Title: Lost Soul
Author: Karenna Colcroft
Cover Artist: Winterheart Designs
Publisher: MLR Press
Amazon: Buy Link Lost Soul
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Length: 220 pages/67000 words
Rating: 3.25 stars out of 5
A guest review by Sirius
Summary: Insta!Love strikes again, this time in the form of a mysterious soulmating connection in this story with likeable main characters, whose actions sometimes did not make much sense to me and I wished for stronger magical world building.
Blurb:
Sorcerer Joel Turcotte fuels his magic with pieces of people’s souls–and now he has found the strongest soul he’s ever encountered in Lanny Hollister.
Sorcerer Joel Turcotte fuels his magic by stealing pieces of people’s souls during sex. Since he caused the death of his lover a decade ago, he’s careful to only take small pieces, but he regrets each one. When he meets Lanny Turcotte, he finds the strongest soul he’s ever encountered, and one that’s almost impossible to resist. Although Joel is reluctant to become involved with anyone, he and Lanny begin a relationship.
But Joel isn’t the only sorcerer who wants Lanny. Can Joel protect his lover from other sorcerers—and from himself?
Review:
This is a really tough review to write. While there were quite a few things I liked about the book — the writing style; the tension scenes where the bad guy was involved was written really well; “the push-pull” between him and his prey was fun to read; and the chemistry between our MC was there as far I was concerned — the Insta!Love was just too much for me. Perhaps the fact that they had a magical connection could help you swallow the “I love you” after one day of knowing each other and moving in together after a week (albeit a very intense week, but still one week). Sometimes, when the chemistry is very convincing, I can shrug off my dislike of Insta!Love and make myself say “oh, they are in love because it is magic”. Oddly, I almost did it in this story — almost, because as I said, I enjoyed Joel and Lanny together, only not quite.
Lanny acted in turns stalkerish (I know it was supposed to be endearing and it almost was), a somewhat-normal man in magical love and just plain out silly. For example, he was so afraid of the bad guy that in a few days he decided that bad guy just won’t bother him anymore and it was safe for him to just go about his business? Granted I see this plot twist in different stories often enough, when the writer needs the prey to meet the hunter so to speak, but I still prefer that the reason the bad guy can hunt would make some sense and not one of the guys temporarily losing his brains.
As the blurb tells us we have a soul eating/stealing/cutting whatever magic in this story. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using fantasy as pure window dressing for romance, but I still need that magic to act consistently overall and not have it depend on whatever the next plot turn needs it to be, and I thought that couple of times here it just served plot needs. I also wished to see other uses for the magic in this world besides soul stealing, making certain things in bed easier for them, but I guess we are back to the fact that fantasy settings are developed only as much as to allow romance to take course. I mean once we see Lanny conjuring food for himself, but it felt like a throaway episode rather than consistent world building detail.
I liked Joel and his struggle to take only little bits from people’s souls fueled by his guilt about what happened to his former lover, but then again, considering what he does with Lanny later on, I wondered about consistency again.
I also thought that the book, while adding on the happy note, left the possibility of a sequel very wide open.
I think I could probably recommend the book if you are a fan of this author, and I will definitely check out her backlist.
The author’s name is Karenna Colcroft.
Sorry about that Enny. I will correct the spelling.
It does sound like a really good book. i love sorcerers!
But I can see how the insta!love would be off putting. It’s something I’ve come to overlook in m/m romance.
I love sorcerers too Larissa. I love magic – it was part of the reason I chose this book. I hope you enjoy it if you decide to get it.
Thanks Sirius! Don’t have anything to add to the discussion, but wanted to say thanks for your time and work.
Hope your week goes well!
Thank you Reggie, it was very kind of you. Hope your week goes well too.
Great review Sirius! This one hadn’t been on my radar in the first place, but I’ll more certainly skip it now. Insta!Love is one of my biggest pet peeves, it’s just so hard to do it believably (IMO).
It feels like it is in every novella I pick up these days Jeayci. Do you have the same feeling? And it is not like I have anything against this plot turn – as you said, just make it believable, just make it Instant attraction if you dont have a page space to develop a falling in love believably and then just pace it appropriately, make it clear that they still have the room to grow in their relationship after knowing each other for such short period of time. Of course this is just a wish list, nothing more and only for me, I know there are readers who love it, I cant really deal with it well, as a rule. From my recent reads I enjoyed how Kate Sherwood did it in Shift and actually come to think of it, the book which I will be reviewing next week has okay variety of the Insta! LOL, but overall I am not happy with this plot twist.
I agree completely! I think that’s one of the biggest reasons short stories so rarely work for me, unless they’re about a couple I already met in a novel.
I think the only times when Insta-Love works for me is in paranormals with the fated-mate thing (and sometimes that just drives me bonkers :lol:) and other very rare cases when there’s a good explanation for it (like I described in The Chimera Affair).
Like I think you’re saying, I’m happier with a believable HFN than an implausible HEA. They meet, they have issues, they confess their undying love and suddenly live HEA is just not a recipe that works for me. I believe HEA takes time, and work, and is an ongoing process that you have to keep working on and recommitting to. And it involves accepting that the other has really stinky farts, or foot-in-mouth disease at dinner parties, or always forgets to put the milk away, but those are all worth putting up with to get to share life with this amazing person. But that doesn’t fit the Disney and Hollywood image of riding off into the sunset, so I guess it doesn’t sell as well. :wallbash:
Yeah, our sharing a brain continues :). Usually in short/er stories I am definitely happier with believable HFN than extremely rushed HEA 🙂
And I just saw that Chimera Affair is available on Amazon and bought it, will definitely let you know what I thought 🙂
I’m really looking forward to finding out your thoughts on Chimera Affair, and I hope you love it as much as I did! 🙂