Looking for 3 to 5 beta readers who love dark romance.
Blurb
Cassia Rhys doesn't believe in fate. She just sells it, reading tarot for tourists in Salem and taking a little white pill every night to keep one dream away: stone stairs, black water, a faceless man coming for her. The night she forgets the pill, a touch from her favorite Thursday customer sends a warning out of her in a voice that isn't hers. Don't take the river road. His driver dies there. The quiet old man runs the Draghetti crime family, and his son Evander wants to know what she is.
About the book: dark Gothic romance, Book One of a series, about 101,000 words. Dual first person (Cas and Evander), slow burn that turns explicit. Ends on a cliffhanger. Comps: Haunting Adeline, Two Twisted Crowns, Rebecca, Crimson Peak.
Excerpt (opening of Chapter One)
Something warm slides over my lip.
I touch it, and my fingertips come away dark in the gray light. Blood. It's on the pillowcase, a bloom the size of my fist. Copper and salt.
I have never had a nosebleed in my life.
I sit up too fast, and the room tilts. There's a pressure behind my eyes, like a thumb pushing from the inside. Migraine, I tell myself. The radiator has clanked all week. People get nosebleeds. It doesn't mean anything.
On the nightstand, the little orange bottle sits exactly where I left it. Cap on. I closed the shop last night, walked home in the rain, and fell into bed with my boots still on.
I don't like sleep. I don't like what waits for me inside it.
These days I swallow a little white pill before bed so there's nothing to tell. The only nights it fails me are the nights I forget it. Those are the nights the Dream gets in, and it's always the same one. Bay leaves. Cold salt air, though there's no sea anywhere in it. A woman singing low and a little off-key. A trembling hand closing my fingers around a leaf. Don't let him find you. Stone stairs going down into a dark that breathes, and a man at the bottom with no face, climbing, calling my name.
I always wake before he reaches me. That's the rule.
Last night he broke it. He took my wrist, and his fingers closed like a lock, and on his smallest finger there was a plain gold ring, heavy and old, catching a light that wasn't there.
Content warnings: murder, gun violence and blood; kidnapping and captivity; stalking and an obsessive love interest; organized crime; loss of a parent and foster care; a stroke and grief; seizures and nosebleeds; reliance on sleep medication; explicit sexual content.
Feedback I'd love: where you couldn't put it down, where you drifted, whether the romance and the danger land, and whether Evander works for you. Questions are built into the file; answer as much or as little as you like.
Timeline: about 5 weeks. Word file or Kindle file, your choice. Feedback in chunks is welcome.
Critique swap: happy to swap with anyone writing romance, romantasy, Gothic or dark fiction.
Comment or DM me and tell me a dark romance you loved recently!