Genre: Fantasy
LGBTQ+ Category: Bi. Poly
Reviewer: Lucy
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About The Book
I summon the lightning.
I claim my power.
The warlocks of Icarus Academy claim me.
I start my night as a cat burglar in Singapore and I end up queen of the witching world. Too bad this rags-to-riches fairytale’s a gig I never applied for and won’t accept. My witchcraft is wild and lethal, so I’ve renounced my power. I’m a fish out of water at Icarus Academy.
But these four sexy warlocks who rule the school just won’t take no for an answer.
They want me to claim my power. They want me to summon the lightning. And they want to claim me as their consort.
Because the witching world is dying, and I’m their last chance. But there’s a queen killer on the hunt. Unless I figure out how to claim my power before the killer claims my head, there’s a global extinction event looming.
With my name written all over it.
One-click for an intense dark witch academy why choose paranormal romance that delivers teacher-student forbidden love, steamy group interactions, possessive males, sexy shifters, first-time M/M, bi awakening, a lightning witch heroine who doesn’t have to choose, and enough heat to set your Academy uniform on fire.
The Review
I picked up the sequel, Gemini Kings, first, and quickly realized I wanted the whole story. And I’m really glad I went back to the beginning and started with Gemini Queen.
This book has a lot of characters, but Navarre does a fabulous job luring you into their lives and stringing you along with enough details to keep you hooked as you untangle all of the various relationships. There’s pretty much every type of relationship in this book: friends to lovers; enemies to lovers; rivals working together; terrible birth family and awesome found family, all wrapped up in a world where magical creatures exist and are fighting extinction, while trying to protect their community from discovery by ordinary humans.
Gemini Queen opens with Zarina Gemini, cat burglar extraordinaire, attempting to steal a Faberge egg, which is purported to contain some vital information which she requires. By the end of the night, she’s fought for her life, been kidnapped, and spirited off to the Icarus Academy. There, she fights against the powers that be who are trying to groom her as the queen-in-waiting of the magical world.
I will admit to a healthy dose of skepticism when I read book blurbs that include descriptions of magical schools. Been there, done that. But, and it’s a very strong ‘but’ indeed, Navarre gives the Icarus Academy a few distinctive twists, some of them very dark and deadly. I really appreciated that Icarus Academy is college level, so these characters aren’t young kids or early teens.
This story has an excellent, well-developed plot which is moved along by fabulous action scenes. Interwoven into the action is the romance. Zara is unabashedly polyamorous, as have been many queens of the witching world. But Zara, and those around her, are surprised by the members of her harem and her court. There is a great deal of explicit sex, both very well written and germane to the story. The hotness has purpose, so this isn’t just a compilation of spicy sex scenes. And there are actual romances and relationships formed throughout the story.
The characters are well-developed, complex, and multi-faceted. There are lots of steamy sex scenes that help carry the plot and show character growth and development. The world and the magical creatures that inhabit it have some great variations that make the setting and characters unique, even while they’re familiar.
From the first word to the last, I really enjoyed Gemini Queen. As soon as I finished it, I moved on to its sequel, Gemini Kings. And I have absolutely no regrets about binging this series. This was my first book by Laura Navarre, but it definitely won’t be my last.
The Reviewer
I’m an avid reader who loves pretty much all genres except math textbooks. As a kid, my parents exposed me to everything from fairies, hobbits, and dragons to the biographies of interesting people around the world, interspersed with poetry, plays, and music. Into adulthood, I spent a lot of years with my nose buried in various textbooks. Now, I read whatever grabs my fancy.