If you love the dark academia romance of "The Discovery of Witches" and the Southern Gothic mystery of "The Mayfair Witches", this Romantasy Noir may be for you - a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers story of desire and vengeance, drenched in Southern Magic.

What's worse than discovering your grandfather was a monster?

Learning you might become one too.

Seminary student Max Frost has spent seven years behind stone walls, sworn off women, worldly desires—everything that might trigger the hereditary madness that destroyed the men in his family. But when his grandfather's cryptic journal about emotional alchemy draws him from his cloistered life in Bavaria to the languid courtyards of New Orleans, Max discovers Otto Frost's legacy runs deeper than family shame.

It leads to the sorceresses sworn to kill him before he can repeat Otto's crimes. Amongst them Liberté, heir to both her grandmother's remarkable talents and the unhealed wounds from the last time a Frost betrayed her family.

As Maximilian is shattered by a longing he can’t allow for a woman he can't trust, will he stay alive long enough to uncover the truth about his grandfather's crimes? Or will he have to awaken the monster he fears within, to survive a woman with every reason to destroy him?

Tropes:

• Enemies to lovers

• Forbidden romance

• Fish out of water

• Dark academia

• Inherited guilt/sins of the father

• Virgin hero

• Morally gray magic system

• Kidnapping/captivity

• Hurt/comfort

• Life-or-death stakes

• Forced proximity

• Slow burn romance

• Interracial Romance and Religious/secular clash