Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Ira has one eye, a back-alley accuracy charm, and a policy of taking what he can get.

Lajos has a sword, a stoic façade that crumbles quickly under pressure, and a mysterious past.

When a routine monster attack leads to the men being magically bound together, unable to part without being violently ill, Ira is horrified. Worse, the link means they can sense each other's every emotion. And as time goes on, Ira starts to wonder which emotions are truly his, and which are just a result of the magic…

I just love fantasy and always search out new stories and new authors. So I had high hopes for Magic Ties Together by Nina Begonia.  It had a neat, interesting premise that linked the couple right from the start...a type of magic handcuffs.

But while this story did contain some nice elements and places where my interest was definitely piqued, for the most part, it was jammed full of just a weird mixture of not enough world building (had no idea of the sort of world these characters really existed in) and one in which we got far too many extraneous details.  Really should have been the other way around.

The characters started having sex almost immediately, because the bracelets "made them do it".  Trust me, not sexy at all.  Then there were hodgepodgy creatures whose physical descriptions made even less sense than some of the world building (what there was).

The characters had potential but didn't seem to reach it imo.  This story is 100 pages yet it felt as though the author was trying to jam 500 pages worth of things the author had in mind for the story that just kept flowing on, regardless of whether it fit or not into the current scenes or storyline.

The ending was probably the best thing about this story.  It was the most pulled together.  The characters felt as though they might actually care about each other but everything leading up to it is such a narrative quagmire.

Not a story I would recommend.

Cover art: Aisha Akeju.  Gorgeous cover, definitely eye catching.

Book – Magic Ties Together
Author – Nina Begonia
Star rating - ★★★☆☆
No. of Pages – 96
Cover – Nice!
POV – 3rd person, one character
Would I read it again – No
Genre – LGBT, Fantasy, Enemies-to-Lovers (sort of)


** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **


I have to admit that I'm disappointed. As soon as I read the blurb, I was intrigued. It reminded me of a fanfiction I read for Harry Potter, once, and I wanted to see it done with originality and new characters. Sadly, it just didn't come together very well, despite starting right in the thick of the action.

First off, the writing had a few issues. There were editing issues galore, with missing words, odd phrasing, and a mix of language that didn't blend well together. There was a mix of modern and old fashioned language that felt unnatural to the characters and the story. There was also a lack of world building that made it hard to follow the plotting. There was an attempt at a fantasy setting, but there were so many mentions of 'levels of Hell' that I wondered if that was metaphorical or literal, and there was no way to find out. The fact that some of the characters spoke in a broken-English style made it even more annoying, because it was so inconsistent and leaked into the actual text, making it nearly impossible to tell whether they were editing issues or actual common-speech attempts.

Overall, the whole thing didn't come together too well. However, I DID enjoy the plot. It was the execution that let it down. I did like the story and the characters, as well as the slow-forming chemistry. There was a bit too much insta-love, but it was overall a jumble of bad editing and not enough world building to make the world clear.

Okay, if you've read some fics before, you're familiar with the bond au. Basically, the two main characters are magically bonded for whatever reason & in whatever form, stuck together until they can figure out how to break the spell, usually also feeling each other's emotions. That's pretty much what this story is, just in a fantasy setting and with original characters.

One chapter in, I still thought it was good. The writing seemed nice enough, the whispers of world-building were interesting, it all clearly had potential. Now, keep in mind this story is 30k words long and has 10 chapters. Two chapters in our main characters were already having sex. Again, if you've ever read a bond au fic, you know the whole point of it is angst and unberable pining. It's the perfect setting for a enemies to lovers trope - two people who can't stand each other suddenly can't leave each other's side! And yet here we barely got hints of that. It's like the author had a vague idea of what this story should be like, but then got too caught up in the possibility of two guys and blowjobs.

The world-building was kind of interesting until the very end and we even got a bonus in the form of the Chosen One trope. But still, the characters felt rather flat & one-dimentional and the writing could definitely use more editing. A half decent atempt, and yet, it made me feel like I wasted some time.