A.R. is not just a reviewer at Romance Book Junkies. She's my partner and a very close friend. She helps in all aspects of the blog on top of her Writing Career as A.R. Von. She can be contacted @ dragonlady039@gmail.com
Danielle
I am a romance book junkie myself and love to share great books I've read with other book junkies. I'm a 32 year old wife, mother and did I say book junkie? :) I read almost anything but mostly paranormal, historical and fantasy romance and preferably hot. Just a note: Blogging for me is a labor of love. I don't blog for money. I will always post an honest review of a book I've read.
Followers
Follow Me
Rating System
An amazing story! Definitely a keeper.
A must read. A good page turner.
A enjoyable read. An average book.
A book that has flaws and is hard to finish.
Terrible and couldn't finish it.
From
the award-winning author of the Progeny Series comes a different type of love
story. Alterity is book one of a romance-based succession focusing on passion,
love, and music.
A
man struggling to gain his independence…
Every aspect of Austin MacKenzie’s
life is governed by a generations-old code instituted by his Scottish
forefathers. But rather than be groomed to take over the family empire, he
struggles to free himself from the bonds of an arranged marriage to a woman
within Scottsdale’s societal circles.
A
woman simply struggling to survive…
Raised by a drug-addicted
mother in one of the roughest parts of Phoenix, Liz Carlisle just wants a way
out. A nursing student, she’s determined to make a difference and reach her
ultimate goal of becoming a pediatric nurse.
With
music as a common ground…
After a chance encounter
at a band audition, Austin and Liz discover that they share a love of music.
Despite their differences, an attraction forms that will alter their lives
forever and rip their worlds apart.
Excerpt:
“I want you,” he confessed, deciding he was no
longer able to maintain a reasonable amount of distance, “more than I want to
draw my next breath. I can’t just be your friend anymore. My feelings go way
deeper. Something’s happening between us. I know it’s only been a short time,
but I can’t think straight. For the first time in my life, I’m free to imagine
a future that’s so different from anything I’ve ever dreamed. I want you in that future.”
Speaking the truth, aloud, made things so much
clearer.
Lifting her head from his beating heart, Liz
made eye contact again, her gaze liquid and accessing. Placing his hand over
her chest, she asked, “Can you feel that? This is what you do to me.” Her heart
thumped against his palm, beating in a rhythm that closely mimicked his own. “I
understand why we can’t make love, and I’m okay with waiting and taking things
slow.” She paused, her stare tunneling deeper. “As long as we get there
someday.”
He whispered, “Is breá liom tú,” against her
lips, speaking the words he’d heard his father say to his mother hundreds of
time. It was a tender term of endearment he didn’t speak lightly, because it
meant he was surrendering a part of himself to Liz. The fact that he’d spoken
it in the tongue of his Scottish ancestors meant more.
And he did love her, more with each passing
day.
A smile turned her lips up, her expression
filled with wonder and confusion. “What did you just say?”
“I love you.” The weight of inevitability
crushed Austin’s chest just as surely as the relief of full disclosure caused
his heart to soar.
Liz straddled his lap, her arms winding around
him as she sobbed into his neck. “I love you, too, Texas.”
Austin crushed her to him, cherishing each inch
of her skin with the pads of his fingertips. He was no longer in a state of
alterity, because he’d unearthed that singular sense of contentment that only
came from finding the other half of your soul. His heart was no longer lost
because it was knit to hers, his whole world existing right there in her arms.
Their mouths joined, accepting and tasting one another, and Austin was well
aware that he was losing his way. Falling. Feeling. Compromising everything
he’d ever been told for one tiny moment. He felt the commotion of his chaotic
life calm to a crawl with each soft caress of her lips. Liz was stripping him
bare, and he was bargaining eternity for the love of a raven-haired angel who
was slowly taking him over.
Ashlynne Laynne is the author of contemporary
romance and the award-winning erotic paranormal romance succession, The Progeny
Series, as well as an accomplished songwriter and poet. She’s an avid horror
movie fan, admitted vamp groupie, and lover of all things Celtic. A hopeless
romantic, she’s always had a thing for the fanged ones and hot guys in kilts.
Ashlynne writes on the edge and combines erotica
and romance in sensual tales that always feature heroes with heart. In her
spare time, she enjoys cooking, reading, and spending time with her family. She
juggles the hats of wife, mother, full time employee and part-time writer,
hoping to write exclusively in the future.
Ms. Laynne is an advocate of autism research and is
currently working on a project to benefit the cause. She lives in the southern
United States with her husband and son.
~ ~ ~
Passion. Love. Music.
The Alterity Series is
not your ordinary rocker romance succession, and Austin Mackenzie isn’t some
caricature meant to epitomize the proverbial bad boy. His life is governed by a
generations-old code that influences every facet of his existence. When he
meets nursing student, Liz Carlisle, they discover a mutual passion for music
and one another.
This series is contemporary romance
intended for adults and contains adult sensuality, language, and themes.
Maybe I should give you the blurb once again to remind you of the book....
Who knew a truck stop post card would send Alexis Davis' life spiraling out of control only to discover a supernatural destiny that she never knew existed. Not wanting to follow in her mother's footsteps, she embarks on a new adventure. Armed with a fresh tattoo and desire for freedom, she winds up in the quaint fishing town of Reedsport, Oregon. Alex meets two men that awaken something frightening that was buried deep inside her very soul. Soon the lines between her past, present, and future become blurred. Now Alexis must decide who she can trust. A dark and mysterious coven that believes she is the only one who can restore their power that was lost long ago....or the two men who have hated each other for centuries because of her.
And the new cover...........................................
and of course you want the blurb of Eterna....
.
.
.
.
.
Faced with the realization that not only do witches, werewolves and who knows what else truly exist. Alexis Davis comes face to face with fate.
The Elekita have played their hand and now it is time for her to decide if she will rise to the occasion or succumb to her volatile destiny.
As Alexis’ power rises, danger seems to pop up at every turn. A past, present and future that span over this life and the lives that she has lost, haunt her every dream. Glimpses into who she has yet to be, cause her to question each decision she is forced to make.
Alexis comes face to face with revelations that may ultimately help or hinder. Alliances questioned as she heads full force into a storm built from revelations, secrets and lies.
While fighting for, not only her fate, but the fate of the world, loves seems to have picked a fight of its own. A choice between a dark and brooding Sebastian Gates and Jonathon Evans with his kind heart and tender soul is made more difficult as motives are questioned and truths become lies.
Can this life become the last?
Will Alexis tap into her control and finally get the answers she deserves?
TITLE – Liberty, second edition
AUTHOR – Kim Iverson Headlee
GENRE – Historical Romance (ancient Rome)
PUBLICATION DATE – Dec. 2014
LENGTH (Pages/# Words) – 462 pages/118K words
PUBLISHER – Pendragon Cove Press
COVER ARTIST – Natasha Brown
BOOK INFO - http://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/p/liberty.html
BOOK SYNOPSIS
They hailed her “Liberty,” but she was free only to obey—or die.
Betrayed by her father and sold as payment of a Roman tax debt to fight in Londinium’s arena, gladiatrix-slave Rhyddes feels like a wild beast in a gilded cage. Celtic warrior blood flows in her veins, but Roman masters own her body. She clings to her vow that no man shall claim her soul, though Marcus Calpurnius Aquila, son of the Roman governor, makes her yearn for a love she believes impossible.
Groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps and trapped in a politically advantageous betrothal, Aquila prefers the purity of combat on the amphitheater sands to the sinister intrigues of imperial politics, and the raw power and athletic grace of the flame-haired Libertas to the adoring deference of Rome’s noblewomen.
When a plot to overthrow Caesar ensnares them as pawns in the dark design, Aquila must choose between the Celtic slave who has won his heart and the empire to which they both owe allegiance. Knowing the opposite of obedience is death, the only liberty offered to any slave, Rhyddes must embrace her arena name—and the love of a man willing to sacrifice everything to forge a future with her.
FINGERS CRAMPING AND shoulders aching from having wielded the pitchfork all day, Rhyddes ferch Rudd tossed another load of hay onto the wagon. Sweat trickled down her back, making the lash marks sting. Marks inflicted by her father, Rudd, the day before because eighteen summers of anguish had goaded her into speaking her mind.
Physical pain couldn’t compare with the ache wringing her heart.
She slid a glance toward the author of her mood. He stood a few paces away, leaning upon his pitchfork’s handle in the loaded wagon’s shade to escape the July heat as he conversed with her oldest brother, Eoghan. She couldn’t discern their words, but their camaraderie spoke volumes her envy didn’t want to hear.
Her father’s gaze met hers, and he lowered his eyebrows. “Back to work, Rhyddes!” On Rudd’s lips, her name sounded like an insult.
In a sense, it was.
Her name in the Celtic tongue meant “freedom,” but the horse hitched to the hay wagon enjoyed more freedom than she did. Her tribe, the Votadini, had been conquered by the thieving Romans, who demanded provisions for their troops, fodder for their mounts, women for their beds, and coin to fill the purses of every Roman who wasn’t a soldier.
If those conditions weren’t bad enough, for all the kindness her father had demonstrated during her first two decades, Rhyddes may as well have been born a slave.
She scooped up more hay. Resentment-fired anger sent wisps flying everywhere, much of it sailing over the wagon rather than landing upon it.
“Hey, mind what you’re doing!”
Owen, her closest brother in age and in spirit, emerged from the wagon’s far side, hay prickling his hair and tunic like a porcupine. Rhyddes couldn’t suppress her laugh. “’Tis an improvement. Just wait till the village lasses see you.”
“Village lasses, hah!” Sporting a wicked grin, Owen snatched up a golden fistful, flung it at her, and dived for her legs.
They landed in the fragrant hay and began vying for the upper hand, cackling like a pair of witless hens. When Owen thought he’d prevailed, Rhyddes twisted and rolled from underneath him. Her fresh welts stung, but she refused to let that deter her. He lost his balance and fell backward. She pounced, planting a knee on his chest and pinning his wrists to the ground over his head.
Victory’s sweetness lasted but a moment. Fingers dug into her shoulders, and she felt herself hauled to her feet and spun around. Owen’s face contorted to chagrin as he scrambled up.
“Didn’t get enough of the lash yestermorn, eh, girl?” Rudd, his broad hands clamped around her upper arms, gave her a teeth-rattling shake.
When she didn’t respond, he released her and rounded on Owen. “As for you—”
“Da, please, no!” Rhyddes stopped herself. Well she knew the futility of pleading with Rudd. Still, for Owen’s sake, she had to try. Her father’s scowl dared her to continue. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “’Twas not Owen’s fault. I—” Sweat freshened the sting on her back, and she winced. “The fault is naught but mine.”
“Aye, that I can well believe.” Rudd grasped each sibling by an arm and strode across the hayfield toward the family’s lodge. “Owen can watch you take his lashes as well as yours. We’ll see if that won’t mend his ways.” The thin linen of her ankle-length tunic failed to shield her from his fingers, which had to be leaving bruises. Rhyddes gritted her teeth. Rudd seemed disappointed. “I doubt anything in this world or the next will make you mend yours.”
“You don’t want me to change. You’d lose your excuse to beat me.” Sheer impertinence, she knew, but she no longer cared.
“I need no excuses, girl.”
The back of his hand collided with her cheek. Pain splintered into a thousand needles across her face. She reeled and dropped to her hands and knees, her hair obscuring her vision in a copper cascade. Hay pricked her palms. Owen would have helped her rise, but their father restrained him. Owen blistered the ground with his glare, not daring to direct it at Rudd for fear of earning the same punishment.
Not that Rhyddes could blame him.
Rudd yanked her up, cocked a fist… and froze. “Raiders!”
Rhyddes whirled about. Picts were charging from the north to converge upon their settlement, the battle cries growing louder under the merciless afternoon sun. One of the storage buildings had already been set ablaze, its roof thatch marring the sky with thick black smoke.
Rudd shed his shock and sprinted for the living compound, calling his children by name to help him defend their home: Eoghan, Ian, Bloeddwyn, Arden, Dinas, Gwydion, Owen.
Every child except Rhyddes.
She ran to the wagon, unhitched the horse, found her pitchfork, scrambled onto the animal’s back, and kicked him into a jolting canter. The stench of smoke strengthened with each stride. Her mount pinned back his ears and wrestled her for control of the bit, but she bent the frightened horse to her will. She understood how he felt.
As they loped past the cow byre, a Pict leaped at them, knocking Rhyddes from the horse’s back. The ground jarred the pitchfork from her grasp. The horse galloped toward the pastures as Rhyddes fumbled for her dagger. Although her brothers had taught her how to wield it in a fight, until now she’d used it only to ease dying animals from this world.
But the accursed blade wouldn’t come free of the hilt.
Sword aloft, the Pict closed on her.
Time distorted, assaulting Rhyddes with her attacker’s every detail: lime-spiked hair, weird blue symbols smothering the face and arms, long sharp sword, ebony leather boots and leggings, breastplate tooled to fit female curves . . .
Female?
The warrior-woman’s sword began its descent.
From the corner of her eye Rhyddes saw her pitchfork. Grunting, she rolled toward it, praying to avoid her attacker’s blow.
Her left arm stung where the sword grazed it, but she snagged her pitchfork and scrambled to her feet. Unexpected eagerness flooded her veins.
As the Pict freed her weapon from where it had embedded in the ground, Rhyddes aimed the pitchfork and lunged. The tines hooked the warrior-woman’s sword, and Rhyddes twisted with all her strength. The Pict yelped as the sword ripped from her hand to go flying over the sty’s fence. Squealing in alarm, the sow lumbered for cover, trying to wedge her bulk under the trough.
With a savage scream, the warrior-woman whipped out a dagger and charged. Rhyddes reversed the pitchfork and jammed its butt into the Pict’s gut, under the breastplate’s bottom edge, robbing her of breath. She reversed it again and caught the raider under the chin with the pitchfork’s tines. As the woman staggered backward, flailing her arms and flashing the red punctures that marred her white neck, Rhyddes struck hard and knocked her down.
The warrior-woman looked heavier by at least two stone, but Rhyddes pinned her chest with her knee. She dropped the pitchfork and grasped her dagger, yanking it free. Grabbing a fistful of limed hair, she wrestled the woman’s head to one side to expose her neck.
The Pict bucked and twisted, trying to break Rhyddes’s grip. ’Twas not much different than wrestling a fever-mad calf.
Rhyddes’s deft slice ended the threat.
Blood spurted from the woman’s neck in sickening pulses.
Rhyddes stood, panting, her stomach churning with the magnitude of what she’d done. ’Twas no suffering animal she’d killed—and it could have been her lying there, pumping her lifeblood into the mud.
Bile seared her throat, making her gag. Pain lanced her stomach. Bent double, she retched out the remains of her morning meal, spattering the corpse.
After spitting out the last bitter mouthful and wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she drew a deep breath and straightened. As she turned a slow circle, her senses taking in the sights and sounds and stench of the devastation surrounding her, she wished she had not prevailed.
The news grew worse as she sprinted toward the lodge.
Of her seven brothers, the Picts had left Ian and Gwydion dead, her father and Owen wounded, the lodge and three outbuildings torched. She ran a fingertip over the crusted blood of her scratch, and she couldn’t suppress a surge of guilt.
Mayhap, she thought through the blinding tears as she ran to help what was left of her family, ’twould have been better had she died in the Pict’s stead.
The surviving raiders were galloping toward the tree line with half the cattle. The remaining stock lay stiffening in the fields, already attracting carrion birds.
Three days later, the disaster attracted scavengers of an altogether different sort.
CHARACTER BIOS
I am Rhyddes ferch Rudd, which in your tongue means Freedom daughter of Red. The blood of ancient Celtic warriors flows in my veins, though I am a farmer's daughter by the circumstance of my birth. My life spans much of the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of a very few men ever to claim that title who did not abuse his power for personal gain—but I care not who rules and who dies in this gods-cursed empire.
More than anything—even more than my freedom—I yearn to be my lover Aquila’s equal. As a foreign slave in an empire where citizenship stands paramount, where an arena fighter such as I can only be considered the equal of other gladiators, actors, undertakers, and whores, this goal seems impossibly remote. Although Aquila is the son of a powerful Roman, he has declared that he would renounce his aristocratic status, wealth, and power for me, but I cannot in good conscience allow him to destroy himself on my account.
And yet the gods have granted the impossible to other mortals. I pray that I am worthy to receive such a boon from them, for surely divine assistance is the only way for Aquila and I to bridge the vast social chasm that separates us from enjoying a future together.
AUTHOR BIO
Kim Headlee lives on a farm in southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, goats, and assorted wildlife. People & creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old house ruins—the latter having been occupied as recently as the mid-20th century—seem to be sticking around for a while yet.
Kim is a Seattle native (when she used to live in the Metro DC area, she loved telling people she was from "the other Washington") and a direct descendent of twentieth-century Russian nobility. Her grandmother was a childhood friend of the doomed Grand Duchess Anastasia, and the romantic yet tragic story of how Lydia escaped Communist Russia with the aid of her American husband will most certainly one day fuel one of Kim's novels. Another novel in the queue will involve her husband's ancestor, the seventh-century proto-Viking king of the Swedish colony in Russia.
For the time being, however, Kim has plenty of work to do in creating her projected 8-book Arthurian series, The Dragon's Dove Chronicles, and other novels under her new imprint, Pendragon Cove Press.
An amazing story! Definitely a keeper.
A must read. A good page turner.
A enjoyable read. An average book.
A book that has flaws and is hard to finish.
Terrible and couldn't finish it.
