Series: The Conduit
Release Date: May 31st, 2017
Arsyn Henley has had a rough life growing up. All the universe has ever done, is take every loved one she has ever had and give deep rooted scars—both on the inside and out—in return. When a relative she never knew about dies and leaves her a cabin in the mountains, she’s eager to start over with a new life. She could never have guessed her new life would be riddled with secrets about her family, new people to love and most of all magic beyond her wildest dreams.
Enter the four dashing Kismet brothers who take this broken girl on a metaphorical magic carpet ride through the world of Jinn—beings who grant the wishes of the human race—and slowly put back together her soul with pieces of their own.
But where there’s light, dark is soon to follow. Can she find the strength to accept her new reality and the people who come with it bringing all the beauty of love and light to her? Or will she falter and beckon the darkness to take her away as it’s own?
*This is a 400+ page Reverse-Harem series with some disturbing sequences of events, mild language and is recommended for ages 17+*
• BIPOC characters
• LGBTQIA+ characters
• characters with a disability
And doesn’t address fatphobia
• Attempted murder (Past, Heroine’s foster parents were abusive)
• PTSD (a by-product is the Heroine goes into rages when she feels out of control)
• No OW/OM
• Does have the Heroine pushing away
• Does have a separation between the Heroes and Heroine
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.
Rating: 3.25/5 stars
Make Me A Wish surprised me. When I start a new series that the book is RH, my expectations are not for the book to be a literary masterpiece. The RH genre is one that I was only recently exposed to–within the last year–and while there are (surprisingly) a high number of them, not all are the perfect amount of intriguing plot, believable and captivating characters and erotica. Sad to say that many RH fall into the pit of not being able to identify the varying men as separate characters. Therefore, RH romances usually fall into three spectrums: a group of friends (2+ guys and only one girl) who slowly develop their friendship until they’re all dating her, except they aren’t having sex. These types of RH books–in my experience–are ones with many books in the series. The other type revolves around scandalous group sex and evolves to the point where the group naturally forms a committed relationship. The final spectrum is perhaps the most common, where there’s a paranormal edge to the story. This sub-genre allows the author to surpass the taboo of an RH romance and underwrite it as usual in the paranormal culture s/he’s creating. Make Me A Wish falls into the last spectrum.
Bluntly put, this book is not the best RH I’ve read, but neither was it the worst. I have to say that it surprised me–in a good way. While being in a multiple-person relationship is normal for Jinn, in Make Me A Wish, the author brings in a unique twist where the Conduit (singular) has their Jinn (multiple) isn’t strictly: Conduit = Female and Jinn = Male(s). Although in this story, the Conduit is Female and all her Jinn are brothers. The author does an OK job of differentiating the heroes… I’ve read RH romances where you couldn’t tell at all which hero was who. But, I think the affinity of each of the brothers helped the author better distinguish them.
A favourite character-type of mine are resilient heroines. These heroines don’t necessarily have to be physically badass (like Aelin Galathynius), but instead, they’ve lived through horrible stuff, but they’re smarter–and in a way–better for it. Syn had the horrendous past and was very resilient to live through it. However, the times where I found she freaked out–to like an excessive degree–about some things (ahem, finding out magic’s real) seemed a bit out of proportion. However, through continuing the book, I discovered that her “rages” are linked to her powers as a Conduit. So, I’m assuming the author will expand on that in the second book.
What grabbed my attention the most about Make Me A Wish was how much I simply enjoyed reading it. As previously mentioned, I’ve read many other RH, but this was an easy read that made me laugh. My two biggest complaints, however, was the fact that the conflict that happened at the end between the guys and her was so apparent during the whole book, it was like everyone, but Elijah knew how badly she would react. Second, was the “bad guy” (of this novel that is, not of the series) you read like two chapters and came across him.
While the friendship (and light romance) was sweet, the real driver of the story was Syn learning she wasn’t human and why exactly she was hidden from the Jinn community. There was a lot of (not so subtle) foreshadowing, so her destiny is not a huge question mark. The story captivated my attention enough that I’m looking forward to reading the next book.
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