Reviewer: Holly
Evermine by Hailey Edwards
Series: Daughters of Askara #2
Also in this series: Everlong, Eversworn
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: February 21, 2012
Format: eBook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Point-of-View: Alternating First Person, Third Person
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler » No « Hide Spoiler
Content Warning: View Spoiler » Rape, Abuse, Slavery, Mutilation, Addiction « Hide Spoiler
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 201
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2021 Goodreads Challenge
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Series Rating:

He can be a slave to his past…or allow her love to free him.

There’s such a thing as too much change. Emma’s sister is mated. Revolution is brewing in her home realm. The last straw: her would-be mate is back from the dead and back under her skin—yet when it comes to the last five years, he’s not talking.

Desperate for a chance to start her own life, she answers the queen’s call to ensure equality for all of Askara’s newly freed slaves. It’s the perfect opportunity to escape a heartbreak in the making named Harper.

Harper loses a piece of his fractured soul when Emma walks away. His lies were meant to protect her from torturous years that drove him to the point of madness. Instead, when he comes to her a year later to help avert a crisis in a freed-slave community, the wedge those lies drove between them is firmly in place.

As their new lives collide with old wounds, they race to stop a threat that could not only destroy the queen, but send Harper back to the hell he escaped. Emma must decide if the man she still loves deserves equal rights to her heart.

Warning: This title contains torn pants, ripped gowns, and sand in uncomfortable places. It also includes one overcompensating villain, one gnarly priest, and two battered hearts willing to give this thing called love one last chance.

Evermine (Daughters of Askara #2) by Hailey Edwards follows Emma, whom we met in the first book. I enjoyed her quite a bit in Everlong and was curious to see how things would turn out for her. Fair warning, this is a dark novel that deals with dark themes. Please review the Content Warnings before reading this book.

Emmaline was born into slavery. As the bastard daughter of the Queen of Askara’s consort, she was raised to be the personal slave of the princess Madelyn. They grew up as sisters, and Emma would do anything for Maddie. Now that Maddie has found her mate Emma knows she needs something more. When the evil Queen is overthrown by Maddie’s older sister and slavery is abolished, Emma agrees to return to Askara to act as liaison between the Avanti former-slaves and the Askarans. If that gets her away from her fated mate? All the better. She knows she can’t face Harper after the way she betrayed his memory when she thought he was dead, plus he refuses to share his past with her. It’s a recipe for disaster. But still, when Harper requests her help to uncover a plot against the new Queen, Emma knows she can’t refuse, even if being near him is nothing but torture.

Harper has always known Emma would be his. He meant to protect her by refusing to share his past with her; he never expected it to push her into leaving him. Now that they’re together again, he’s determined to prove to her that they belong together. Though he isn’t sure she can accept all of him, he knows he has to try.

This is a complex and multi-layered world. I highly recommend reading this series in order. A lot of the events that happen here are related to what happened in the first book.

I really liked Emma in the previous book. She faced things head on and wasn’t afraid to get in someone’s face if she needed to. That was true here as well, though she seemed less sure of herself at times. Plus, she had an addiction that I don’t really think was properly addressed.

View Spoiler » She was addicted to coffee on Earth, which for the Avanti is the equivalent of an alcohol addiction. She beat the addiction off-page, but she was fed another type of drug on-page. She suffered some side-effects of that, but then we didn’t hear about it again. I wish that had been explored more. « Hide Spoiler

Harper was a prisoner for 5 years. Literally kept in a cage and used and abused, he’s determined to give others better. He was a strong character and I loved how determined he was to save those he cared about. I didn’t necessarily love him and Emma together. They weren’t great about communicating, and her reasons for keeping him at arms length seemed forced at best.

I enjoyed the world and overarching storyline enough to immediately start the next book, but this isn’t my favorite series from Edwards.

3.5 out of 5

Daughters of Askara

Reviewer: Holly
Everlong by Hailey Edwards
Series: Daughters of Askara #1
Also in this series: Evermine, Eversworn
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: March 30, 2010
Format: eBook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Point-of-View: Alternating First Person
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler » No « Hide Spoiler
Content Warning: View Spoiler » Rape, Abuse, Slavery, Mutilation « Hide Spoiler
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 224
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2021 Goodreads Challenge
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
Series Rating:

The most damaged heart can fly with the right pair of wings.

Madelyn’s life is far from fairytale perfect. She is second in line for the throne of a corrupt, brutal monarchy. Or at least she was until her dark guardian sacrificed his life to hide her safely in a realm of infinite possibilities.

For years she’s lived among a colony of escaped slaves as her guardian’s widow. Even in this simple life, though, nothing is as it seems. Her hero kept a secret—a younger brother named Clayton Delaney. Warrior, winged demon…and the man who now wants to lay claim to her heart.

No longer cast in his brother’s shadow, Clayton meets all obstacles head on, including one named Maddie. His infatuation with her reaches the breaking point when she undergoes a royal rite of passage, going into heat and pushing them both over the edge.

Just as Maddie learns that some risks are worth taking, she discovers that her guardian may be alive. And she’s forced to make a choice between the man she’d thought she loved, and the demon willing to lend her his wings.

Warning: This book contains virginal angst, a hero who’s too nice for his own good, wings, claws, and convenient use of glamour. It contains heartbreaking loss, conversation with a woodland creature, and sweet, sweet demon loving.

Everlong is the first book in the Daughters of Askara series by Hailey Edwards. I’ve read a number of books by Edwards and generally enjoy them, so I went into this with high expectations. Unfortunately, the heroine’s “head in the sand” approach to basically everything left me frustrated.

Madelyn is the Princess of Askara, a brutal monarchy. It is time for her ascension, a ceremony where she was to claim her title as Princess and accept her place as second in line for the thrown. During the ceremony she and her personal slave, Emma, are to be tattooed from head to foot to denote their stations in life, and then Maddie is meant to take a man to her bed for the first time. Emma’s after, Maddie’s step-father, has decided she must choose him as her consort for the evening. In return, he agrees to grant Emma and Maddie’s Guardian, Harper, their freedom. Although she has every intention of sacrificing herself for them, Harper takes the choice out of their hands by whisking them away to an alternate universe before the ceremony can be completed. Only Harper is killed and Maddie is left mourning him for five long years.

On Earth, Maddie and Emma open a diner and do their best to blend in the colony where Harper left them. Emma makes friends and joins the community, but Maddie chooses to keep herself apart, grieving for her dead Guardian. Until the 5th anniversary of his death, when she finally meets his older brother, Clayton. Clayton has kept himself away from Maddie to allow her time to grieve, but now that her mourning time has passed and she’s going into heat, he knows he has to stay near to protect her. Because when the females of their race go into heat, the males will do anything to claim them. Clayton may want Maddie for himself, but he would never dishonor his brother’s memory that way. The best he can do is keep her safe….unless she decides she wants him, then all bets are off.

I didn’t care for the way Maddie kept her head in the sand and refused to see anything that was going on around her. I really wanted to see her come into her own, but I don’t really think it that happened. She was better toward the end of the novel, but it ended before I was satisfied that she was anything more than a literal spoiled princess. She was basically a walking zombie, never engaging with anyone or seeing what was right in front of her nose. I didn’t understand why she acted the way she did, or more importantly, why anyone put up with it.

I did like Clayton. He was a good leader and an honorable male. This was a quick read. I enjoyed the world and the secondary characters, but Maddie kind of ruined it for me. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Daughters of Askara