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Bound by Secrets
Some vows conceal secrets. Others unravel them—along with the world.
Aurelia has never played by the rules, and she won’t start now. When she agreed to marry, it wasn’t for love. It was for protection, power, and a chance to uncover the truth behind her sister’s mysterious disappearance.
Her new husband is the richest man in the city, and their arrangement is purely transactional… or so she tells herself. Because while he’s willing to shield her from the dangers closing in, he’s also hiding secrets as dangerous as her own.
As Aurelia delves deeper into the tangled web of those behind her sister’s disappearance, she unearths long-buried truths about her own family—secrets that shatter everything she thought she knew. Knowledge has always been her greatest weapon, but some truths are too deadly to wield.
And the closer she gets to unraveling the past, the more she realizes she isn’t just fighting for her sister.
She’s fighting for the truth. She’s fighting for her heart.
Most importantly… she’s fighting for her life.
The first book in a gripping trilogy blending urban fantasy, romance, and mystery.
Aurelia has never played by the rules, and she won’t start now. When she agreed to marry, it wasn’t for love. It was for protection, power, and a chance to uncover the truth behind her sister’s mysterious disappearance.
Her new husband is the richest man in the city, and their arrangement is purely transactional… or so she tells herself. Because while he’s willing to shield her from the dangers closing in, he’s also hiding secrets as dangerous as her own.
As Aurelia delves deeper into the tangled web of those behind her sister’s disappearance, she unearths long-buried truths about her own family—secrets that shatter everything she thought she knew. Knowledge has always been her greatest weapon, but some truths are too deadly to wield.
And the closer she gets to unraveling the past, the more she realizes she isn’t just fighting for her sister.
She’s fighting for the truth. She’s fighting for her heart.
Most importantly… she’s fighting for her life.
The first book in a gripping trilogy blending urban fantasy, romance, and mystery.
362 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 20, 2025
1 person is currently reading
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 15, 2025
2/5 stars
TLDR;
This book hits all the spots, except instead of stopping at each one it just drives on by them. Like a bus tour that refuses to let you off to explore and enjoy the sights, and the bus driver is lost? Like, drives in circles down some dirt roads before managing to find their way back to the main road. In the end it felt juvenile, and made me carsick.
~There be spoilers here~
When I said this book hits all the spots, I meant it. It has classic romance tropes, a marriage of convenience, mythical creatures, family drama, corporate espionage! I mean really the list goes on and by these alone I was hooked! Unfortunately, our bus driver sped through all the red lights and kept on driving by the bus stops.
Everything is all there it just doesn’t fall into the spots that I personally think it should have gone. It felt like scenes and chapters should have been swapped around. I mean, in some instances it felt like this had possibly been the case, that they had been swapped, but not edited appropriately to fix that they had been swapped. One example of this is when Aurelia has a moment, discovering her love for Luke (more on this moment in a … moment.) Directly stating “I love Luke Moore.” but, five chapters later “I think I love him.” As if this self declaration hadn’t just happened. It made things feel pointless, like the words that Aurelia told herself, and us as the audience, mattered very little (and not in an unreliable narrator way, more just in a “hey huh??” way). All in all this novel seemed to suffer from lack of editing, spelling errors, grammatical errors, scenes that didn’t need to be there, missing scenes that felt like they should have been there. The organization of the plot wasn’t there, and some more editing could have really made this into something amazing, because, like I said, the ideas were so solid and so there. Another good example of the ideas maybe not having been thought through entirely, is the direct opening of the book. We join Aurelia, having been followed and tailed for the day, stopping at the court house for an unknown reason (a reason that we don’t get an answer for), but apparently she’s already lost the tails. There was a perfect opportunity for the plot to move smoothly, right from the get go, a girl running from someone tailing her, stops briefly only to get invited to be a witness at a wedding in a private space! A perfect getaway! Instead of it being convenient or a clever manuever on our main characters part, she decides to join in on this marriage because it could be fun, not for really any other reason.
As for the love, it was barely love. It didn’t feel like a case of insta love, it didn’t feel like a case of falling in love. It just felt like nothing? There was no tension, no yearning, no reason to be reading about it in general. They get married by chapter three and essentially act as a married couple, with no hitches, until the end of the book. Which, doesn’t really make for a good romance novel. There needed to be something there to keep the tension up, a questioning of will they or won’t they, fear that the other wouldn’t love them back, secrets and the gnawing anxiety that those can bring. It just wasn’t there, at no point did it feel like Aurelia questioned if she was interested in Luke, nor was there a change from interest into love. It just was always this baseline of they exist and smooch on the occasion without any question or feeling about that. There’s a lot of off-page things that happen as well that we don’t get to experience, apparently the duo share conversations and laughter and dates that we do not see. There’s a pushed concept that Luke doesn’t smile around any one but Aurelia, pushing this sunshinexgrump image that just really isn’t proven or shown in the pages. Sure, we see Luke be serious, but we don’t see his lack of smiles outside enough to warrant us, as readers, believing that he has two contrasting sides.
I also cannot not mention the callout the book does on various things that it then follows through on, Aurelia when meeting Noah (who feels like a very useless character as I believe this opening scene area of the story is the only time we see him.) makes a joke about “not like other girls” and how she doesn’t agree with that concept, but she is a quintessential not like other girls girl. On the opening page we see her mocking other women, by the time we’re at this conversation with Noah she has proven via her abilities, thinking, and words that she fits into the box. So to promptly mock the idea that she could fall into that trope felt silly? At some point you have to accept and embrace the trope! She can be unique and it not be a bad thing, she can be a not like other girls girl and still be cool and a fun MC! We then have a second trope call out in the form of the “miscommunication trope” joking about romance novels and the “who hurt you?” trope, which Luke had already done, and then saying “As long as it’s not like one of those annoying ones, like miscommunication.” which then happens, plural times. Finally we see it once more nearing the end, the couple are going to make dinner together, Aurelia mocks cheesy rom-coms and their approach to a couple cooking together, and then the book proceeds to do just what it says. It creates a cheesy rom-com moment by a food fight taking place. All of these things are fine, I want to reiterate there’s nothing wrong with mocking a trope, but it didn’t feel as if our main character was mocking these ideas in a subversive manner, it more came across that the author didn’t consider these to be the tropes at play.
If you’re going to read this for the urban fantasy, which is my all time favorite genre and what drew me to the book in the first place, I’d look elsewhere. We finally get to experience it, in part by the end of the book. Literally, all seems pretty normal as a corporate espionage, family drama, romance novel (save like two lines about “scent” and movement speed, and some voice in the head action that is quickly brushed off) until 78% of the way through the book, which feels a little like a slap in the face at this point. Obviously it was coming, but it didn’t feel necessary by this point. Without it the story would literally have been the same.
I apologize for these two, because this is purely just a thing that bothered me to no end… Ya know? IT WAS SAID SO MANY TIMES! I KNOW! Ya know, I know! Ya know was said 43 times. 43. I checked. 43! That’s a damn lot of “ya know”’s!!!! Okay, then there’s…The names. Aurelia, Chiaki, Akira, Noah! Solid names! Then, jarringly, Luke. Michael. And, Jackson. MICHAEL JACKSON?????????? What is happening here. How did we go from Aurelia to Michael Jackson. I was fighting for my life to not laugh. I also have a sneaking suspicion of where the name Shoto came from, aka a characters name from an anime called My Hero Academia. Which leads me promptly into my next point.
This felt like a Manga or Manhwa more than it did a novel. And, I think that format would have suited it better as far as the themes and nature of the entire book went. It reminded me of writing done by a manga artist named Tomu Ohmi, who I am a fan of and have read multiple works by! It felt a little bit like Midnight Secretary by her in it’s vibes at times, and I’m not sure if that was due to the corporate adjacent setting or not, but something about it invoked that series for me.
All in all, I think this novel has something going for it, but it wasn’t ready to be published and needed to stay in the editing phase for a while longer. If this is ever republished down the line, I will absolutely reread it! For now, I think this is the end of the road for this series and I…. Unless? Ya know?
TLDR;
This book hits all the spots, except instead of stopping at each one it just drives on by them. Like a bus tour that refuses to let you off to explore and enjoy the sights, and the bus driver is lost? Like, drives in circles down some dirt roads before managing to find their way back to the main road. In the end it felt juvenile, and made me carsick.
~There be spoilers here~
When I said this book hits all the spots, I meant it. It has classic romance tropes, a marriage of convenience, mythical creatures, family drama, corporate espionage! I mean really the list goes on and by these alone I was hooked! Unfortunately, our bus driver sped through all the red lights and kept on driving by the bus stops.
Everything is all there it just doesn’t fall into the spots that I personally think it should have gone. It felt like scenes and chapters should have been swapped around. I mean, in some instances it felt like this had possibly been the case, that they had been swapped, but not edited appropriately to fix that they had been swapped. One example of this is when Aurelia has a moment, discovering her love for Luke (more on this moment in a … moment.) Directly stating “I love Luke Moore.” but, five chapters later “I think I love him.” As if this self declaration hadn’t just happened. It made things feel pointless, like the words that Aurelia told herself, and us as the audience, mattered very little (and not in an unreliable narrator way, more just in a “hey huh??” way). All in all this novel seemed to suffer from lack of editing, spelling errors, grammatical errors, scenes that didn’t need to be there, missing scenes that felt like they should have been there. The organization of the plot wasn’t there, and some more editing could have really made this into something amazing, because, like I said, the ideas were so solid and so there. Another good example of the ideas maybe not having been thought through entirely, is the direct opening of the book. We join Aurelia, having been followed and tailed for the day, stopping at the court house for an unknown reason (a reason that we don’t get an answer for), but apparently she’s already lost the tails. There was a perfect opportunity for the plot to move smoothly, right from the get go, a girl running from someone tailing her, stops briefly only to get invited to be a witness at a wedding in a private space! A perfect getaway! Instead of it being convenient or a clever manuever on our main characters part, she decides to join in on this marriage because it could be fun, not for really any other reason.
As for the love, it was barely love. It didn’t feel like a case of insta love, it didn’t feel like a case of falling in love. It just felt like nothing? There was no tension, no yearning, no reason to be reading about it in general. They get married by chapter three and essentially act as a married couple, with no hitches, until the end of the book. Which, doesn’t really make for a good romance novel. There needed to be something there to keep the tension up, a questioning of will they or won’t they, fear that the other wouldn’t love them back, secrets and the gnawing anxiety that those can bring. It just wasn’t there, at no point did it feel like Aurelia questioned if she was interested in Luke, nor was there a change from interest into love. It just was always this baseline of they exist and smooch on the occasion without any question or feeling about that. There’s a lot of off-page things that happen as well that we don’t get to experience, apparently the duo share conversations and laughter and dates that we do not see. There’s a pushed concept that Luke doesn’t smile around any one but Aurelia, pushing this sunshinexgrump image that just really isn’t proven or shown in the pages. Sure, we see Luke be serious, but we don’t see his lack of smiles outside enough to warrant us, as readers, believing that he has two contrasting sides.
I also cannot not mention the callout the book does on various things that it then follows through on, Aurelia when meeting Noah (who feels like a very useless character as I believe this opening scene area of the story is the only time we see him.) makes a joke about “not like other girls” and how she doesn’t agree with that concept, but she is a quintessential not like other girls girl. On the opening page we see her mocking other women, by the time we’re at this conversation with Noah she has proven via her abilities, thinking, and words that she fits into the box. So to promptly mock the idea that she could fall into that trope felt silly? At some point you have to accept and embrace the trope! She can be unique and it not be a bad thing, she can be a not like other girls girl and still be cool and a fun MC! We then have a second trope call out in the form of the “miscommunication trope” joking about romance novels and the “who hurt you?” trope, which Luke had already done, and then saying “As long as it’s not like one of those annoying ones, like miscommunication.” which then happens, plural times. Finally we see it once more nearing the end, the couple are going to make dinner together, Aurelia mocks cheesy rom-coms and their approach to a couple cooking together, and then the book proceeds to do just what it says. It creates a cheesy rom-com moment by a food fight taking place. All of these things are fine, I want to reiterate there’s nothing wrong with mocking a trope, but it didn’t feel as if our main character was mocking these ideas in a subversive manner, it more came across that the author didn’t consider these to be the tropes at play.
If you’re going to read this for the urban fantasy, which is my all time favorite genre and what drew me to the book in the first place, I’d look elsewhere. We finally get to experience it, in part by the end of the book. Literally, all seems pretty normal as a corporate espionage, family drama, romance novel (save like two lines about “scent” and movement speed, and some voice in the head action that is quickly brushed off) until 78% of the way through the book, which feels a little like a slap in the face at this point. Obviously it was coming, but it didn’t feel necessary by this point. Without it the story would literally have been the same.
I apologize for these two, because this is purely just a thing that bothered me to no end… Ya know? IT WAS SAID SO MANY TIMES! I KNOW! Ya know, I know! Ya know was said 43 times. 43. I checked. 43! That’s a damn lot of “ya know”’s!!!! Okay, then there’s…The names. Aurelia, Chiaki, Akira, Noah! Solid names! Then, jarringly, Luke. Michael. And, Jackson. MICHAEL JACKSON?????????? What is happening here. How did we go from Aurelia to Michael Jackson. I was fighting for my life to not laugh. I also have a sneaking suspicion of where the name Shoto came from, aka a characters name from an anime called My Hero Academia. Which leads me promptly into my next point.
This felt like a Manga or Manhwa more than it did a novel. And, I think that format would have suited it better as far as the themes and nature of the entire book went. It reminded me of writing done by a manga artist named Tomu Ohmi, who I am a fan of and have read multiple works by! It felt a little bit like Midnight Secretary by her in it’s vibes at times, and I’m not sure if that was due to the corporate adjacent setting or not, but something about it invoked that series for me.
All in all, I think this novel has something going for it, but it wasn’t ready to be published and needed to stay in the editing phase for a while longer. If this is ever republished down the line, I will absolutely reread it! For now, I think this is the end of the road for this series and I…. Unless? Ya know?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 23, 2025
I liked seeing a strong FMC who still had a soft side but wasn’t afraid to take action and get things done. The villains of the story were the type of villains that make your skin crawl and make you root louder for the main character throughout the story.
I found the middle part of the story a bit slower, but it significantly ramps up in the last 25%. I wish the big reveal in the last 25% of the story had come sooner. Or at least more hints were planted earlier in the book to make the reveal more of an ‘ah ha!’ moment, as a lot of information was introduced in the end that I wasn’t expecting. That being said, and without spoiling anything, I loved the new details introduced at the end of the book. That’s one HELL of a way to set the stage for book two! Overall, I enjoyed the read!
I found the middle part of the story a bit slower, but it significantly ramps up in the last 25%. I wish the big reveal in the last 25% of the story had come sooner. Or at least more hints were planted earlier in the book to make the reveal more of an ‘ah ha!’ moment, as a lot of information was introduced in the end that I wasn’t expecting. That being said, and without spoiling anything, I loved the new details introduced at the end of the book. That’s one HELL of a way to set the stage for book two! Overall, I enjoyed the read!
June 17, 2025
Aurelia enters a strategic marriage—not for love, but for protection, power, and answers. Her wealthy husband shields her from mysterious threats tied to her sister’s disappearance. As she investigates, Aurelia uncovers devastating family secrets and hidden truths that threaten not just her quest but her very life. This urban fantasy–romance opener sets the stage for a trilogy filled with intrigue, magic, and high-stakes emotion.
June 19, 2025
Wow! This book kept me turning pages and I struggled to put it down to get some sleep. Main characters to love, and others to hate, with enough mystery to keep the tension as the action unfolds rapidly.
So many things I love in a good book, and damn - did it leave me wanting more!
Character-development beautifully done, romance you wish for unfolding, throw in some hacking, violence & supernatural elements, and voila! Delicious!
I received an ARC copy of this book via Voracious Readers Only.
So many things I love in a good book, and damn - did it leave me wanting more!
Character-development beautifully done, romance you wish for unfolding, throw in some hacking, violence & supernatural elements, and voila! Delicious!
I received an ARC copy of this book via Voracious Readers Only.
May 19, 2025
A gripping story of a marriage of convenience slowly growing into love interspersed with a mystery of missing siblings, kidnappings & a domineering matriarch who insists on being obeyed. This is full of interesting twists till the end as Aurelia slowly learns her family's secrets.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author via Voracious Readers Only.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author via Voracious Readers Only.
June 19, 2025
Bound by Secrets is such a great book! I was invested from start to finish! I’m a big fan of romance and mystery! Aurelia… I absolutely loved! Her strength!! Her sister!! All the family drama, her and her husband’s secrets, and the unexpected twists sent me on a journey! You won’t be disappointed! AD Dumas outdid herself with this book and I cannot wait to read her next one!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews