Master of Salt & Bones by Keri Lake –> Review

Master of Salt & Bones by Keri Lake
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
Published by Indie
on April 22, 2020
Pages: 557
Genres: Romance, Dark, Gothic
Review Copy Provided By: Author


Goodreads
AMZ US
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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.

I was provided a review copy; this did not influence my opinion of the book.

❝It was my mother who first told me that there was no such thing as fairy tales with happy endings. That’s because she spent her whole life waiting for the white knight to come and rescue her from the life she so desperately tried to escape.❞

How does Keri Lake make me feel so much, Every. Single. Time?!?

Lake pulls emotions from her readers with every book, every story, every scene she writes. Whether that be outrage, disgust, fear, overwhelming sadness, swoon-inducing heart palpitations or ovary-bursting delight, her readers feel it all.

❝I went in search of the villain, instead, and found him alone and in pain, living in a castle of bones.❞

‘Master of Salt & Bones’ reminded me a bit of the fairytale Beauty and The Beast, but in a darker, more tormented, and demented way.

❝A darker version of my mother’s knight, whose armor had dents and cracks, and his hands sullied with blood.❞

Isadora Quinn was a music virtuoso, raised by her aunt after having been abandoned by her drug-addicted mother – her father wasn’t in the picture, and Isa didn’t know who he was. There was a mystery surrounding her father’s identity. While life was better with her aunt, it still wasn’t great. The two barely scraped by most days. Isa may have been musically gifted, but she was too poor to leave the lazy seaside town in which she grew up to pursue a career in music. So when a job became available working at the town’s only castle, Isa saw it as a way out, even though the town’s rumors warned against it.

❝A broken man who tasted of salt and depravity, and who took me selfishly, without apology.❞

Lucian was raised in that castle of horrors, living alongside his demented father and psychopath of a mother, his life was doomed to the chaos and misery he was destined to share. Not even the son was immune to the tortures that lay within. There was, however, more than a shred humanity beneath his stone-cold exterior. Although he kept it well guarded, other than when he hired someone to take care of his mother, it lay bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to be set free.

❝He’s the curse my mother warned me about. The Devil of Bonesalt, the Mad Son,❞

Either this was tamer than her other romance titles, or I’m becoming immune, but this story didn’t make me read only in daylight with my hands over my eyes. And I’m so grateful, because right now, with the way things are in our world, I needed a consuming read that didn’t completely disturb my mind while reading it.

‘Master of Salt & Bones’ was a chilling, passionate, and consuming dark romance that will leave you believing there’s good in everyone, and that even the darkest souls need love.

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