Mark of the Raven, The Ranchero's Love, & A Bound Heart {Triple Book Review}

Lady Selene is the heir to the Great House of Ravenwood and the secret family gift of dreamwalking. As a dreamwalker, she can enter a person's dreams and manipulate their greatest fears or desires. For the last hundred years, the Ravenwood women have used their gift of dreaming for hire to gather information or to assassinate.

As she discovers her family's dark secret, Selene is torn between upholding her family's legacy--a legacy that supports her people--or seeking the true reason behind her family's gift.

Her dilemma comes to a head when she is tasked with assassinating the one man who can bring peace to the nations, but who will also bring about the downfall of her own house.

One path holds glory and power, and will solidify her position as Lady of Ravenwood. The other path holds shame and execution. Which will she choose? And is she willing to pay the price for the path chosen?

This whole book was amazing. But the characters were....wow.....and I mean wow in a good way. These characters were conflicted, had fears and doubts, and felt so real. I really felt I knew Selene (I mean....as much as you could). And Damien was the type of guy that you wish you knew in real life. The rest of the characters were amazingly well done and each had their motivations for things, so no secondary characters felt like secondary characters.

I don't think it would be proper to call the "romance" a romance because it wasn't really a romance, per se. Confusing, yeah. It will make more sense once you read it. But if it was a romance (which I'm hoping for in book two) then it was amazing.

The worldbuilding was also incredible! It takes a little to fully understand what the Houses are and their parts but it is so thought out and very believable.

One of my favorite parts was the symbolism with the light and the dark. It took me a while to fully grasp it but once I did....wow......It was very powerful.

Um....nothing. This was a truly amazing book!

There was a girl who got raped and Selene sees it in her dream. There is also mention of an affair.

This shouldn't shock anyone xP

5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House in exchange for my honest opinion.



She is running from her past… from the love she can't have…from the inescapable horror of her future. 

Rosalinda knows she will never escape her past, both the choices forced on her and the mistakes she's made. She longs to find a place to live in peace-where she can learn to mother her children and where Lucio Armenta won't be a constant reminder of the love she can never have. She doesn't count on her inability to avoid the ranchero, or the threats to her children and the burgeoning fear she has for them. 

Lucio wants to marry. However, Rosalinda, the only woman he's ever been attracted to, doesn't meet the ideals he's set for his future wife. When he discovers she, and her adorable brood, are accompanying him as he delivers horses and goods to his sister and brother-in-law, he objects. An objection that is overruled. He resolves to keep his distance as much as possible. A resolution he finds impossible to keep. 

When secrets from Lucio's past are exposed, and Rosalinda faces choices no woman should have to make, will their growing love, and their faith, survive? 

I always enjoy books whose theme is that of salvation. The theme that, no matter what you've done, you can be saved. Well, that was the theme of this book, and it was pretty well done.

The characters, for the most part, were done very nicely. Some did annoy me sometimes, and some characters did act like secondary characters, but for the most part, they were done very nicely. Rosalinda and Lucio were very interesting main characters and had a well fleshed out past, which initiated most of the conflict. Their internal conflicts didn't seem forced and were well written.

Rosalinda's children were so adorable! I love when writers write books with children as a focal point, and this book had it done very well. The children did actually seem like children and were not overly annoying.

I also enjoyed the setting. Aside from the American Girl Josefina books, I don't think I have read a book set in the Hispanic part of America. As a Hispanic myself, I very much enjoyed reading a book in a setting that I could sorta relate to.

I also sorta liked the romance. It was a kinda strange romance, but it was, at the heart of it, very sweet.

Something that bothered was how Rosalinda's personality changed. One minute she would be flirty, then serious, then crying, then angry, till you're just like, "Woah......wut just happened"

Some of the conversations were rather stilted, and it was a little jarring to read.

And yeah, the romance, I mean, it was fine and cute and all, but something felt....off. I can't tell what, but something was a little odd.

All of Rosalinda's children were born out of wedlock, and her lifestyle before she was freed was clearly that she was forced to be with a man. Throughout the book, there is this person who harasses her and the ending he is about to force her to do things with other people but she stands up for herself. And with the whole theme of the book, Rosalinda did not come from a clean past. But I will say that it was done rather tastefully.

I liked this book enough to give it

4 stars

I received a free copy of this book from BookCrash in exchange for my honest opinion. 



Though Magnus MacLeish and Lark MacDougall grew up on the same castle grounds, Magnus is now laird of the great house and the Isle of Kerrera. Lark is but the keeper of his bees and the woman he is hoping will provide a tincture that might help his ailing wife conceive and bear him an heir. But when his wife dies suddenly, Magnus and Lark find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of accusations, expelled from their beloved island, and sold as indentured servants across the Atlantic. Yet even when all hope seems dashed against the rocky coastline of the Virginia colony, it may be that in this New World the two of them could make a new beginning--together.

Laura Frantz's prose sparkles with authenticity and deep feeling as she digs into her own family history to share this breathless tale of love, exile, and courage in Colonial America.

First of all, the setting of this book was GORGEOUS. Just that opening sentence and I felt like I was right with Lark on the cliff in Scotland. I really enjoy Scottish and Irish stories and this book was made extra enjoyable because of that. Franz has an amazing capability to describe her settings and it made the book that much better. The setting really blew me away. A very well described setting adds a lot to the book and yeah, the setting and description were amazing.

The plot was also very interesting. It was something that I don't think I've seen done, and throw in all the settings was really great. The plot was just very well done overall.

I also really liked Franz's writing style. This isn't something I point out often (I think), but I don't normally notice the writing style. So it has to be really bad or really good writing to catch my attention. Luckily, this writing style was really good.

The characters were also en pointe (yes, ballet pun). I really enjoyed reading Magnus point of view. He was so serious and so good. Lark was also a great character and all the rest of the characters on the Isle of Kerrera were great and felt like real people.

Franz could have taken this romance in a whoooole other direction, especially since Magnus is married for about 1/4 of the book. But when stuff finally does happen and Lark doesn't hear from Magnus and yeah and there is THAT guy and yeah. You really learn to root for these two people even though they are able to marry (kinda) but separated.

I think the only thing that bothered me A LITTLE is that Lark was one of those girls with whom ALL the guys fall for. But that's it.

Larkin's mother was said to be a woman with low morales, and when the officers' pick their favorites it is clear what they are for. And Lark is almost forced to do something she clearly doesn't want to.

No surprise here!

5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from Revell Reads in exchange for my honest opinion. 

Have you read any of these books? Do you want to? Which one seemed the most interesting? Which one are you most likely to read?