Leena Edenfrell is a Charmer, a human with magical powers who collects and wields the power of magical beasts. Normally, she would spend her life in idyllic Hireath, but she fell in love with the wrong man, who got her cast out for a crime he committed. Leena is forced to sell some of her beloved beasts to stay alive--an act absolutely forbidden among her kind--and she is on the hunt for the Myad--the one beast she knows can make the Charmers Council listen to her side of the story and maybe allow her back home.
Noc is the master of the guild at Cruor, feared assassins whose ranks are made up of people brought back from the dead, and he is struggling with a secret curse: anyone he loves will sicken and die from an incurable disease. While he doesn't have much hope of breaking the curse, a Gyss, one of the Charmers' beasts that grants wishes for a price, just might work.
Lena and Noc strike a bargain: he won't fulfill his contract to kill her if she provides person-specific beasts for himself and his three top assassins. But secrets from both their pasts catch up with them, threatening their newfound love and their very lives. The first book in the Beast Charmer trilogy by Maxym M. Martineau, co-founder of AllTheKissing.com, is witty and sexy, featuring a diverse range of people and beasts living in a fully imagined world. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.