Gargoyles Box Set by Lisa Carlisle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stone hard shifters…

Features two gargoyle stories in the Underground Encounters series.

HEAT – A gargoyle statue that’s more than stone…

Danton breaks from his curse to protect Tracy, the woman he has longed for. He only has 24 hours before he returns to stone.

Can he convince her to spend it with him?


BLAZE – A computer geek turned rock star…

Mike is good at playing with two things–numbers and his guitar. People, not so much. So when he stumbles upon two women having fun in the shadows at an underground club, and a bouncer urges him to get one to safety, he’s not sure how to respond. But, when he discovers she’s been bitten and her neck is bleeding, something wakes inside of him.

He’s compelled to protect her. But–why?

Gargoyles

Gargoyles Times Two!

Heat

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🤎🖤
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏
Character development: 😍😚😉
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Tracy – a bartender at Vamps, a goth nightclub. She seems compelled to be near and talk to one of the gargoyle statues that are in the bar. She is a college student with anxiety and worries about her younger brother who has been struggling in school. When her abusive ex boyfriend nearly attacks her in the club, the gargoyle statue turns into a handsome man who rescues her.

The Hero: Danton – He has been locked inside his stone shell until Tracy needed his protection. The gargoyle shifters are protectors of the human race. He becomes human when someone needs assistance and stays human for twenty four hours before returning to stone, that was the curse put on them by a witch. Though if he finds love, he can break the curse.

The Story: This was a short book at <130 pages and took quickly devolved into smuttiness. I mean Tracy was certainly surprised at the fact that Danton was a supernatural being but she was too quick to take him to her house and then to her bed. I would want to find out much more about the guy before jumping into bed no matter how hot he was, especially after her last experience with a guy.

Also she supposedly had anxiety but the appearance of a naked man out of nowhere didn’t trigger an anxiety attack? It seemed like the gargoyle storyline was just a plot device to get to the smut rather than the actual plot. I like a good story along with my smut, and it did get a bit better as it went along, we found out more about the curse and Danton’s brothers.

This book was told in dual points of view via dual narration. It was narrated by Amber Lee Connors and Kieran Flitton, whose voice reminds me a bit of Tom Cruise at times. Both of these narrators do a good job and Amber Lee has a youthful feminine voice which was very pleasing and perfect for Tracy. Though I didn’t like the fact that Danton was French. The accent sounded more Transylvanian than French.

Blaze

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🤎🖤❤️💜
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎
Character development: 😌🙂😍🤩
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The Hero: Mike (a.k.a. Chee Keydood) – he is the lead guitarist of the Velvet Cocks (a.k.a. VC) and he loves women. He is a software engineer by day and a guitarist at night, when he isn’t playing, he hangs out in the goth club called Vamps where his band plays sometimes. One night while in the club, he goes backstage to use the facilities and comes across two women locked together. When the bouncer (Danton) breaks the women apart, he tells Mike to get the small blonde one out of there for her own good. He sees that she has what looks like a vampire bite on her neck and thinks they are into vampire play or something.

The heroine: Allana – after coming out of her stupor, she recognizes Mike as someone she once hooked up with and is disturbed by the fact that he didn’t recognize her. She thinks he is a jerk and isn’t afraid to tell him so. Allana’s best friend Lily is dating one of Mike’s band-mates Nico and she says Mike is a better guy than he acts, which is like bad boy to play up the rockstar image and that he is really nice with his friends. Ally is moving from teaching yoga at a Gym to working at opening a new Yoga studio of her own and needs to focus on that.

The Story: Danton from Heat is in this book as well. He now has enough power to be able to shift at will between his gargoyle and human forms. Though he still works at Vamps to watch over his girl Tracy who works there as well. He is also able to use his magic to help transform his brothers who also watch over the club, but they still can’t shift at will without help from Danton or without needing to help a human in danger.

Danton tells his brother about the events of the night. He tells them the man who witnessed the encounter and took the human woman away, resisted his magic when he tried to compel him to forget what he saw. He said he tried to ascertain what kind of supernatural Mike is, but couldn’t. They said he seemed human, but more.

Like the last book Heat, this one was told in multiple points of view via dual narration. It was narrated by Amber Lee Connors and Kieran Flitton. the narrators do a great job. Both have great voices and show a lot of expression in their narration, so this was good. Though Kieran seemed to be overacting a bit in this one, not sure if it is the content or the narrator.

I also liked the story in this one. It is much better than Heat which was the first book in this series that I read. It was ok but not great, it started out too quickly and didn’t get into the story and world building till much later in the book. This one was better and gave a lot better background information up front, which I liked. This one was also a full sized book while the last one was a novella so that helped as well. This book also had some peeks into the next book, Combust

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