Nightshade by Keri Lake
Picked up on a whim after someone recommended this one to me for a review and I fell head over heels into the pages until I reached the end. To say I picked up the next one in the series immediately would be an understatement.
Classified as a dark gothic novel, this fantasy has something for everyone. Soulmates, true love, hot and heavy erotic scenes, and a truly good story to boot, it was one I'm so glad I read.
Told from different points of view, timelines, and even different worlds we follow Farryn who's a little bit of a lost soul. Losing both her mother and father in suspicious ways she suffers from nightmares and hallucinations that drive her to investigate the origin of them knowing there's more going on here than just a wicked imagination.
Her investigation leads her to some suspicious characters who she has no choice but to trust. Leading her literally over the side of a building. plummeting to her death she wakes up in Nightshade. A place for lost souls, some would know this as purgatory. On the hunt for answers to what happened to her father, she meets Jericho. A baron otherwise known as death himself. A sour man not wanting to indulge Farryn in her ludicrous journey to uncover what she knows to be the truth, he feels a strong connection to her. One he can't quite explain. There's a familiarity and a deep longing he would rather ignore.
I think you know where this goes from here and I can't exactly give you spoilers without ruining a good read. I invite you on a journey that will no doubt unveil a good story.
About
My father called them messengers.
He once told me they walked among us, and that somewhere in this dark and godless city, there shined a faint sliver of hope. I had only to look for the signs.
Well, I’ve spent my whole life investigating the inexplicable, and all I've found are the unsettling vestiges of iniquity - the evidence of another world shrouded by the obscure. Purgatory to some, where depravity hides in shadows, and girls like me are little more than delicious bites of temptation.
Others call it Nightshade.
This peculiar place is where I first met the cold and callous recluse living in a decaying cliffside cathedral. Jericho Van Croix is the epitome of everything I’ve been told to fear. A raven-winged harbinger who wears intrigue like a warm black cloak. An enigma that I’m determined to unravel – even if it means getting closer than I should.
One touch is forbidden. Even so much as a kiss would be my demise. But the sin on his lips burns me up like a wild flame, and his growing infatuation weakens my resolve.
Giving him what he wants, though, will mean no chance for redemption, or escape. What's worse is, the signs I’ve followed yet failed to see all these years begin to unmask a terrifying reality:
That falling may be my only saving grace.