Heart of a Witch by
Rebecca L. Garcia Pages: 307
on December 14, 2021
Series: Embracing the Darkness #2 A vengeful fantasy standalone romance perfect for fans of The Bridge Kingdom and A Touch of Darkness
I’d never particularly liked humans, but I’d never wanted to kill one. Until now.
Hidden in a kingdom that hates witches, I’m forced to hide what I am. With my sister working in a secret dark magic club, and our family’s shop gaining unwanted attention, things couldn’t be worse when the notorious witch hunter, Damian Shaw, comes to town.
When my sister shows up dead, and my family’s name is called into question, we’re forced to adopt new aliases and leave the home we cherished. As I watch my life fall apart, I vow to destroy the hunter responsible, but his punishment would not be swift. Death was too easy.
Redforest is a quaint town, with a church, pretty shops, and like any good town, a dark past. When my family and I move in, I set my sights on the Shaw family, quickly learning everything I can about them. Damian’s son, Elijah, is the hunter’s greatest pride. His heir. His confidante. The only family he trusts.
I come up with a plan. I am going to shatter every good thing in Damian’s life, ending with his son. My goal: make Elijah Shaw fall in love with me, twist him into the very thing his father hates, then kill him.
With my heart challenged, the attraction growing, I find myself trapped in a deadly game. In a twist of fate, Elijah might just end up being the death of me.
Embraced by Darkness is a collection of standalone books set in the same world without an overarching plot, which means you can start with any books in the series and pick and choose which ones you want to read. This collection of novels follows different couples as they go from enemies to friends to lovers, while facing dangerous obstacles in a world split between humans, shifters, witches and gods, set in two kingdoms that separate them.
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Heart of a Witch is a new adult paranormal romance by author Rebecca L. Garcia. This is the second book in the Embracing The Darkness Collection, but it is a total standalone. The cool thing about the Embracing the Darkness Collection, is that the books are all set in the same world, but there is no overarching plot, which means you can read the books in whatever order you would like, or pick and choose which books you are interested in. They are each standalone stories.
Heart of a Witch is a dark story. It really explores good and evil themes, and has some interestingly morally gray (sometimes dark gray) characters. Here we meet our two main characters, Victoria, who is the cautious oldest daughter of a witch family in hiding, and Elijah, the son of the most famous Witch hunter (Damien). When Damien kills Victoria’s younger sister, Tori promises to seek revenge on him. So her and her remaining siblings move to the witch hunters small town and start to infiltrate his household. Elijah and Corbin were interesting because they already kind of saw their father for who he really was on the inside. I found it interesting to see them already half way against him as the witch hunter. Elijah has no interest in continuing in his father’s footsteps. It was a unique take on this enemies to lovers romance, because normally the son of this type of a character believes in the cause at first, but that was not really the case here.
I was unsure what I thought of Tori at first, but I grew to appreciate her as a character. I loved Elijah and his younger brother Corbin the most. I will admit, I thought this book took a while to get going. The beginning foundation is important to the story, but it was my least favorite part. Once Tori, Alex and Cas met Elijah, I thought the story started gaining some good momentum and I was more and more invested. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the book at first because I was on the fence about liking or disliking Tori, and the world was so dark I was worried that Heart of a Witch was going to make me very sad, but then when the siblings moved to the Witch Hunters town, the story shifted for me. And it continued to get better and better as it went on. I liked the romance between Tori and Elijah, but I do wish more time was spent on developing it and watching it blossom between the two of them. I know there is only so much time in a single book, but it was my favorite aspect of the story so I wanted to see more of it. I was happy with the way the story wrapped up and overall, I ended up really enjoying Heart of a Witch and I loved that it was a standalone story. If you are a fan of dark witchy romances, then you will love Heart of a Witch.
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