Book reviews and Art

“What else is this shed for, if not torturing unsuspecting vampires?”

Rahil Zaman has good reason to keep his distance from the world—and his fangs are only part of that. He hides in his crumbling home, acquiring blood through the risky one-night stands he finds on hunter-infested hookup apps. After one such fling turns sour, Rahil ends up trapped in the work shed of the one match he wishes would respond to his flirtations.

Finding the hot twink he’d been ghosting inside his work shed was not on Mercer Bloncourt’s agenda. Between his work as a craftsman and his tumultuous relationship with his chronically-ill daughter, he doesn’t have the time or heart for a relationship. But Rahil is not the only intruding presence in Mercer’s life. A hostile hunter and a manipulative research scientist both insist—on threat of his daughter’s life—that he recreate versions of his ‘holy silver’: a vampire-killing metal forged in the wake of his wife’s murder, bound up in all the grief and destruction he’s striven for years to overcome.

To complicate matters, Rahil is the rare vampire who’s immune to the deadly silver, providing Mercer the perfect lab rat to test a kinder vampire-affecting metal.

As Rahil and Mercer rush to the forge, they must face their past wrongs once more, and in time, discover that no mistake is worth the sentence of eternal loneliness.

Flaunt Your Chains is the fourth novel in a loosely connected series of standalone slowburn mm romance books. It features high thirst with one extensive spice scene toward the third act involving bondage, praise, and sensory play, and a happy ending for the main couple. Content of this book includes migraine, insomnia, and chronic illness rep, a human and a pet experiencing seizures, and grief over the traumatic deaths of family members.

THE FACTS

📕great world-building, vampires, fae & others

📘not your run-of-the-mill vampires

📙found family, grief, forgiveness

📘 spice!

THE GOOD BITS

D.N. Bryn has a wonderful series that I think many of you should check out! If you love vampires, queer content in books, diversity, character-driven plots and a series that really lets you dig into a fascinating plot. 

Vitalis-Barron Pharmaceutical Lab is the villainous thread weaving through all the stories in this series. The first three books in the series have followed various characters as they overcome their own challenges and fight their piece of the battle against Vitalis. Book Four in the series is “How to Flaunt Your Chains and Surrender A Vein” and gets the reader intimately acquainted with Rahil and Mercer.

Rahil is a vampire-twink (meant in the best possible way) and he uses hook up apps to offer sex in exchange for blood. It’s not a bad gig, keeps things interesting and keeps his hunger at bay. Sometimes the hook-ups don’t end well, and Rahil must bolt to protect himself. One such hook up ends up with him hiding in a workshop and ending up trapped in chains.

The chains and the workshop belong to Mercer – who happens to be on one of the apps Rahil uses. Except Mercer has just remained silent despite Rahil’s multiple attempts to hook up. There’s a lot going on in Mercer’s life that doesn’t leave him open to adding a vampire to his small family. He’s raising a daughter with a serious illness after losing his wife. 

An incorrigible flirt, even hanging in a trap Rahil can’t prevent himself from letting Merc know how sexy he is. There’s a definite attraction for both…but so many complexities for them to overcome.

This is a really great story. The relationship between Rahil and Mercer is wonderful. I love every one of the author’s vampires, but I think Rahil may be my new favourite. He is a flamboyant, charming, adorable, caring, troubled ball of mayhem and I loved everything about him. Mercer is the very epitome of “still waters run deep”. There’s a lot going on beneath the outer appearances of his life and so much of it is beyond his control. Maybe that’s why he likes control in other areas of his life.

There’s lovely diversity in this novel and it’s done well – not the whole plot but incidental to it. It’s a wonderful world D.N. Bryn has created and one I feel at home in.

As usual, these characters are well developed and captivating. There’s a lot of depth to Mercer and complexity to what Rahil is living with. Both are multi-dimensional and that is such a marvellous thing to discover in novels. 

The series is not yet complete and I’m already looking forward to more instalments.

THE LINKS

🖊 Author

I was given an ARC of  How to Flaunt Your Chains and Surrender a Vein by the author. This is an unbiased review.