I think I fell in love with Lizzy Ford about a chapter into Katie’s Hellion. I had downloaded the book for free (It’s still free–go NAO!) from Amazon after just finding out there were free books on Amazon in the early part of May, 2012. (Late Kindle bloomer). I bought every book she had after that and ate them up like they were chocolate and I needed a fix. I didn’t know what end was up from one book to the next as far as trying to pick a favorite character because I loved all of them… Rhyn, Decker and Darian eventually rose to the top. I guess I like the tortured anti-heroes the most.
I’m currently amidst a Lizzy Ford back up because I have the ARC of Voodoo Nights: Cursed started and Hear No, Xander’s Chance and Winter Fire waiting for me to read. I won Charred Heart on a giveaway that Lizzy Ford was having on her Facebook over Thanksgiving and I was so high off winning that I tucked in within a few minutes of getting it in my email. Thanks, Stephanie Shaw and Lizzy Ford for the gift!
Charred Heart is pure Lizzy at her finest. Chace is a made dragonshifter who has lived the last thousand years under a punishment which has made him witness the death of all his mortal attachments. Although it has actually given him a great deal of power and magic, all Chace is aware of is the negative aspects and how much he has lost year after year in human lives. When he makes a deal with a mystical man called Mr. Nothing to restore the humanity taken from him in his youthful Viking life he assumes the cost–all he has, amounts to nothing more than his motorcycle and a few what-nots, all things he is willing to give up. His assumptions couldn’t be farther from the reality of his thoughtless arrangement; with single minded desire for freedom he endangers all his shifterkind who find sanctuary in the bar his magic protects from human eyes, the life of his closest friends, and the love of the woman who completes him. As he ignorantly acted as a young man one thousand years earlier, Chace once more brazenly faces the choice of doing what is best and doing what is best for him.
Skylar’s mission as a dragonslayer is simple; she is to capture her prey and return with him to the detention center where he will be rehabilitated. She has trained years for this, but her dragon keeps setting off alarm bells in her mind and tripping memories that shouldn’t be there. She wants more than anything to protect him instead of wrangle him, an illogical response considering that shifters are the ones who harm humans and are the last thing that need protection. After a night with Chace she is further confused by mixed loyalties which plague her demanding that she thwart the Slayers who have raised and trained her at their every move against her dragon. When Chace learns of her background and comes for her in the manner she has always been warned about, fearful of the harm he could cause she goes with him–after all she can manipulate him with his passion for her and control him with his lust. Or maybe she is as much a slave to the feel of her dragon as he is to her.
The story is great. The hero and heroine struggle throughout with just the right amount of back and forth, “should I, shouldn’t I?” I loved this book and I love how prolific Lizzy Ford is so that the wait for Charred Tears is a mere few days, rather than months. It’s release date is December 16, 2013.
Chace is a great book boyfriend. He is hot and sizzle-ish and boy, oh boy, does he ever know how to heat things up. (He’s a dragon–heat things up? Charred Heart… you get it, yeah?) I would have to say he is atomic on the man-sex-bomb scale. This is the kind of guy who can eat crackers all night in bed and you would not only not kick him out–you would go get him more crackers.
As far as heroines go Skylar is a strong and relatable character. She does not fold and get run over by all the new facts like a house of cards and you can understand why she fights the obvious truth for as long as she does. I would hope that as a reader you can identify with someone’s struggle to accept a new reality after so many years of knowing another. She isn’t stubborn or pig headed in what she is doing in this book–she really is grasping at the last few grains of hope that her life has not been a complete lie. Rock on, Skylar-chan, utsukushii senshidearu!
This book is a 10 out of 10. Buy the e-book. Buy the print book. Buy the book written in the sky by plane. Buy the book as it is carved in ice during the winter months. Buy the damn book!
Lizzy Ford is one of the nine muses and she holds court in the following locations: Guerilla Wordfare, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and Wattpad. Please don’t disturb her at Mount Olympus as she might just be dining with the other gods and goddesses and from what I hear Coeus has a temper. You would hate to be hit in the eye by a mythological ambrosial pea thrown from that distance by a Titan.
*****
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