MASTER OF SALT & BONES
Genre: Gothic Romance
Author: Keri Lake
Release Date: April 22, 2020
When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He’d ride up on his white steed and break the curse I’ve been fated to carry since the day I was born.
Funny how things changed over time. How the fairy tale twisted into something far more crooked, darker than I ever imagined.
In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.
Lucian Blackthorne is as cursed as I am, and equally shunned by the locals, the fishers of men, who believe him to be the devil in the flesh.
Perhaps he is, with the way his amber eyes draw me in, ignite me like an infernal blaze. And the sins he whispers in my ear are as wickedly intoxicating as the man himself.
Yet, his touch is heaven and his will is my weakness.
He calls us forbidden, an unsalvageable tragedy, with no happy end. Maybe we are. But in this story, he’s the one who needs saving.
Together, we are madness. And there is music in madness and madness in love.
Magical, all encompassing, enthralling, with a dark undercurrent and a romance that’s literally to die for, this book was everything!
How do I even begin to review this book. Keri Lake is a master of her craft. She’s written some of the most memorable stories I’ve read to date. Her romances are unique and unlike any I’ve read before. And this goes double for Master of Salt & Bones. This is a shift away from Keri’s usual dark romance, but it’s still somewhere there in the middle. It’s a gothic romance full of mind blowing twists and jaw dropping secrets. It tells the tale of an unlikely romance between a mysterious recluse and the young ingenue that tempts him beyond reason.
Lucian Blackthorne. The Devil of Blackthorn. Just saying the man’s name gives me shivers. Keri has written some of my favorite antiheroes, but this man? He is something else. If you like tortured heroes, prepare to give your heart away. Lucian hides devastating secrets. He’s richer than sin and the town recluse for reasons that slowly unwind as the story unfolds. He’s mysterious, aloof, and ruthless when it comes to getting what he wants.
Isadora Quinn is a young woman with secrets of her own. She’s lived her entire life underneath the shadow of her mother’s sins in their small town. Desperate for an escape, she takes a job as a caretaker for Lucian’s mother. The second she enters the Blackthorne manor, life as she knows it, takes a turn.
There are dangerous secrets lurking in every dark corner. And the man that warns her off with every sharp bite of his temper holds the darkest secrets of all. He pushes when she pulls, and then he pulls when she pushes. Theirs is an intricate seductive dance of forbidden and dangerously alluring. Isa is everything that Lucian doesn’t deserve and can’t have, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t temp him beyond reason. She’s too young, but only in years. Hers is an old soul that has survived too much in her young life. But there’s something more that binds them. Something more dangerous. Something darker. Something that Lucian already knows he craves and Isa is only figuring out.
This book, y’all. GAH. It’s THICK. The story is a bit of a slow pace in the beginning as it sets the scene. But then right around the second half, it takes off like a bullet. I loved the dark allure and the sharp edge that this romance carried. It was a little depraved and a whole lot twisted. And this girl? Loved every single page.
This looks delicious!
It was AMAZING!!