Title: Burning for You
Author: Joel Abernathy
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 298 Pages
Category: Fantasy
Content Notes: Action violence, substance abuse, extreme enemies-to-lovers dynamics, nonconsensual ritual bloodletting, heat sex, knotting, technical suicide in a supernatural context (not self-harm).
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: For as angsty as it had the potential to be, the main conflict resolves quickly and without much drama or reflection. That said, though, Burning for You accomplishes what it set out to do: be an erotic tale of the corruption of souls, with a happy ending.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Most fallen angels fell for Lucifer.
I fell to save the boy I was created to protect, trading my freedom—and my soul—for his life.
Sterling, the twisted and immortal alchemist who now owns me, is hellbent on using me as the power source to resurrect his murdered lover. My blood provides enough energy to fuel his dark arts, but as the years wane, he turns to more intimate means that are entirely foreign to me—and his touch ignites a fire within me I wasn’t created to discover.
Now that he’s nearly bled me down to the last drop and still hasn’t succeeded in his blasphemous mission, I should despise him more than ever. And I do. But even though I know it means nothing to a straight man who still yearns for his wife’s embrace, the carnal bond our bodies have forged has drawn something far more unforgivable to the surface.
I’m beginning to fall for him.
Review: Adam Sterling is a monster, an accusation he wouldn’t bother trying to deny because he knows it’s true. He’s an unapologetic sadist who isn’t merely dabbling in necromancy, he’s attempting to perfect his sorcery for the purposes of resurrecting his dead wife. Even if it means committing cold-blooded murder to achieve his goal. Now, all his years of bloody trial and fatal error have led him to one conclusion: nothing less than an angel’s power will suffice to reach Purgatory and save her.
The only thing standing in his way is that he hasn’t tricked an angel into falling.
Yet.
To say that Sterling is obsessive, opportunistic, and singularly focused is not an understatement. He’d sell his own soul, and anyone else’s, as a means to his end. The longer he works, the more that work chips away at his humanity. He is not a kind or sympathetic character by any stretch of the imagination; he is callous, narcissistic, driven, and hubristic, and Joel Abernathy does not spend time making excuses for Sterling’s behavior or giving readers reason to seek redemption for him. Sterling is who he always knew he would become, and he didn’t care to stop.
Cael is not the most powerful of the angels. He’s young, in the grand scheme of angelic longevity, and a guardian who succumbs to Sterling’s machinations, falling into a trap that meant he was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving the boy he was meant to protect, even if that act of mercy meant being forever banished from Heaven, and making a slave of himself to Sterling in the bargain. As such, Burning for You is not a romance novel in the strictest definition of the genre. It is a story of corruption and of good and evil. It’s also one of a battle of wills, a test of faith, and it straddles the fine line between love and hate which blurs into something like addiction with the introduction of an Alpha/omega angle.
For as angsty as it had the potential to be, the main conflict resolves quickly and without much drama or reflection on Sterling’s part, leaning more so into the supernatural bond with Cael than giving him time to reflect on why what had been an obsession for centuries was suddenly so easy to let go. That said, though, Burning for You accomplishes what it set out to do: be an erotic tale of the corruption of souls, with a happy ending.
You can buy Burning for You here:
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