Kelly Meade

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Mages, Vampires, and Loup Garou oh my!!!! What a gem this book is!!

Opening Sentence: “Brynn Atwood observed the entrance to McQueen’s Auction House, as she had done for the past few minutes while she gathered the courage she needed to leave the safety of her rental car.”

The Review:

Brynn Atwood is a Magi and her ability is a to see the future, be it near or farther away. Sadly, in the eyes of her community this ability is weak and undependable, making her a worthless member of her society. However, Brynn loves her father and is determined to prove her worth. So she sets out to observe and somehow protect her father from his future murderer. Rook is a Black Wolf and the youngest son of an Alpha, and he is who she is out to stop.

Quickly Brynn finds that all is not what it seems, and soon the biggest mystery is not who is going to kill her father, but who is killing loup garou’s. As Brynn gets closer to the McQueen’s, they are caught in a race against time to find out who is killing off towns full of loup garou’s and who is after Knight, Rook’s brother. Will her vision’s be able to save them, and will they be able to have love despite the differences in their races?

For a long time paranormal was my go-to genre, although I admit I was in love with many long time series, and now that I am really reading all kinds of books and not a particular genre, I find that my love for it has fallen away. It’s hard and rare to find a book that is different. I mean they all focus on different things, and each author has their own world and quirks with vampires, and werewolves and sometimes mages. But this book sucked me in from the start, I loved the background, and learning about the different races, and it was just new and fresh for me.

I loved this book from the start, Brynn doesn’t have a lot of self confidence in the beginning, but as she grows, learns, and is supported and encouraged. Brynn blossoms into a major player with a total understanding of the Loup Garou’s. The McQueen brother’s are a total swoon fest, and I can tell from the titles of the other books that they are actually the major focus of this trilogy. However, the book is mostly told from Brynn’s point of view. It does have moments where the other characters are the ones telling what is going on, but it isn’t broken down into chapters with that kind of focus.

Cornerstone is the sanctuary town that the McQueen’s run, and in this world a sanctuary town is what the Loup Garou’s call the communities that they live in. The town is filled with Loup Garou’s and the humans that do live there, know about their nature, and together they work to keep the human community in the dark about supernaturals. It is really interesting that for the most part humanity plays very little role in this world. Humans exist and are around, but are completely oblivious to the Magi, Vampires and Loup Garou’s. I think I need to go buy the next books in the series. So if you love paranormal or it’s been a little dull for you lately, read this book now!

Notable Scenes:

“She was certainly the only person who’d showed up today intending to prevent a murder.”

“Brynn Atwood might walk alone into a loup sanctuary town, but she wouldn’t walk in unarmed.”

“For her useless powers that had done nothing to save the loup garou family she was growing to care about.”

“Brynn answered his question with actions, rather than words.”

“Something about the magi that was relevant to everything happening today.”

“Hearing those words spoken so plainly drove them home in away his own musings never had.”

FTC Advisory: Intermix/Penguin provided me with a copy of Black Rook. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.… (mer)

I'm always cautious going into a new urban fantasy, but this was a really decent, surprisingly bloody read. It's somewhat similar to Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs - its matter of fact practicall ruthlessness with no embellishments worked well for me.


At the same time the main heroine was a bit of a self-sacrificing doormat, and I'm hoping she will step up her game in the future books in this series. She already started showing her claws closer to the ending of Black Rook, so I'm hopeful.


The world-building is localized but solid, and the tight-knitted pack of loup-garou living in a sanctuary town was a pleasure to read about. McQueens as a family were lovely, strong and loyal to each other, and I enjoyed their interactions more than Brynn and Rook's love story. Sorry, "mates meant for each other" has never been one of my favorite tropes.


As to the narrator, Xe Sands was fantastic, and only added to my positive experience from the book. Overall, this is a promising beginning of a new series, and I'm sure I'll be listening to any new installments. Recommended.… (mer)

The conclusion to the Cornerstone Run Trilogy is here. Knight has not had an easy few months. He was held prisoner and raped by the hybrids and then had to deal with the fact that one of them got pregnant and was killed by his pack. Now the woman he loves, Shay, has been kidnapped by the hybrids and he wants her back. Shay is the daughter of an alpha. Her whole run was murdered by the hyrids in book one and she has had to crawl out of the emotional hole that those events left her in. Now her crazy half sister has kidnapped her.

We get a lot of feelings in WHITE KNIGHT. Knight has to work through what he's been through and Shay has grown a lot and is now in a position to finally fight for herself and her relationship with Knight. The relationship between Knight and Shay has been a long time coming and I enjoyed watching it unfold. The pace of book 3 is a lot slower than book 1 and 2. The couple isn't together for the whole book and that made this book feel a little different than the previous books as well.

This has been a great trilogy to follow. Book 1, Black Rook, was my favorite of the three, but I really loved the connections and continuation of events that all of them brought. I enjoyed getting to know each and every character and I loved that we still got to follow each couple even when their books were over or hadn't started yet. i was happy with the conclusion that WHITE KNIGHT brought the conflict to and I really loved the glimpse we got a few months down the road at the end. I hate to see the characters go, but they all got their happily ever after and I couldn't ask for more.

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.… (mer)

Reviewed by: Rabid Reads.

Knight’s character has been growing on me throughout this trilogy which is why I’ve been impatiently awaiting this last installment with bated breath. White wolves are this universe’s unicorn, and this final HEA has been quite the arduous battle, thus I expected a glorious conclusion to the McQueen family’s adventure via the middle brother. WHITE KNIGHT was a far cry from being the grim story that I had anticipated; yes there was still darkness and death, however for the most part Knight’s tale was about healing and moving forward. It was an uplifting way to end this series, but the radical about-face made for a somewhat bumpy read.

There’s no disputing it, Bishop and Rook ARE alpha males, while as Knight is more of an emo werewolf which was what made him so unique, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s incapable of getting his claws bloody when the need arises. Or at least, that was my take on it anyway. Regrettably, McQueen’s part in this story was rather humdrum in that he didn’t rescue his lady, barely contributed to offing the antagonist, and instead spent the bulk of his time talking about his feelings. Kudos to him for finally getting the words out; however heartfelt confessions don’t exactly make the pages fly by.

Shay definitely wears the pants in this CORNERSTONE RUN relationship, and this story was just as much hers as her mate’s, although I unquestionably enjoyed her role tenfold in comparison to Knight’s. She showed courage while at the mercy of the hybrids, loyalty to Chelsea & Leopold and unrelenting patience to her beloved. I was also happy to see her own her alpha daughter status by supplying Bishop with tactics to help defeat their enemies, and offering up ideas on how to improve pack life. This book would have been hella boring without her.

Ok, that’s not entirely true, I liked the plot a great deal as well, and Meade wrapped up all of the threads to my satisfaction, even a few that I had completely forgotten about or didn’t realize were linked to the bigger picture. I actually found myself hating the hybrids less and less, and Atwood more and more as the truth surfaced. The Paul Melina aspect was inspired, and the Dell Jones incident was further validation that the author left no stone unturned. This novel would have felt incomplete without an epilogue, so I was immensely grateful that Meade decided to go the distance, and deliver the flash forward that I craved.

WHITE KNIGHT was the light at the end of the CORNERSTONE RUN trilogy. ~ 3.5 stars… (mer)