this book and i did not agree with one another. darkness and trauma for the sake of shock is not something that i enjoy. i have enough darkness already. sorry

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Great book . Was interesting and I finished it fairly fast. This was one of my favourite reads . Will definitely buy a copy of this book

This is not a book for me. I did not understand the importance of any character by the end of chapter 4 and, while I can handle some darker tones, the blatant pedophilia and incest for no obvious narrative reasoning did not sit right with me. Thank you for the opportunity to read your story.

Definitely heed the content warnings for this one, primarily the sexual assault and incest warnings. These warnings are given as happening off the page, however, they are regularly mentioned throughout the book, including regular taunts from the abuser to his victims.

I enjoyed the story of this book, in particular the character and mythology of Luka. The writing itself was very poetic, but sometimes distractingly so. At first, I felt like we would have gotten more out of seeing on the page what had happened to the Well of Hope, but the twist at the end made it worth it.

The idea of what the Well of Hope meant to the world didn't really feel very tangible. It's clearly a strong power source, and it's clear how it can be used to give and take hope from how Aethan intends to use it, but how its absence affected the world wasn't obvious.

The romance of Luka and Rhys's relationship was a strong point, although I'd have expected a little more uncertainty to their sexual relationship at least at first, considering Rhys has only so recently escaped his predator. There's also a scene where Rhys invades Luka's mind against his will that feels jarring after his own experience.

I'd like to mention the fact that the description of this book is somewhat misleading and mentions nothing of the triggers in this book (TW's: rape, physical abuse, sexual abuse, incest) or the fact that the relationship at the center of the book is essentially grooming. Luka is several hundred years old while his lover Rhys was 17 when they first met. Rhys and Luka met through Luka saving Rhys's life than protecting him in his home, and I can't help but feel that there was probably an element of an abused power dynamic at some point. Because neither of these points was mentioned in the description I dived headfirst into the book with unrealistic expectations therefore leaving myself even more disappointed.

Big thanks to Netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing for providing me with an e-ARC.
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I DNFed this book. So for now 1star.

- i tried my best to finish this book but i just can't.
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First off, storyline is confusing. I'm not in any means a beginner in reading but this book confused the heck out of me from the first chapter. I also think that some informations aren't propely explained but just being thrown to me and this book really gives a sequel book feelings. All the time i was wondering whether this book have a first book or not because there is alot of things not adding up here.

The pace is really fast and i'm okay with it but it makes the story a lot more confusing. I had to stop a numerous times to process my thoughts on new informations or any new development occured.

This book actually needs to have a lot of trigger warning. Cover and synopsis of the book gives a feeling that book gonna have two people on an adventure saving the world and igniting their love for eachother but it is not like that. Considering the trigger warning in this book i can say that it is quite dark but the action of their doings is more like a mentioned or reminder. But i think it will be more safe to put trigger warning in the synopsis.

All in all, i tried so hard to finish this but i just can't. I still have a lot of unanswered ques in the last chapter and hoping the next chapter would atleast answer on of them. Instead i got a lot confuser and still many question.

I’m going to buy this and share it everywhere on my blog. It is beautiful. The story was amazingly written and the descriptions felt like poetry. I would read this over and over again a hundred times over. Easily one of the best books I’ve read this year.

This read like a sequel that we were thrown into without a lot of explanation. We were also told a lot of the emotions rather than seeing or really feeling it. A lot of the main romantic relationship felt super problematic and there was a severe imbalance in the power dynamic between them, and it was hard to feel any level of attachment to any of the characters. It was also strange to me that there was never any real addressing of the need for healing after the terrible things the characters endure.

*I received this copy from netgalley*
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TW: rape, incest, paedophilia, torture.
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There are a lot of trigger warnings for this book if you mean to read it and before starting it I wasn't aware of them which made my experience a little worse than if I had known.
The story was..intense. For me it had unnecessary plot and was very confusing. I still enjoyed a few character and ideas of the story. I found Aethan's character unforgivable and couldn't understand how he was forgiven at the end. I wanted to see him and Lorin punished for their actions. It is repeatedly mentioned how much Luka and Rhys love eachother but when it came to it, it always felt more sexual and lustful. I did enjoy Ravan and also the characters of Rhys and Tarian and whole story behind them and would've liked to see more their feelings and thought process about all that had happened to them. I would recommend this to a more mature audience who are ready to read about topics that are handled as side story in the book.

This will definitely not be for everyone. I know there are probably some people who will wonder why some of the aspects of the book exist, especially things that could be considered triggers, but honestly, there's no reason for them not to exist in my opinion. If you don't want to read a book with anything problematic, or without particular problematic aspects, then avoid this one. The story is enjoyable and the characters are deep and interesting and I think they wouldn't have been half as sweet if they weren't against such a dark backdrop.

Thank you for the ARC copy from Dianne Hartsock and NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This isn't a book I'd recommend for the faint of heart. It's got pretty much every debasing trigger going including rape, pedophilia, torture, incest. And for the life of me, I'm not really sure why... It seems unnecessary and ugly. There's doesn't seem to be much of a plot/story to cling onto. DNF because it's honestly not something I enjoyed.

I got about 5 percent into this book and this was just not it for me. I think with this writing style I just couldn’t really connect to the story.

I think the sexual content, verbal abuse, mention of incest kind of ruined this book for me. The characters are complex and well- written, but I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if the previous content was toned down just slightly. The reason for this is because it seems as if this book is geared to the YA audience and I don't think this content is necessarily appropriate.

I wanted to love this one with this amazing cover. But sadly this one just didn't work for me at all. This book has massive trigger warnings and I think that the note at the front of the story was perfectly done. But the story itself just didn't mesh with me at all.

This was a very sweet story. That I felt was actually spoiled by the sex content. I don’t mind sex in books it doesn’t bother me at all but this book seemed to skew to a younger audience so the sex seemed inappropriate. But I did enjoy it nevertheless.

I was kindly supplied with an advanced reader's copy of this book by the publisher NineStar Press however I really did not enjoy this book and I could not finish it. I had to put the book down fairly early in the reading process.

The thing that saddens me most about this book is the amount of potential the world and characters had, and the way it was wasted.

This brings me to my first issue with this book, it is the way it was written. The book did not read smoothly or make a great amount of sense especially when explaining action scenes, The writing moved extremely fast and while some might enjoy that more fast paced style of story telling, this was not for me. On top of this the author didn't spend much if any time on describing the world or characters, often spending only a sentence describing Rhys's muscular frame but nothing else and also neglecting to describe the magic system and lore of the story, ultimately leaving me with a sense of confusion and incompletion.

Another issue I have with this book is that the mentioned warnings at the beginning of the book are prevalent all the way through the book and so there is literally no way to avoid the triggers mentioned if you desire to read this book. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing (I've seen it done well in multiple books for example All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes by Holly Bourne) in this particular circumstance it was not approached in a way that would intrigue the reader or provide them with any useful information.

Finally I'd like to mention the fact that the description of this book is somewhat misleading and mentions nothing of the triggers in this book (TW's: rape, physical abuse, sexual abuse, incest) or the fact that the relationship at the centre of the book is essentially grooming. Luka is several hundred years old while his lover Rhys was 17 when they first met. Rhys and Luka met through Luka saving Rhys's life then protecting him in his home, and I can't help but feel that there was probably an element of an abused power dynamic at some point. Because neither of these points were mentioned in the description I dived head first into the book with unrealistic expectations therefore leaving myself even more disappointed.

Overall I strongly disliked this book and would only advise you to read this if you are aware of the problems it carries and don't hold high hopes for it.

TW: rape, incest, paedophilia, pedarasty, torture, gaslighting, enmeshment
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With warnings like that (and I don't make them lightly: these themes are persistent throughout and you can't skip past them as they're mentioned every few paragraphs) this novel would need to be truly groundbreaking and brilliantly written to be palatable. It isn't. This uncomfortable book reads like bad fanfiction with all the abuse tropes thrown in in lieu of plot. There's constant exposition and the two main characters are ostensibly deeply in lust (and apparently also love, though neither acts it) with one another, although we're never shown the relationship in any way that reads as plausible and we're only told they were in love and continue to be. That just isn't good enough. Vague but very problematic spoilers: a mage who is several hundred years old (don't worry, we're told he looks like he's "in his 30s", as if that isn't a red flag and makes it.. not pedophilia) rescues a 17 year old from an evil sorcerer, who is also the boy's father, tormentor, rapist, etc. 17 year old falls in love with his rescuer. They have an underage/pedophilic relationship for a few months, then the mage boots him out 'for his own protection (which is somehow supposed to make any sense). Boy ends up right back with his rapist father and is now also abused by his rapist half brother, who himself is abused by their father - - It goes on like this, with a lot of poorly proofed prose, awkward attempts at sex scenes, and 'plot' that just has them on the run, oh no now they're both captured, no wait now they're running again, now one is captured, now we're in a dream sequence... It's honestly so shockingly bad that I don't quite understand how it got published, or who the target audience could possibly be.

Advance reader copy kindly provided by NineStar Press.

Definitely heed the content warnings for this one, primarily the sexual assault and incest warnings. These warnings are given as happening off the page, however they are regularly mentioned throughout the book, including regular taunts from the abuser to his victims.

I enjoyed the story of this book, in particular the character and mythology of Luka. The writing itself was very poetic, but sometimes distractingly so. At first, I felt like we would have gotten more out of seeing on the page what had happened to the Well of Hope, but the twist at the end made it worth it.

The idea of what the Well of Hope meant to the world didn't really feel very tangible. It's clearly a strong power source, and it's clear how it can be used to give and take hope from how Aethan intends to use it, but how its absence affected the world wasn't obvious.

The romance of Luka and Rhys's relationship was a strong point, although I'd have expected a little more uncertainty to their sexual relationship at least at first, considering Rhys has only so recently escaped his predator. There's also a scene where Rhys invades Luka's mind against his will that feels jarring after his own experience.

Highlights were Ravan's character, and the addition of Tarian. I'd love to see what happens to him going forward.

Initially this book confused me slightly and it took to some concentration to understand what was going on but then very quickly i was enthralled by this book. There is a trigger warning for abuse, assault and mentions of incest in this book but it does add to the plot. The characters are also very diverse and that is always something appreciated in a good book. Definitely worth the read.