Unfortunately this book was incredibly boring for me. I could see how others would like and find it interesting and would absolutely recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of vibe, it was just not for me.

I was gutted that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The sexual aspects of the story seemed quite random (like others have also mentioned). It did feel more servitude than/slavery and there wasn't really the romance that I expected. It's a shame because I feel like this book had a lot of potential in parts, I just think it fell a bit flat for me as a reader. There were parts that felt disjointed and confusing, and needed more explaining for me to understand what the intent was behind it.


Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this. I'd like to say I'd still be interested in reading this authors work in the future, possibly to give a different book of theirs a try.

Of Auras and Shadows is a fantasy story focused around Heroes and Guardians. Eryn, a Hero, unfortunately gets paired with the lowest ranked Guardian, Rina. It takes a while to understand the caste system in the story. Everyone is suppose to be seen as equal but, you can see the cracks in the foundation of the beliefs. Okay, the sexual aspect seemed so random and weird in this world. It was more of servitude/slavery, and not romantic at ALL. I think the story had a lot of potential but, a lot was confusing and you are kind of thrown into this world without any explanations. Ultimately, Eryn has to decide if she is going to fight against a system which she is benefiting from. I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t really enjoyed this book. I got thrown into the story with no explanation for anything like the world. I still felt like I had more questions than answers for what was going on the whole time. It seemed like there where emotional moments happening, between characters but with no real background or dialogue. The romance parts didn’t really feel romantic. The writing of some scenes felt quite mechanical and awkward. I think the premise and concept could’ve been there, but unfortunately did not really enjoy it.

Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.

I had high hopes, and every single one of them was dashed. I found this book unreadable; I DNF'd at 15%. From the first page, the author left me wanting more: more world-building, more exploration of the character's motivations, and more plot development. “Today marked the next step on her journey to being the woman the Community needed- choosing her guardian." What is the Community? What are guardians? Why does she need one? What is her role in this society? Why is the society structured in this way? What causes the distinction in roles in the Community? Who is the Goddess? Why do they worship her? Answering ANY of these questions within the first page would have made me more likely to want to keep reading and make me want to turn to the second page.

Unfortunately, the whole book was like that: many questions and few answers. This book felt unedited from a grammatical and content perspective. When I read lines like, “Sex with her guardian had always been the least of Eryn's concerns." My jaw was on the floor. This line comes entirely out of the blue. Why the hell do guardians have to have sex with their heroes? There was zero conversation or world-building that explained the expectation of sex that Eryn implies. It doesn't make sense with the world-building, the plot, or anything. The relationship dynamic between Eryn and her guardian made me deeply uncomfortable. It felt like the guardian had no agency over her own body, and she only lived to elevate and serve her hero.

This book had potential. It should have been developed and reworked in a way that made all the points I mentioned earlier clear and helped the reader understand the characters and their motivations better. This book never had beta readers, and it shows. (allegedly)

I do not remember when, if ever, I had such a hard time reading a book as I had with this one...

I got excited when I read that this was a romantic fantasy sapphic novel, as that is not something I stumble across often. However, to my disappointment, it did not meet my expectations.
There was little to no explanation of the plot, why it was happening, or an in-depth description of the mythology that otherwise played a big part in the book.

The romance aspect felt awkward and unfinished. At no point was the time taken to make the reader connect with the characters, their personalities, or their relationships.
The characters came off as two-dimensional with little interesting about them.

In conclusion, this rough read felt unfinished, unloved, and without heart.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an advanced reading copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley & Bold Strokes Books for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review! This was my first arc read, so I’m honored to have been given the chance to do this!
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Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book. We seemed to have been thrown into the story with little to no explanation for anything as far as the world. After several long chapters, I still felt like I had more questions than answers for what was going on with the assurance that this feeling was not intentional.

This was especially true when it came to character relationships and connections. It seemed like there were big emotional moments happening, in grief or love, between characters with zero background or dialogue. This is especially true for the romance, which was advertised as a main genre for the book but ultimately fell flat for me.

The romance didn’t feel romantic at all. In other words, there was no part of me that was screaming, crying, or throwing up as the relationship unfolded. I didn’t find myself cheering them on, because frankly I didn’t know what I would be cheering for. The explicit scenes felt like they were included willy nilly, with no real connection or purpose behind them. The writing for these scenes was quite mechanical, unnatural, and awkward.

I agree with some of the other reviews I have seen that address the writing. I agree that this book could have used some additional rounds of editing as there were often redundancies or descriptions that seemed to go on much longer than necessary, especially since it was rare that something of value toward the characters or world building could be gleaned from such descriptions.

While the plot does pick up about 40% of the way through, I ultimately found myself trekking through to complete the story rather than engaged. I would also argue that this is fairly far into the book for the plot to only start to gain some pace. There were several opportunities at this point for something of note to occur for our characters that just never did.

Overall, I think the premise and concept could’ve been there, but unfortunately did not really enjoy how it was executed. Giving this one 1.5 stars rounded up.

As a side note, this book gave me Silo vibes for sure in the type of dystopian novel it was.

Of Auras and Shadows is a very unique story but I thought it was ok and the author did well.
3.5 stars


Thank you, Bold Strokes Books, and NetGalley

Rate - 4
Spice - 1

This book was a beautiful fantasy representation of a LBGTQ relationship between two strong women. This story was amazingly written with great world building and character development.

I couldn’t ask for a better novel. I like a little more spice in my books but this is a great YA book. That shows great romance, love, community and family.

If you loved Divergent, this book is for you!

Of Auras and Shadows is a captivating story set in a dystopian world. Rina and Eryn, Guardian and Hero, come together despite all odds to help their community flourish within an ichor shield amidst the Dark Lands. Did I mention the Dark Lands are full of dangerous shadows and dire beasts?

The world building in this book was unique and enjoyable! The main characters were relatable and I adored their journey. The ending felt a bit rushed compared to the rest of the book, but I will always appreciate a good HEA.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!

I really enjoyed the second half of this book. Unfortunately, I wasn’t terribly engaged before that but persisted cause I wanted to give it a fair shake.

The book is fantasy and dystopian with a mystery element and some romance. We follow dual narration from Eryn, a “Hero,” and Rina, a “Guardian,” as they work together to save their community from what seems like impending catastrophe. There is Sapphic romance and class commentary and a communal society with some good ideas and some Very Bad Ideas as well.

Rina is everything. Unfortunately, most other characters are horrible. Even the other MC is semi-horrible. The book knows these people are horrible and that is part of the point, but it made it hard for me to care about the fate of the Community. Eryn’s semi-awfulness also gave me some distance from the central romance. I wanted Rina to have a fulfilling relationship with Eryn because that is what Rina wanted, but the other woman spent so much of the book self-centered and lacking self-awareness. Eryn’s growth is part of what made the second half more engaging.

The second half is where the plot gains momentum. Once the Commander began enticing Rina with the promise of information, I found myself invested and motivated to finish the book.

It was tough getting to the point where the book was really absorbing. There is a lot of world building that happens in the first half and I understand that it is necessary, but some of that world building is confusing. The sheer odiousness of many of the characters also slowed down the book when there wasn’t plot momentum to balance that out.

However, I would try something else by this author. When the book worked, it really worked.

Exciting adventurous story. The dome in which they live is slowly diminishing. Heroes and their guardians are sent out to obtain the ichor that will save their community. They have to fight the shadows who seem to,want to stop them. Eryn's guardian Rina is not convinced they are doing the right thing. This is the story of what transpired and what they found out about the shadows.

Unfortunately, I DNFed at 14%. The story (from what I could tell) and world building is actually really cool! I’m just not a huge fan of a lot of sex in my books and this one was talking about sex in the first chapter. I tried reading further to give it a chance but sex and the relationship between guardians and heroes kept being brought up so I’m guessing the sex aspect just gets heavier as the book progresses.

Thank you for sending it to me. I’m sure there are a lot of people who will love this book, I’m just not the target demographic.

Three stars for cool world-building

The worldbuilding was very good. I really enjoyed the crafting of the different castes, how everyone plays their parts in the Community, the safety of the dome, and how everything outside the dome is unsafe.

The main characters were a little flat and two dimensional, but likeable enough.

My biggest issue was the forced relationships due to the nature of the bonds between guardians and heroes, which implied a lack of consent.

I received an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley on behalf of Bold Strokes Books in exchange for an honest and fair review.

This is an adult fantasy and follows the greatest Hero in the community, Eryn, and the highest ranking guardian who are prophesied to be the saviours from the corruption, shadows and darkness that lurk outside their communities protective dome. However when her guardian is killed Eryn is given Rina, the worst-ranked guardian as a replacement and one the one guardian who has spent her entire life trying to prove that shadows don’t always lie. She always fights for the right to love her hero unconditional rather than accepting it as she is supposed to. Eryn and Rina were great characters to follow on their journey to find love and learn the truth about there Community’s system.

I was always taught if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all. This was my first book by this author and I was excited by the premise of this book as I love fantasy, but this fell flat on its face.

The story revolved more around the greatest hero and her guardian's sex life than any plot I could see. I couldn't get into the story at all and there was way too many sex scenes that seemed forced and like it had to happen, not that they wanted it too.

I enjoyed the world building, but that was all. The writing was hard to follow and I didn't enjoy the story. This is just my opinion, others may enjoy this story.

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is an adult fantasy book. I found that the story didn’t seem to go anywhere at the beginning. There was much about the relationship and sex between the greatest hero and her guardian, this possibly one sided and maybe magically forced. But the author brings the story to an exciting conclusion, and by then everything is explained.
Thank you to Bold Stroke Books, Inc and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.


Eryn is prophesied that she and her guardian will save the Community but things go wrong when her guardian gets killed. Eryn wonders if what have been seen is true when she teams up with Rina who isn’t the best guardian but she shows that she never quits. When Rina realizes the threat maybe not be outside forces but within will Eryn accept that Community may not be what she always thought it was. It took me a minute to get into because of background world building but it’s move more along as I read I didn’t really like the romance because how it was set up and although I warm up to Eyrn she felt so full of herself. Love the magic and fighting was the best part.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

And I am going to be very honesty when I say that unfortunately I think that this book was poorly written all-around. I usually really hesitate to give a book only one star, but I genuinely can't say that I would rate this book alongside anything I've given a two- or three-star rating because there is no particular aspect that I feel like it succeeded at. I will do my best to be thorough in explaining why.

The writing itself was fairly clunky and seemed as if it needed at least another round of editing. Sentences like "Keddeth gave Rina a soft smile as if to acknowledge her pain, as if he could possibly understand the depths of her pain" are common, reading like somebody is trying to pad out a minimum word count for an assignment. There isn't that much in the way of vivid or stand-out description (though there are definitely some good lines), and in some cases the descriptions veer into the realm of feeling tonally odd or out of place (eg. describing the smell of blue cheese wafting towards a character as she approaches a mangrove forest).

The plot is fairly slow to develop: at 36% of the way in is where any overarching narrative whatsoever shows itself, and our characters had already made three trips into dangerous territory where, aside from being attacked on the very first one, nothing of note happened whatsoever - no major discoveries, no plot advancements, nothing. (Comparatively, by this point, there have already been 5 sex scenes.)

This seems very harsh to say, but the characters felt like puppet caricatures attempting to imitate human behavior. At first I thought that Eryn's stilted and self-centered way of thinking was written as a deliberate way to showcase the attitude of superiority and indoctrination that had been educated into her, and to a certain extent it was, but then I realized that everyone in this book has the same stilted, somewhat mechanical speech. People are falling in love and having life-changing sex and mourning each other before having had so much as a single real, on page conversation (even those unaffected by certain revelations about bonds); those that have known each other for much longer are having emotional about-faces that strike me as unsettling at best; and the internal narration of emotions for our characters feels very simplistic, almost like it's been written for a middle grade book.

There is also a lot of explicit sex in this book, but I can't say that I found it interesting to read. That preference is something that can vary wildly from person to person, but at least personally I found that the context of the rest of the book and its approach to relationships to make the sex scenes feel genuinely weird and disconnected from reality in an unattractive way. The way the characters talked to each other felt like they were awkwardly reading an amateur erotica script rather than speaking genuinely or naturally.

The one thing that I would genuinely compliment is the worldbuilding surrounding trees. I don't think it's very thought-through (it boils down to "everything outside the safe zone is a carnivorous semi-mobile predator, including the trees" which is a comically unrealistic way to maintain an ecosystem), but it was at least pretty cool to read about trees that not only need to visibly breathe to eat bugs, but also pretend to stop doing so to trick larger pray into approaching.

Overall, I really did not like this book and if it were not an ARC that I felt honor-bound to finish, I would likely have DNF'd it. As it is, I did end up speed-reading to get through it.

This was such an amazing story!!!! Eryn and Rina were great characters to follow on their journey for ichor. The world building was so very unique that you couldn't help but want to read more. Luckily, I started reading on a Saturday morning, or I'm sure I would have had sleep deprivation going into work the next day. Ms. Karter does an amazing job of telling her story in a new way that I've never seen before. This is her second book I believe, and having read both of them as an avid Sci-Fi/Fantasy fan, I soooo very much hope for more to come. Definite read and make sure you have time that day because you are going to want to finish in one sitting!