator in this pulse-pounding paranormal romance from New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Day.
What better way to hide the existence of vampires from humans than in plain sight? Thus, the Vampire Motorcycle Club was born. Bane, the 300-year-old vampire who leads the club, has fought for years to protect his kind. But the truth about vampires is not only that they exist, it is that they are creatures of pure desire. Conscience and restraint has been burned out of them by the process of Turning. Any woman Bane meets is either prey—or food.
Dr. Ryan St. Cloud finds out that vampires exist when one steals her patient out of the hospital right beneath her nose, leading her to question her own sanity. But when the dangerous man whose touch inflames her senses and whose gaze enthralls her comes to her for help, she is unable to refuse. Bane is a dangerous predator, but somewhere beneath his arrogance and power, she can see his heart—and she knows it could belong to her if she is strong enough to claim it. She is bound to a vampire, but loving her would be … Bane’s Choice.

Excerpt

Ryan finally settled on the best, most awesome choice for a drunken movie fest and settled in to watch it, saluting the TV with the bottle, having quit bothering with the glass a while back. “Yippee ki-yay!”

But before John McClane could get off the plane with that enormous teddy bear, things started to get weird.

She laughed. No, that was a stupid thought after the night she’d had.

Correction: things got even weirder.

Because that’s when the magical kidnapper from the hospital appeared on her second-floor balcony.

The balcony that had no stairs, ladder, or fire escape.

“I’m more the Hans Gruber type,” he said. “Hello, Dr. St. Cloud.”

She blinked and then took another swig of wine, still staring at him. “Hey, call me Ryan. I’ve decided I should be on first-name basis with all my hallucinations. And damn, but you’re just beautiful, aren’t you? At least my brain dreamed up a hottie when it decided to go ballistic.”

“I don’t… You…” He shook his head and then raised a single eyebrow and pinned his glowing gaze to her, decidedly non-glowing, own. “I assure you, I am quite real.”

“Right. And so, Mr. Quite Real, what did you do with my patient? You know, the one who was dying? The one I had no chance in hell to save, even before you picked him up and disappeared with him?” she was on her feet and shouting at him by the end but didn’t remember standing. Also, unpleasantly, the rage smashing through her was, to borrow one of Annie’s expressions, harshing her mellow.

“How do you remember that?” His eyes narrowed. “Luke said he’d compelled you to forget.”

“I’d like to forget so much about tonight,” she muttered. “And who the hell is Luke?”

“I’d like to explain, Doctor… Ryan, if you’d invite me in,” her magical mystery guest said.

Ryan pointed her bottle at him. “No. Nuh-uh. No way. You keep your glowy-eyed magical ass away from me. And how did you climb up to my balcony? How did you even find me, more to the point?”

“Invite me in, and I’ll tell you,” he said, but his voice had a weird, buzzy resonance that tickled the inside of her mind somehow.

It made her laugh. “Nope.”

His eyes widened. “So it was true.”

“What was true? And why are you here?”

He folded his arms and said nothing, which infuriated her.

“Where is my patient?”

“Invite me in, and I’ll tell you,” he said again, shrugging.

She blew out a breath. “Fine. Whatever. Come on in, Mr. Drunken Hallucination. And then you damn well better tell me where my patient is.”

He smiled and took a step forward, into the room, and she started toward him but tripped over the coffee table and fell.

Into his arms. Damn, he smelled good. She rested her overheated cheek against his chest for a moment and inhaled.

Wait.

“You were clear across the room,” she muttered, struggling to back up while pushing him away at the same time. Trying to push him away, rather, because he had chest muscles like iron boulders. Was that a thing? Iron boulders? Rock-hard steel?

Some kind of metaphor for hard, for sure.

Yummy. Hard.

Also, damn. Maybe opening that second bottle of wine had been a mistake.

“You seem to have been having a party,” he said, and there was amusement mixed with something darker in his rich, deep voice.

God. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen—imagined? Dreamed?—and his voice sounded like silken sin. A tingle of heat and electricity raced through her, and she could actually feel her nipples harden. Now she was really losing it, because her hallucination was making her hot.

No different from fantasizing about a movie star in the bathtub, she tried to tell herself. Except bath-time fantasies never came to life and walked into her living room.

She’d never felt one hold her in his arms before, either.

Vampire Motorcycle Club

>

Giveaway Alert

We’re giving one lucky winner their choice of one of our Sunday Spotlight books. Use the widget below to enter for one of this month’s features.

Sunday Spotlight: October 2020

Alyssa has kindly offered a paperback copy of Bane’s Choice. U.S. residents only.

Bane’s Choice by Alyssa Day

Are you as excited for this release as we are? Let us know how excited you are and what other books you’re looking forward to this year!

About Alyssa Day

Alyssa Day is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than a million books sold --all filled with kissing, laughter, mystery and magic. Alyssa’s paranormal series include the Vampire Motorcycle Club, Poseidon’s Warriors, and Cardinal Witches paranormal romances and the Tiger’s Eye Mysteries paranormal mysteries. In an Alyssa Day book, the good guys (and gals!) always win and happily ever after always prevails!

Alyssa's many awards include Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® award for outstanding romance fiction, and the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal Romance novel of 2012. Her books have been translated into a zillion languages but she’s still holding out for Klingon.

Before she became a full-time writer, Alyssa graduated summa cum laude from law school and practiced as a trial lawyer in three different states for more than a decade. She is a past president of Romance Writers of America.

Please visit her online at http://www.alyssaday.com to sign up for her newsletter for news of releases, free stuff, and pictures of her dogs and her baking. But not of her dogs baking, because that would just be wrong.


Tagged: , ,

Review: The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

Posted August 24, 2020 by Holly in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa ColeReviewer: Holly
The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole
Narrator: Regina Hall, Mindy Kaling, Feodor Chin, Therese Plummer, Dina Pearlman, Neil Hellegers, Adenrele Ojo, Kyla Garcia
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: December 3, 2019
Format: Audiobook
Source: Audible Escape
Point-of-View: Alternating First
Content Warning: View Spoiler »
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 125
Length: 5 hours and 18 minutes
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2020 Goodreads Challenge, Holly's 2020 New to Me Challenge
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-half-stars

Listening Length: 5 hours and 18 minutes

A captivating romantic comedy with a thrilling sci-fi twist by award-winning author Alyssa Cole!

Trinity Jordan leads a quiet, normal life: working from home for the Hive, a multifunctional government research center, and recovering from the incident that sent her into a tailspin. But the life she’s trying to rebuild is plagued by mishaps when Li Wei, her neighbor’s super sexy and super strange nephew, moves in and turns things upside down. Li Wei’s behavior is downright odd—and the attraction building between them is even more so. When an emergency pulls his aunt away from the apartment complex, Trinity decides to keep an eye on him…and slowly discovers that nothing is what it seems. For one thing, Li Wei isn’t just the hot guy next door—he’s the hot A.I. next door. In fact, he’s so advanced that he blurs the line between man and machine. It’s up to Trinity to help him achieve his objective of learning to be human, but danger is mounting as they figure out whether he’s capable of the most illogical human behavior of all…falling in love.

I loved the narrators. They definitely made the experience for me.

Trinity is recovering from an accident at her previous job at a government research center. She’s trying to heal emotionally and physically. She spends most of her time in her apartment building, either hanging out with her two best friends or swimming or running. When she’s introduced to her neighbor’s extremely attractive nephew, Li Wei, she kind of goes into a tailspin. All of a sudden pieces of her memory are coming back, and what she sees in front of her isn’t adding up. When she realizes Li Wei is actually an A.I., she begins to question everything..especially her sanity, since she can’t deny her major attraction to him.

The story is told from both Trinity and Li Wei’s points-of-view as they both recover. Li Wei is working on recovering his memory systems and becoming a fully functional A.I., while Trinity is in physical and mental therapy. I really loved how they came to know one another, and how Li Wei insisted from the beginning that Trinity was to be fully trusted.

The world took a bit to fall into, since so much is strange and we see the majority of it from Trinity’s POV. I struggled with the first couple hours of the audio, even with the excellent narrators, but I’m glad I pushed through because I really enjoyed the story. I wouldn’t mind finding an AI like Li Wei for myself. I’m just saying.

I’m looking forward to more books in this series.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

three-half-stars


Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Review: The Cursed by Alyssa Day

Posted October 23, 2019 by Holly in Reviews | 0 Comments

Review: The Cursed by Alyssa DayReviewer: Holly
The Cursed by Alyssa Day
Narrator: Xe Sands
Series: League of the Black Swan #1
Publisher: Berkley, Self-Published
Publication Date: May 7, 2013
Format: Audiobook
Source: Audible Escape
Point-of-View: Alternating Third
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Content Warning: View Spoiler »
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Fantasy
Pages: 282
Length: 8 hours and 1 minute
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2019 GoodReads Challenge
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
two-half-stars
Series Rating: three-stars

New York Times bestselling author of the Warriors of Poseidon series Alyssa Day returns with a thrilling new series of paranormal romance and a heated battle between good and evil fought to the death on the streets of New York…

Bordertown private investigator Luke Oliver’s beat is the dimensional fold in Manhattan between the human and supernatural realms. But now a secret from his past—the League of the Black Swan—has surfaced. Because Luke isn’t any ordinary P.I. He’s the Dark Wizard of Bordertown, and he never backs down from a fight.

But this time the fight threatens his life and his heart. Rio Jones, the only woman he loved, needs his help against a deadly menace. Luke pushed her away once before, so she’d never fall prey to the curse that threatens to destroy him. He swore he’d never let her go again.

Luke and Rio, with the help of the newly reformed League, must keep evil forces from taking over Bordertown—all the while battling a passion on the razor’s edge between danger and desire. And going to take everything they have just to stay alive.

I discovered The Cursed by Alyssa Day while browsing Audible Escape and decided to give it a go. Shortly after I checked the author’s website to see the series had been cancelled by the publisher and no follow up book has been released. The description says this does not end in a cliffhanger, so I continued on with it. While there isn’t technically a cliffhanger, the story is left open and I’d have liked answers to some of the questions left open.

When Rio Jones witnesses a young girl being kidnapped in Bordertown – a place full of magical beings between the Realm and San Francisco – she knows she needs help. She goes to Luke Oliver, the Dark Wizard of Bordertown. The PI is sexy as sin, but has made it clear he isn’t interested. She doesn’t want to go to him, but she knows he’s the only man who can help. Luke turned Rio down for her own good, but he knows he isn’t strong enough to walk away from her twice. When she requests his help, he knows he’ll do anything he can to keep her safe – and to keep her around.

The world was interesting and the early chapters really pulled me in. I enjoyed Rio and Luke, both, as well as the secondary characters. As the story wore on, I became more and more frustrated with the way Rio and Luke both put their heads in the sand and refused to deal with all the questions concerning Rio’s past. Everyone but her seemed to know who she was and what was coming, but rather than follow up they both just sort of ignored everything. Plus, the way things were glossed over about Luke’s “curse” and how quick both of them were to storm off in a huff was annoying.

I really liked certain aspects of the book, and I would have read another had it been available, but overall this was a pretty underwhelming listen.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5

League of the Black Swan

two-half-stars


Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Throwback Thursday Guest Review: Vampire in Atlantis by Alyssa Day

Posted August 15, 2019 by Tracy in Reviews | 2 Comments

Throwback Thursday Guest Review: Vampire in Atlantis by Alyssa DayReviewer: Tracy
Vampire in Atlantis by Alyssa Day
Series: Warriors of Poseidon #7
Also in this series: Atlantis Awakening (Warriors of Poseidon, #2)
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: June 7, 2011
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 311
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

The most unexpected of all allies to Poseidon's warriors has proven to be the fiercest-Daniel, a vampire and Night Guild mage. But even the strongest alliance can be destroyed when a vampire's oath crosses paths with a maiden's quest, and an eleven-thousand-year-old desire is reborn.

Ready to face the dawn and die after 11,000 years as a vampire, Daniel walks into the Reflecting Pool on the Washington Mall and ends up in Atlantis, at the mercy of Serai, a long-dead warrior princess he could never forget.

Yet Serai is not dead. Centuries earlier she and several others had been magically put into suspended animation to ensure the continuation of the Atlanteans. But the magical jewel that keeps them safe has been stolen, and, now awake, Serai must find it to save the other sleeping women.

Together, Daniel and Serai search for the stone and renew their relationship, stalked by an evil that isn't about to let them succeed.

*** Every Thursday, we’ll be posting throwback reviews of our favorite and not-so-favorite books. Enjoy! ***

This review was originally posted on Nov 15, 2011.

Daniel was just a blacksmith’s apprentice in Atlantis when he met the beautiful Serai. It was love at first sight and they longed to be together. Unfortunately many things happened to keep them apart. Atlantis was attacked, Daniel turned into a vampire, Atlantis submerged into the ocean and Serai put into stasis to one day be awoken to marry High Prince Conlan.

Eleven thousand years have passed since that time. Daniel is ready to face the dawn and end it all when he finds himself not only alive but in Atlantis and facing the women he thought long dead. He is mesmerized once again and eager to help her with whatever she needs.

Serai broke out of the stasis but she doesn’t want to be put in and knows she must get out of Atlantis immediately. She was told that Daniel died all those years ago and when he appears before her she’s shocked. They fight together to find a gem from Poseidon’s trident, the Emporer, and try to save the other women in stasis.

This is book 7 in this series and my least favorite of the bunch. While it was an interesting story to a point and continued the overall story arc that will be concluded in future books, it just lacked that extra something that made it captivating. The story was good but I found myself kind of well, bored at points.

I really liked Daniel and of course Serai was a strong female character but they were a bit melodramatic for me. Yes, I know that they’d been apart and thought the other dead – I would probably be very vocal about my feelings too if that happened…but it just didn’t have a truly realistic feel to me.

While the story was good and had a bit of an extra romance with the vampire Nicholas and the witch Ivy it unfortunately just fell a bit short from the other books in the series.

Rating: 3 out of 5

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

three-stars


Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Sunday Spotlight: Christmas in Atlantis by Alyssa Day

Posted December 3, 2017 by Casee in Features, Giveaways | 5 Comments

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we began in 2016. This year we’re spotlighting our favorite books, old and new. We’ll be raving about the books we love and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

Sunday Spotlight

I thought we could kick off the month of December Sunday Spotlights with a good old fashioned Christmas romance brought to you by some of my favorite Atlantians. Alyssa Day writes fantastic paranormal romance. I first got into her series back when it was first published in 2007. I’ve been hooked ever since. I really love reading how different authors have different takes on Atlantis. It’s fascinating.

Christmas in Atlantis
Series: Warriors of Poseidon
Genres: Paranormal romance
Release Date: December 4, 2017
Publisher: Holliday Publishing

The Gift of the Magi…in Atlantis

A tortured warrior…

Warrior-turned-pirate Dare is the black sheep of all Atlantis. He enraged Poseidon, the sea god, so much that Dare had to forfeit his ship and the water spirit who inhabits it. For Dare, being denied the ocean is worse than death…until he comes home to a woman who drowns him in waves of hunger more powerful than the sea. But black sheep and scoundrels can never deserve love, even during the magic of the first Christmas in Atlantis.

An artist who sees the world through song…

After the accident that killed her parents and blinded her, Lyric discovered she had a special gift—that of song sight. She now sees the world in her own unique way, and her paintings are full of light and magic. When the Atlantean warrior she’s fallen in love with takes her to his home in Atlantis, she finds a rare magical artifact that could change her world forever. Or it could deliver to Dare the thing he most desires.

Atlantis’s first Christmas is coming…

It’s the season of miracles in Atlantis. A chance to make wishes come true. And when Lyric tells her new Atlantean friends O Henry’s story of The Gift of the Magi, the world—and Lyric and Dare—may never be the same.

Order the Book:

AMAZON || iBOOKS

Excerpt

“Time to close up shop.” Lyric turned toward the door, but before she even took a first step, it crashed open.

“I think I need your help,”

It was Dare; she knew him instantly. She could smell the sharp sent of wind and sky and saltwater that was uniquely his; she could pick his voice out of a thousand others.

“Dare?” She started toward him. “Are you–”
“I think I need –”

A heavy thud was the only conclusion to his sentence. He’d collapsed. She rushed over and knelt down beside him. She reached for his pulse, her fingers finding their way to the spot. His pulse was there; strong and reassuring. He was soaking wet, though; his skin was icy cold and he was shivering violently.

“Dare? Dare? What happened?”

He didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t answer. And of course she couldn’t see him, so she couldn’t even guess how badly he was hurt.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and told it to call Dr. Miller.

No. She pressed END CALL.

“Call 911.”

No pirates were going to die on her watch.

Warriors of Poseidon

Giveaway Alert

We’re giving one lucky winner their choice of one of our Sunday Spotlight books. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter for one of this month’s features.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Are you as excited for this release as we are? Let us know how excited you are and what other books you’re looking forward to this year!

About the Author

Alyssa Day

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS

Alyssa Day is the pen name (and dark and tortured alter ego) of author Alesia Holliday. As Alyssa, she is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, and she writes the Warriors of Poseidon and Cardinal Witches paranormal romance series and the Tiger’s Eye Mysteries, a paranormal mystery series. As Alesia, she writes comedies that make readers snort things out of their noses, and is the author of the award-winning memoir about military families during war-time deployments: Email to the Front. She has won many awards for her writing, including Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award for outstanding romance fiction and the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal Romance novel of 2012. (With all that romance writing, you’re probably not surprised to hear that she’s a board member of the amazing writing organization, Romance Writers of America.)


Tagged: , , ,