Guest Review: Naked Dragon by Annette Blair

As owner of the Works Like Magick employment agency in Salem, Massachussetts, Vivica Quinlan has a gift for perfectly matching clients with magical temps that works every time.

McKenna Greylock contacts Vivica in desperate need of a jack-of-all-trades handyman to help repair her Victorian bed-and-breakfast. She has a shoestring budget and ninety days to meet the building inspector’s approval—or the house will be repossessed and purchased by her duplicitous cousin.

To McKenna’s surprise, Vivica sends the gorgeous Bastian Dragonellia who not only possesses the speed, strength, and agility to get the job done, but also sets her soul ablaze with a fiery passion she’s never experienced before. And if McKenna can accept Bastian’s true nature—as a dragon warrior—she’ll find her life heating up in more ways than one.

This is the first Annette Blair novel in the “Works Like Magick” series from Berkely Sensations. As I had not read any of Blair’’s previous work, I was excited about discovering an author that was new to me. As I am also new to paranormal fiction, it was another opportunity to expand my exposure to what is becoming a favorite genre of mine in romantic fiction.

Bastian Dragonelli is a Roman warrior who lived almost 2,000 years ago and who was changed suddenly into a dragon and taken from earth to the Island of Stars in an alternate reality. Assisted by the Goddess of Hope to return to the earth as a man, Bastian is drawn to McKenna from the first time he spots her at Vivica’s employment agency where he is being educated by Vivica (a powerful witch) so that he can learn English, understand human ways, and learn to live among 21st century humanity.

McKenna Greylock is the last of a long line of Celtic witches who have survived over the centuries. As the last of her line she is trying to retain the property that is her only legacy. Obsessed with wresting the land away from McKenna, an unjust and unscrupulous developer is doing all he can to upend her efforts to meet the deadline for paying the mortgage arrears as well as the delinquent taxes, including injury to her contractor. Bastian comes into her life with his strange language and his strange ways, but she is drawn to him in spite of herself.

Blair has written a truly delightful romance that seems to have many of the qualities of a fairy tale. Yet the characters are real, the circumstances are all too contemporary in today’s economy, and McKenna is a woman who has learned that there are few people in whom she can safely put her trust. The extended illnesses of her grandmother and her mother have exhausted her resources – another situation that is all too familiar. Bastian’s gentle spirit, his winsome ways, his desire for her, his kindnesses and his evident and extraordinary abilities begin to melt McKenna’s resistance and challenge her determination not to let any man into her life. Yet her inner spirit is hungry for authentic relationship. Bastian recognizes her as his heartmate but is wise enough to bide his time, not only to eventually be able to woo her into a physical relationship but to also hope that she can accept his alternate existence as a dragon.

We meet good people here as well as some who are pure evil. I was delighted by the children who could see Bastian’s guardian dragon and a tiny fairy that had accompanied him “through the veil” onto earth. There was joy reclaimed when Bastian made it possible for McKenna to see and converse with her parents and her grandparents, to experience the love and protection that was all around her with her family spirits who were remaining until she found true love, and her meeting with Ciarra, the original witch in her ancestry. There’s lot to like here. The humor was wonderful and I have to confess to some hearty laughing while reading. There is hope and renewal as Bastian makes McKenna’s quest his own. Yet it is a joy to witness McKenna’s discovery about her own skills and strengths. When she encounters Bastian true dragon self, the exchange is beautiful and heartwarming.

I think this is a delightful book and I hope all of you take the time to read it. It is not overly long but is well-written and display’s the author’s skill in telling a very good story.

I give this book a rating of 4.5 out of 5.

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