4⭐️ 1🌶 I finished The Sapphire Sailor's Tale by Julia Lovely last evening. This was a solid debut novel. I'm assuming this is a standalone; the story arc was completed. It was short at just under 400 pages so it was a pretty quick read. Cordelia the FMC is a junior officer in the Navy. She is on her first tour aboard a ship. She is running herself ragged doing her own job and going through all the training a new officer is required to take on as well. When the ship enters the Bermuda triangle Cordelia starts feeling odd, like she's being pulled toward the ocean floor. During the swim day Cordelia is pulled by that force down to the bottom of the ocean. She assumes she should be dead, but she wakes up in a completely different world. She finds herself in a castle built into the walls of a cavern with lava streaming down the walls. She steps out onto the balcony attached to her room and comes face to face with a fire...
5⭐️1🌶 I finished The Ties That Bind Us by Deidra Duncan at about 4:30 this morning. It was amazing but if I'm honest, I feel scandalized by that ending. I knew it was the first in a series; I think it's going to be a duology, so I figured it would end on a cliffhanger but holy Hannah, I was not expecting that. The book is very heavy with fantasy lore, the magic system is also downright trippy. It's essentially a portal fantasy. David and Sean are raised in Viterra, the mortal realm, our realm. They live in a tiny town in California. But they are both important. There is a prophesy, they are both components of this prophesy along with a couple other people. It gets really complicated, really fast. I will admit, this first bit of this book dragged a bit for me, but there was so much that needed to be established. Sean and David get pulled into Luxoria separately but they both wind up there. Sean is the pu...