Dawn just wants out: out of her empty house, out of her writer’s block, and out of excuses. Taking a new admin job at Frostfire Real Estate isn’t exactly her dream, but anything is better than staring at a blank page. She knows she has another book in her—now she just needs the red thread to pull it together.
When a structure-eating fungus takes over her hallway cupboard, everything seems lost. Then her colleague Luc offers his guest room, and suddenly Dawn finds herself in a slow burn, roommates-to-lovers situation she never expected.
Lucien Atkins joined Frostfire’s IT department for a fresh start, trading in his old life for something quieter. But the new team assistant glitches his carefully coded boundaries. Between barefoot cooking, late-night gaming, and the fairy cat he insists Dawn adopt, Luc realizes that hurt and comfort can coexist—and that the woman sharing his space might be the one he wants for good.
Code Mages & Empty Pages is a cozy monster romance novella with sugar, spice, and a guaranteed HEA. Perfect for readers who love wolf man romance, roommates-to-lovers tropes, and a younger hero with a dad bod and a cinnamon-roll heart.
The second book in the Frostfire series, it can be enjoyed as a standalone.
KU Read 178 Pages Paranormal Romance Established series & worldbuild Workplace Romance Grumpy x Sunshine Human X Lupine Friends with Benefits Knitting
This follows the familiar pattern of a lot of Rhea's books and they have become comfort reads for me. Short dopamine hits of sweet Romance with a bit of spice set in a world like no other I've read before. Dawn has started to work in the same IT department as the quiet and reserved Luc who she is determined to win over only when her home is in need of work, he is The one bold enough to offer her a place to stay. Their time together was only meant to be temporary but after a few short weeks, his house is a home filled with warmth that he wants to keep.
Dawn started a new office job as an IT administrator. She organizes tickets for the IT professionals to work and brings her great attitude along with her. Luc is hot and cold with her so she wonders what she did wrong and hopes to fix it because everyone usually likes her. For his sake, Luc likes her a lot and tries not to creep Dawn out by being too obvious which is the reason for his behavior. They and other coworkers start hanging out and Luc is there to solve Dawn's housing issue when she needs a place to stay for a few weeks while her home is ridden of some dangerous fungus. While she's at Lucy's he goes into a rut and asks if they can be co-workers with benefits. Fast forward and things feel real between them before they make it official. There's no drama or angst, it's an easy story in that sense.
It's hard to put an exact finger on why I was mostly detached. Part of it is because I felt like I was thrown into the deep end and wasn't given a helping hand out. The story starts okay for the first few paragraphs, but then we just get non-human characters thrown in all of a sudden with no world building. One minute Dawn is a human woman coming to work, the next, her boss has blue skin and she's talking to a hybrid of something I can't recall. No explanation. No information about the difference between species of whatever the beings to are, just silence. I was also puzzled because the book opens on her regretting taking the job because her first day was terrible, but the horrific was never realized, at least to my expectations. A slow computer system and frustration with how it worked inefficiently was the workplace from hell from what I could determine so I was left wanting and confused.
Both Dawn and Lucien aka Luc were decent characters and Luc was endearing with how much he liked Dawn. Although I like them, their relationship felt disjointed. Luc is hot and cold, Dawn doesn't know where she stands but is increasingly attracted to Luc but neither really does much. Then Luc's rut comes, he proposes that they start hooking up no strings, Dawn thinks it over for an hour, and then they're in bed together. I wanted more of a connection between them I guess.
This was such a fun read! Both of the main characters are so relatable and unsure of the other that it feels extra cozy when they settle into their routine.. then routine of extra convenience… then eventual relationship. It feels like you know them, you’ve been in this relationship.
The depth of how well Luc knows Dawn is so romantic. He even knows that when she parks on a certain side of the road… yeah it’s for convenience so she’s going the right direction when she leaves next… but also it’s an indication that she’s stressing. At the same time Lucian is vulnerable, anxious and working on breaking a generational habit of how poorly men in his family treat women.
Lastly, I love when animal-like characters do things that remind you they aren’t like regular people. There’s the obvious fur and knot (yum) or anything omegaverse related, but I’m obsessed with the authors explanation of Luc’s ears twitching and flattening during certain scenes or the involuntary movements of his tail. I LOVE IT!
Whether the girl next door or the dragon man from who knows where, Fox always delivers characters that are more realistic and relatable than most contemporary books. Fox’s Frostfire series, like her interconnected cryptid books, provide relatively low to no angst while still touching your heart, and quite often simply giving you some swift ( but gentle) kicks right in the feels.
This book was super low conflict, standalone, and explores the spicy office romance of a human woman (Dawn) and grumpy wolf man Luc. If you’re looking for complicated plot, move along little doggy, but if you was a spicy, short, simple, well written fun time coated in sugar, with some cameos from some of the interconnected books/series, this is a lovely place to come for a palette cleanser.
I've never not liked a Rhea Fox book. So cozy and the spice is always perfect. Ya know those books that make you lose time? The ones where you'll look at the clock and it'll be seven pm and then you look later and its definitely passed your bedtime? Yeah, these are those books