Review: Viscounts & Villainy by Allie Therin

Title: Viscounts & Villainy

Series: Roaring Twenties Magic: Book Three

Author: Allie Therin

Length: 327 Pages

Category: Fantasy, Historical Romance

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: Come for the magic, stay for the romance, bask in a world where danger lurks and heroes are made and happily ever afters are earned.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Love redeemed them, but the past isn’t done with them yet.

New York, 1925

For jaded Lord Fine—Wesley, to the friends he’s surprised he now has—falling into his lover Sebastian’s world of magic and intrigue has changed everything. But when a plot to destroy magic is linked to Wesley’s own aristocratic world, he’s determined to root it out—especially when it threatens newly vulnerable Sebastian.

Sebastian will never regret sacrificing his magic to save Wesley’s life, even if life without magic is challenging and sometimes dangerous. But now he faces the biggest danger yet: infiltrating Wesley’s viscount circles to find a villain, without magic to protect them, because Sebastian’s magic is gone forever…isn’t it?

Joined by old friends, Wesley and Sebastian follow the clues from New York’s speakeasies, across the ocean to England, and finally to a duke’s country estate. Always one step behind, they must race against time to stop those responsible and end the threat to the world, and magic, once and for all.

Review: When Arthur and Rory burst onto my scene in Spellbound, book one in the Magic in Manhattan series, I was not only awed but also fully aware I’d stumbled across something special. Allie Therin has done nothing less than leave me dumbstruck ever since, in the way only an author who builds fantastical worlds and characters and stories can do.

As Wesley, the arrogant, disaffected and surly Lord Fine, took lead, the challenge was to make me tolerate—let alone like and eventually love—him. The only person who could accomplish this task was Sebastian de Leon. As Wesley works tirelessly to keep people at arm’s length, it’s Sebastian who works his way into those arms and leaves Wesley with no recourse but to love for all he’s worth. Sebastian brings Wesley to life. Sebastian makes Wesley fierce. Sebastian is the key to Wesley’s locked-down and rigid temperament.

Their romance plays against a backdrop of villainy and xenophobia towards those who are magic. That Sebastian was part of the magical world until he gave up his power to save Wesley’s life does not exempt him from the dangers chasing them across the ocean. As the threads of the story unravel, they are rewoven into something stronger. They become the fabric of Wesley’s courage to not only accept but to admit that he loves Sebastian beyond anything he might have imagined himself ever feeling.

While this is the conclusion of Wesley and Sebastian’s story arc, I hope this isn’t the last we hear from these characters. All of them: Arthur and Rory, Wesley and Sebastian, Jade and Zhang. Their magic may be intact, but surely this world harbors more adventures for them.

Come for the magic, stay for the romance, bask in a world where danger lurks and heroes are made and happily ever afters are earned.