By Sara Raasch
This is the second book in the connected but standalone romantic fantasy series “Magic and Romance”. Both books are mm romances that take place in a modern day earth – Philadelphia to be exact – where all things are the same except fantasy creatures and magic users are part of every day life. The first book The Entanglement of Rival Wizards is about two human wizards who manifest magic in different ways being forced to work with each other on a joint project. The reader is introduced to the world building on a need to know basis, so there is no end to what creatures or magic will show up. This allows the author to make up funny situations that the characters find themselves in, like dungeon monsters escaping and causing a rush hour traffic jam. Adventure parties are dispatched to keep life moving as normal as can be, when a magic user’s spell goes horribly wrong and sends city hall to another plane of existence. The focus is mostly on the romance with all this happening in the background, which creates the feeling of a contemporary rom com, but with a bit more of global conflict at stake, since sometimes Gods can’t help but meddle in everyday dealings of their worshippers.
There is demonic cults and kidnappings, recurring nightmares, cute outfits and things that can be with tails. Our two protagonists stumble and stutter around each other but are undeniably attracted to each other and can’t help but fall in love. One of the protagonists is a half giant pro “rawball” player, the other MMC is a manic pixie pink glitter and make up cheerleader. This is really a big boy protects cute smol bean boy story. It’s really not my kind of situation, but Raasch writes a cute love story with …compelling… spicy scenes. And she has a dropped in a few gags, like a repeating motif with a gossip tabloid show that covers pro athletes and their relationships.
What really shines here is the narration in the audiobook version. The book is told from the perspective of Orek, our half giant, and the narrator really captures the growly raspiness and possessive tone of the character but still able to portray his emotions in a believable way. Sometimes the more deep and gravelly a voice gets, the less emotional range the actor can portray but I really got the sense of Orek struggling with his feelings and also able to communicate meaningfully with his friends and boyfriend. Alexxo (awful name, but there is a reason it’s used) and some of the less masculine characters can run into a bit of a squeaky quality, which I didn’t quite like at first, but by the end of the story I wasn’t put off by it.
The romance is cute, the story has enough conflict and angst that we move away from ‘cozy’, although all this CR is pretty much cozy as even the conflict really only affects a select group of characters. I didn’t cry over the romance, which is my selling point for the best romance. But overall I enjoyed both the story and the narration and would easily recommend this book and this series to anyone looking for a cute and funny mm romance, with well written and just enough spicy scenes.
Technically the book is a standalone although the Orek is introduced in the first book, and the first books characters have major roles here. There are some major plot points from book one that are mentioned here, but this book takes place 5 yrs later, so the conflict here is completely different.
I gave this book 4.25/5 stars on Storygraph. The book is sweet like candy, fun to consume, no real nutritional or literary value, but also scores high with creative content and cute twinks.
