❤️‍🔥 happy pub day ❤️‍🔥

Book: Bewitched
By: @laurathalassa 🖤

GOOD THINGS CHECKLIST:

✔️ paranormal romance!! think witches, mages, & werewolves

✔️ A PET PANTHER (& he is sassy) 🐈‍⬛

✔️ FMC is a witch trying to get into an exclusive coven BUT using her powers causes her to lose memories 🤯

✔️ dark, angsty, insanely powerful MMC looking for revenge on who cursed him

✔️ the most gripping love/hate relationship, throw in some spice, and stir it all up with some mystery and potential mistaken identity?? 😩 I WAS HOOKED

✔️ first in a new series and OH BABY I'll be needing book 2 ASAP because this one was just tooooo good

available TODAY!! & it's on KU for all my kindle babes out there 🥰 shout-out to @read_bloom and @netgalley for the advanced copy!

What a great first in series. I've seen a lot of Laura's books but, never got the chance to read them and I'm so glad that I read this book. This book was so wonderfully told and I can't wait to read more books by Laura.

I was expected a light fantasy romance, but I got way more than that and I really really like it. Overall it's an entertaining captivating adult fantasy romance read for me.

It's a complex fantasy romance with lots of angst and enemies to lovers trope (one of my fav tropes) and there's a dash of mythology here and there. Love the magic, it's our world but magic, witches, werewolves is common, although normal people still kinda unfamiliar with the magic, it's like there's separate places between normal human and magical creatures, they're just coexist.
This book really brings all the feelings for me, I can feel the frustration, the desperation, the anger, the sadness and the steaminess really got me squirming.

As for characters, I love Selene a witch with unique power and a panther as a familiar, yups this one is a badass character. Then there's Memnon, for now I hate this A**hole, at first I thought okay, he's a sexy king but and who doesn't love a sexy handsome cunning King, but the more I read gah this King really an A**, but hey let's see in the next book, if this king can redeemed himself.

If you're looking for a steamy entertaining fantasy romance with enemies to lovers trope, this one is perfect for you.

You want an awesome dark fantasy romance novel full of witches, curses, and an ancient warlord sorcerer that manages to bespell a vulnerable witch into opening his well-hidden and buried sarcophagus and lifting a 2,000 year old curse? You want that sorcerer to be sexier than sin, possessive like a barbarian, Machievellian and vengeful, and yet still have space in his dark heart to truly care for you?

Oh yeah, you’re going to absolutely love Bewitched.

Laura Thalassa is absolutely a reliable author of the character-driven dark fantasy romance novel. Her men aren’t good men–they’re definitely callous and unemotional to start out with and surely strung along the darker shades of the greyscale. Her women are feisty and often out of their element with their male love interest to start off with: a little lust drunk, unsettled by their power and mood swings, and yet they learn somewhere along the way how much power they hold both as women and as lovers.

This first installment in this series is heavy on exposition, to be sure, but the characterizations of Memnoch and Selene don’t suffer for it. If anything, the exposition helps to fill these characters out, to help us understand Memnoch’s motivations, goals, and experiences, and to also help us get a glimpse into Selene’s anger, frustration, weaknesses, and strengths. In essence, Thalassa wields exposition in the manner it’s meant to be wielded: showing us instead of merely telling us.

There is a lot of magic flying around in this book, and while there is a nominal effort made to explain the magic system, I still found myself a touch confused at times. I’m going to chalk it up to this being the first installment and there was so much going on in this book that it’s likely we’ll learn more and more about the magic in this series as it moves on.

There is also a lot of plot running around. Besides the main plot between Memnoch and Selene, there’s also two (maybe even three?) subplots running under the surface that keep the pacing flowing nice and steady, waiting there to mix it up so us readers aren’t simply sitting here reading your standard romance novel. There’s some heft to it. Some pizzazz. It’s simply a great read and a great win for Thalassa under her new imprint.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. Any thoughts, views, ideas, or opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Read/Fantasy Romance/Romantic Fantasy/Paranormal Fantasy/Urban Fantasy/Dark Fantasy/Fantasy Series/Book Series/Romance Series/Contemporary Romance/Dark Romance/Paranormal Romance/Spice Level 2

Believe the hype, this book was worth every page. Bewitched is a wonderful witchy Romantasy with a morally gray MMC that is quite literally willing to burn everything down in order to be with the FMC. I was truly rooting for Selena the FMC throughout her journey in this book, but I have to say my favorite character is her familiar. I can’t wait to see what happens next in this magical world.

This was one of my anticipated reads for 2023. Wish I could say that I loved Bewitched but sadly this didn’t work for me. No ill intended, all just my opinion. The writing was fine but the language style didn’t seem to match up with the modern day setting.

Anyway, I’ll keep it spoiler free as possible.

Selene is a young witch trying to attend the coven of her dreams. Her powers are among the rare sort, as the use of magic comes with a cost. This being her memories. After her first rejection and a possible second, Selene takes a trip on a new magical quest in hopes to accomplish a nearly impossible task. Unable to remember why she choose her particular destination, events start happening that leads Selene to awakening the cursed sorcerer called Memnon. From then on there’s a dynamic playing out between Selene and Memnon throughout the book, but sporadically. More about that below.

The heroine was kind of hard to read, Selene is overly stubborn and quite naive when it comes to common sense. She makes many silly decisions because she believes others will see her magic as weak. So she doesn’t look or ask for help til she’s desperate for it. Some of her decisions I understand but not others.

The hero, Memnon, has the whole possessive-ish alpha male vibe which I do like in the books I read. He’s also has this obsession in wanting Selene’s acceptance as his wife. For a being that has been cursed into a sleep for many many years, he has acclimated to modern times rather quickly. Some how. Sadly we don’t get enough time with him as a lot of the contact with Selene is through a mind connection until we get more towards the last quarter-ish.

The dynamic between Selene and Memnon is simply based on this distant feeling she gets when he’s near over anything else. The heroine has a hot and cold thing going on. She’s her normal self when it’s just her but then she’s lost to sudden attraction when they’re face to face. Those times all seem to play out much the same for a good chunk of the book.

The romance was definitely lacking for me. It’s more with following Selene and her coven experience and the mystery surrounding the nature of dead witches. Then the romance comes through. I had a hard time understanding that. There’s some cursed man who followed you back. One that believes she’s his wife, separated for a few thousand years. I doubt he’d give her much room to breathe as he did. Even if he was scheming, I would think he’d want her under his thumb more.

I must say I was terribly excited to read this book because this author is widely known to write gripping urban fantasy romances. She did not disappoint. This story was exciting from page one. We are aware of witches, sorcerers, and shifters so far. The idea of the FMC losing bits of her memory whenever she used a lot of her magic is intriguing and adds to the tension. The first-person POV enhanced the book's premise and added to the reader's experience as we experienced what our FMC experienced as she tried to catch up to what she was forgetting. (That sentence sums up my enjoyment while reading this book.) It actually was very trippy at times. I loved it.

The puzzle only gets more fragmented as we move through the book; we are given snippets of the potential of Selene's power. It's proving to be more than she ever knew. But did she at one time know this but forgot? It's all such a puzzle. Memnon adds more facets to the puzzle. He's obviously still very attached to her, but what happened? Is she Roxilana? Or maybe a descendant? Who knows? We have not even touched on the murder mystery. Then we're left with a delicious cliffhanger and tons of unanswered questions. A fascinating mystery is being woven, and I am here for it.

I need the next part now, I don't know how I'm going to cope with the anxiety because this book left me on the edge of everything
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Laura Thalassa knows how to make me addicted to her characters and their story. I want to know more about Selene, about Memnon, about all her characters, I need to know more about everything!
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There was a moment of doubt in which I did not understand if it was a story of soul mates and destiny or of wizardry, but then the werewolves appear and with supernatural human beings that twilight mix between of Jacob vs. Edward is created, and I understood that it is all that and more
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Selene is a young witch who all her life wanted to enter this school/ college, that is like a coven of whizardy, that her best friend is part. But every time again she is rejected by the council as she has a rare condition that causes her to lose her memories
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But due to a strange event, the council decides to admit her if she gets a familiar, an animal-shaped spirit guide on whom she can lean and achieve a magical mission of her choice
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Selene ends up discovering an ancient tomb near Peru, with a sarcophagus where its occupant seems asleep and without understanding why his body reacts to it, ends up waking him up
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Memnon has just woken up in this world two hundred years later and believes that Selene is his wife, his queen and even worse that she is the one who betrayed him and locked him up all this time
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Just as Selene begins to settle into the coven, a murderer begins killing witches and leaving them in his wake and this ancient king re appears when she least expects it vowing revenge
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This book has everything, mystery, love triangle, challenges and destiny with spicy scenes and the promise that you will not be able to stop reading
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I really enjoyed reading and unraveling this plot, every time they touched on the subject I wanted to hear more about this ancient civilization and especially about the history of this ancient king and his mistery tomb. I'm so intrigued about how this story is going to continue, how Selene, after this ending, acts. I'm so here for it and I'm going to be aware of every sneak about it
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Thanks to Laura Thalassa and Sourcebooks bloom books for give me a copy of this beautiful book in exchange for my honest and voluntary opinion

This is fantastic, I don’t think I’ve read a book by Laura Thalassa that I haven’t been addicted to. Although I will say I’m unhappy with that cliffhanger, just because I need book 2 now and I don’t have it, I’m so impatient. This was everything I hoped for and more, strong female lead, an antihero who develops across the book and you want to hear more from, dark and very interesting romance, I can’t recommend this enough, if you’ve read Laura’s books before you’ll want to read this so bad, if you haven’t what are you waiting for


I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Bewitched is a captivating tale that pulled me into a world of enchantment and destined love. The narrative is crafted in a manner that entices one to continue reading, making it a true page-turner. This magical read is impossible to put down.

Lauren Thalassa has absolutely created an amazing novel that is sure to fly off of the shelves. Everything from the romance, to the plot and overall story was absolutely incredible. I cannot wait to see what she writes next!

Thank you to the Publisher and the Author for providing me with the ARC.

Bewitched is one of my top favorite books for the year 2023. Ever since I'd seen this book on Laura's social media, I wanted to get my hands on it, like, real bad. And when I found it on NetGalley, I HAD TO HAVE IT.

Bewitched is a paranormal romance and the first in the series, featuring a strong heroine, a hero hell-bent on revenge, and a dark and twisted romantic tale, full of suspense.

Laura Thalassa's writing style has a way of pulling you in and keeping you hooked till you reach the end. The story is very unique, The plot and the characters' storyline are developed so well, it kept me on my toes, questioning every action and motive, and the twist in the story at the end!

Selene is a witch, looking to join Henbane Coven, an academy for witches. She's asked to do some tasks after which she would be admitted to the coven. I found Selene to be a really interesting character, The cost of her magic is her memories - every time she casts magic, she loses a random memory. This intrigued me because I wondered how that would come into play, especially when dealing with the anti-hero.

Selene takes up the assignments, which leads her to unlock an ancient being called Memnon. Memnon mistakes her for his wife who has betrayed him and swears to take revenge on her and possess her.

Of course, Selene fights back (or tries to), and therein lies the entire story--which you honestly need to experience for yourself.

Talking about Memnon, OH BOY. Memnon's the classic anti-hero, you'll love to hate and hate to love. You'll doubt his motives, fall for him, hate him, and be intrigued by him. He elicits so many emotions. And with the book in the heroine's POV, you're riding that rollercoaster of emotions and thrill.

Memnon is obsessed with Selene, he believes she was the one who cursed him in their past life and wants her back BUT at the same time wants to take revenge.

Their relationship is FIRE. Selene is scared of him, but she can't deny the connection between the two. And Memnon is all about her - and that's one of my favorite tropes (boy obsessed).

This book is a wild ride to the magical dark side. It is captivating, thrilling, addictive, and leaves you wanting more and more.

I can't wait for Book 2.

I love this. I can't say it enough. I went into this with high hopes because I adore this author. I was not disappointed. The FMC is relatable, and I LOVE that the world they live in makes it so magic comes with a price. I am weak for enemies to lovers, and i adored that this went back to enemies. Slow burns can be frustrating at times, but not this. I loved this. This was wonderful and I can't recommend this enough.

I've really enjoyed the two Laura Thalassa series I've read so far - they're dark, sexy, and engrossing - so I was super excited to receive an ARC of Bewitched and I wasn't disappointed!

Synopsis: Selene is a witch whose power manifests in a very unusual way - whenever she uses her magic, it eats up some of her memories. She's desperate to be accepted into a coven/witch's school but they are hesitant to take her on, suggesting that she should first find an animal familiar and also go on a magical quest through the wilderness. Selene wakes one morning and finds that she has booked a trip to the Galapagos (and has no memory of doing so) for her quest, and while she is on the plane she hears a magical voice calling to her and feels a power pulling down the plane.

Selene uses her magic to safely land the plane but the voice is still calling to her. She follows it through the jungle until she finds a crypt, where she finds who has been calling her and awakens Memnon, an ancient warrior whose wife Roxilana put a curse on him...and he thinks that Selene is Roxilana.

Memnon follows Selene back to the school, where he continues to insist that she is his wife, whom he once loved but now hates for cursing him, and that she has just lost the memories of the truth. To make matters worse, there is a string of murders occurring on campus, and when the police start to look at Selene, her memory issues make her seem like a possible suspect...

Review: This book was so enchanting, the magical world of witches, sorcerers, and shifters was so interesting and not difficult to understand. I really liked Selene's character. Despite the issues her magic causes for her, she is desperate to be part of the coven community and to use her powers, having developed a system to try to write everything down and be able to keep her memories as much as possible.

Memnon of course was SUPER HOT and dark and surly. He obviously loves his wife Roxilana but is incredibly pissed at her for cursing him and is vowing to get his revenge, and those warring feelings make him hot and cold with Selene. It's sexy and frustrating and I loved it. I will say that there wasn't a ton of spice in this book but the couple of spicy scenes were super hot! I think the next book in the series will be amped up for sure.

The mystery around what is happening on campus and who is responsible for the deaths was interesting but I felt like it wasn't quite developed enough to fully keep my attention - I was definitely more focused on Selene and Memnon's relationship and whether or not she was really Roxilana. The mysterious deaths and magic felt a bit slowly developed but hopefully things will become clearer in the next book! I think this book was good at getting everything with the different storylines set up and I think things will be a bit faster paced in the next book, we definitely were left on a cliffhanger and I can't wait to see what happens next!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloom Books for this ARC!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
I was so looking forward for this book and it delivered. I really enjoyed it. I loved Selene as a character and the premise is so interesting. As for Memnon I'm conflicted. For the most part I liked him as a character but then I think he got a bit to far with his actions so I'm not sure how everything will resolve and how Selene will be able to forgive him. We didn't really get any answers and that ending killed me. It's going to be an agony waiting for the next book

I really loved the idea behind this and the story in this book. I think it is a good first book to a promising series. Selene, a witch, unfortunately loses her memories in exchange for using her powers. Because everything has a cost when it comes to magic. With that, she is having a difficult time getting accepted into a coven so she takes a trip to find the things that the coven asked her to submit to be accepted in. In this journey, she awakens Memnon, a cursed sorcerer who has been asleep for thousands of years. Once awakened, he believes Selene is his long lost wife who cursed him to his long sleep and now he wants revenge. The story takes off from there with other things going on throughout the book with the romance subplot. This book is slooooww burn, like real slow burn with enemies to lovers to enemies (which i loved). I thought that Selene is such a fun FMC that you like from the start. Memnon is a broody man who instantly has you falling for him, he is also such a good MMC. And when i like the two main characters, I know I am going to enjoy the book and the series going forward. After reading this book, I am very excited for the next one!! I can't wait.

Bewitched by Laura Thalassa is a fantasy romance novel with a subplot of mystery about witches. Our main character is Selene who is a witch working to get accepted at Henbane coven which is a school for witches. Selene has never wanted anything more than to be accepted at Henbane. The only issue is that every time she uses magic, she loses a memory. The more magic she uses, the more memories she loses. Henbane sees this as a problem and tell Selene she needs to complete a magical quest and find a familiar before they will accept her. That is how Selene finds herself on a plane to South America. During her flight she hears a voice in her head and magic seeping through the plane. The next thing she knows, the plane is crashing in the rainforest. This is where the voice draws her to a tomb and she awakens the sorcerer Memnon and finds her familiar in the rainforest. Memnon follows her back to Henbane and thinks she is his long dead wife.
The first thing I have to say about this book is that it would be a great fall/Halloween read. There are lots of spells, potion making, and overall witchy vibes that put me in a fall mood. The romance between Selene and Memnon was also different from anything I have read before. Memnon is convinced Selene is his wife from 2,000 years ago who put him in that tomb. Selene is constantly telling him that there is no way she is his wife Roxilana. However, Selene can't deny the magical connection she feels with him. Memnon basically ends up stalking Selene and is extremely posessive. You can expect things like "touch her and you die" and "who did this to you" which are always great tropes to see. I also enjoyed how Selene's memory loss was written. You would see her experience something at one part in the book and later on see her surprised to hear about it because shes forgotten. These details made everything more realistic. I also really enjoyed Selene's familair who is a panther. Usually familiars are something basic like a house cat and the panther was a surprise that I loved. The only thing I did not love about this book was how spells were cast. In this world, the witches make up a rhyme to do a spell. To me, this just seemed really juvenile in an adult fantasy book. It reminded me of something I would see on a kids TV show and that was cringy to me. The last thing I will say is to beware of the synopsis of this book. I read it and saw something that did not happen until the very end of the book. It would have been a good plot twist if I did not already see it in the synopsis. Overall, this was a fun and enjoyable fantsay that was easily digestible and I highly recommend it. I am now on the lookout for details of the second book since this does end on a cliffhanger.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloom Books for the ARC in exchange for a review!

I really wanted to give this book a very high rating, but I found it to be pretty average. Laura Thalassa is an author that is hit and miss for me and Bewitched is more of a miss than a hit.

Selene Bowers is a twenty year old witch who is desperately trying to get into the school of Henbane Coven. Thalassa's world building is set up to have supernatural creatures do college through approved supernatural schools and for the most part, this works to convey Selene's age and lifestyle. Selene is also hampered by memory loss every time she does magic. This payment was such a great aspect to the story and I liked the uniqueness that magic does come with a price. Selene is finally accepted into the coven school after pursuing her project of getting a familiar and having a magical journey. Unfortunately, this magical journey consists of a plane crash and the waking of a 2000 year old sorcerer that thinks that Selene is actually his scheming wife in disguise.

And this is where we veer into regular Thalassa territory. My issue with a lot of Thalassa's books is that her characters really don't change from book to book. The female main character is always young and there is an attempt for her to be seen as not like other girls. The male main character is always older, overbearing, and most times veers into AITA territory. This book was just not an exception and that's where it started to lose me.

Memnon and Selene just have no chemistry together. The parts where he invades her dreams to make her see him sexually are just ick, the parts where he invades her life and insists she is the scheming wife are just ick. He gives her no agency and there is no way that I buy any sort of relationship between them.

The other aspect of this book revolves around witches being murdered, but after being the main plot for several chapters, it is left to the background. I'm sure these dangling plot threads will be picked up again, but I'm not sure if I'm invested enough to read the next book.

Overall despite the three star rating, I was rather disappointed in how this book worked for me. I think fans of Thalassa will glom it up, but if you are on the fence, I say to check it out from the library.

I received this book from Sourcebooks Bloom Books for review purposes.

Received an Advanced Reader’s Copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

Laura Thalassa had long become an auto-buy author for me. I can’t recall which series of hers I read first.. maybe it was The Vanishing Girl, but I’m one hundred percent certain it was both The Bargainer series and The Fallen World Series that sealed the deal for me.

The Four Horsemen series was something very different and Laura Thalassa for the most part pulled off writing books with the same plot thread that need to be executed differently. The only book in that series I haven’t read is Death, but even without reading it I know it’s going to be very different from the previous three.

When I read the blurb for Bewitched, I was quite frankly bewitched. The idea sounded so very different from anything she’d written before this and I was super curious how this book would be. I practically fell over when I saw my approval for Bewitched sitting in my mail. I couldn’t wait to dive in and see what world those pages hid for us.

Long story short, I was not disappointed.

The book starts off by setting the tone of the story, the voice of the protagonist and her situation. The base setup was complete within a few chapters and I enjoyed the way Thalassa chose to do that. The chapter after that is an explosion that blasts open doors straight into the meat of the story. From that point onward the book flies.

If you think about it, this book has a very different relationship graph than is typical for a story with romance in it. Typically the couple meet, there’s a trope that is followed and eventually they fall in love. This book follows no such thread. As the blurb says, the heroine is thrown into a situation where she is mistakenly considered the love interest of an ancient being called Memnon, the Cursed. The writing throws everything over its head and Selene lives every day at a time, her optimism and strength pushing her forward despite her circumstance with a dangerous magical being and of course, her personal situation where her using her powers result in her losing her memories.

These two situations are the primary plot threads, but there are many many interesting sub-plots that add to the complexity of the narrative and complicate the nature of the heroine’s life. There’s one beautiful line that Selene thinks to herself, questioning why everything about her must be viewed in the lens of what she doesn’t have, instead of everything she does. I enjoyed that line immensely and hugged that line to my heart.

Laura Thalassa has always been the queen of anti-heroes and she does no different in this book. The graph, again, is very different from what she’s done before and what we may have seen before. Often anti-heroes begin as villains and reveal themselves to be anything but. The graph of Memnon’s presence follows no such pattern. Everything is turned on its head and the book leaves you wondering who betrayed whom in actuality.

The book ends of sorts in a cliffhanger. It’s not devastating, because Thalassa builds to it, but it’s still a cliffhanger nonetheless. The book was about 7K pages on my Kindle, which must be about 500 pages in print format; I devoured it in practically one sitting. It was a breeeeeeze to read. Additionally it was so funny, I couldn’t stop all the giggles. A special mention to Nero, who’s—I feel—the actual protagonist to this whole story.

The writing is as addictive as always and while the book worked on such a serious subject, it didn’t feel heavy most of the time. It was light and a swift read (despite being such a big book filled with so many things that happen). But I have a feeling the sequel to Bewitched is going to be more serious than this one was, given the circumstances that this book ended in.

Five stars. Eaaaaasy. Happy reading and as always check trigger warnings!! I’ve mentioned a few here, highlight to read: There’s blood, violence, gore, drugging and kidnapping of a minor, grotesque creatures, misuse of power, betrayal by a loved one to name a few.

Well.

I'm struggling to rate this. Lots of stuff happens, and yet it felt like nothing happened. It was long and meandering, and I just kind of wanted it to get to the point, but it never really did.

It's frustrating when authors make it blatantly clear that a relationship is incoming and yet insist upon forcing in third wheels, either to inject a bit of sexy bits on the page before the main dish gets together or to try and create a facade of inner romantic turmoil which we all know is a crock.

Memnon is an asshole alpha, tall and buff and dark and brooding and all the things we love about asshole MMCs. He acts like a macho stereotype jackass, and whatever, that's fine, because that's who he is.

What I hated was how vehemently Selene loathed his actions and then turned into a puddle of goo because wang. It made it so that I couldn't possible respect her, and I actually grew to really dislike her and wish the worst for her. AND we aren't even given any graphic banging to offset it. I could maybe almost sort of understand if she was dickmatized to some degree, but she never actually gets the dick. (spoiler)

Yada yada yada, I don't want to read the next one.