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Bright Dead Things
Not yet published
Expected 3 Jun 26If the forest stares back at you, you’re already prey.
Bran Gallagher grew up with three rules passed down through his coven: beware forest paths that lead to dangerous mounds, always keep iron close, and never speak of magic.
Cillian Dunne grew up with his mother’s love, his father’s absence, and secret warnings to never trust a witch.
In Pelham’s forest, where bright lights haunt the trees and hunt the lost, there are traditions kept for survival and others out of habit, none of which should be broken.
Bran and Cillian unknowingly broke tradition and ruined each other in the aftermath of a kiss years ago. Reunited in the wake of a family tragedy, they cross paths with something old, something terrifying—something that wants them dead. When Bran’s younger sister is stolen away by a nightmare into the Otherworld, they can only follow and try to keep each other alive in a strange and haunting land.
Trapped in a dangerous Fae Court, Bran learns being a witch comes with a death sentence. To save him, Cillian must fight against those who seek power from a past he has no memory of, and the only person he can trust is the witch who broke his heart.
But it might be too late.
For the Fae have never been kind, and they have always hungered, and this time, what they hunger for is revenge.
A searing M/M fantasy romance full of magic, Fae lore, high-stakes, courtly intrigue, and a forbidden love readers will be sure to devour. Please see the beginning for TWs.
Bran Gallagher grew up with three rules passed down through his coven: beware forest paths that lead to dangerous mounds, always keep iron close, and never speak of magic.
Cillian Dunne grew up with his mother’s love, his father’s absence, and secret warnings to never trust a witch.
In Pelham’s forest, where bright lights haunt the trees and hunt the lost, there are traditions kept for survival and others out of habit, none of which should be broken.
Bran and Cillian unknowingly broke tradition and ruined each other in the aftermath of a kiss years ago. Reunited in the wake of a family tragedy, they cross paths with something old, something terrifying—something that wants them dead. When Bran’s younger sister is stolen away by a nightmare into the Otherworld, they can only follow and try to keep each other alive in a strange and haunting land.
Trapped in a dangerous Fae Court, Bran learns being a witch comes with a death sentence. To save him, Cillian must fight against those who seek power from a past he has no memory of, and the only person he can trust is the witch who broke his heart.
But it might be too late.
For the Fae have never been kind, and they have always hungered, and this time, what they hunger for is revenge.
A searing M/M fantasy romance full of magic, Fae lore, high-stakes, courtly intrigue, and a forbidden love readers will be sure to devour. Please see the beginning for TWs.
386 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication June 3, 2026
About the author
Hailey Turner
46 books2,014 followersHailey Turner is a big city girl who likes to spoil her cats rotten. She writes science fiction and fantasy with lots of action, epic plots, and romantic relationships that satisfy the heart. Hailey lives in sunny California when she isn’t adding stamps to her passport.
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April 18, 2026SHAKING IN EXCITEMENT, HAILEY TURNER IS COMING BACK TO US ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ AND SHE'S BRINGING FAE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review of advance copy
Oh boy, I hope you're ready for me to ramble a lot because that's what I do when I love a book this much.
Bright Dead Things is the start of Hailey Turner's new series, Bitter Legacies, and I genuinely don't know how this author keeps doing it.
Soulbound is one of my favourite series of all time and has been for years now, so going into a brand new series from Hailey always comes with a strange mix of excitement and nerves because those are impossibly high expectations to live up to. Somehow though, Bright Dead Things not only lived up to them, but I think this might genuinely be up there with On the Wings of War as my favourite thing she's written. Potentially even my favourite, full stop (which feels slightly ridiculous to say after one book, but here we are).
Before I talk about anything else, I have to talk about the worldbuilding because I truly think Hailey Turner remains one of the best authors writing MM fantasy and supernatural romance right now.
Starting a new fantasy series is hard. You have to convince readers that your world exists while also not overwhelming them with lore dumps, new terminology, politics, magic systems and twenty names you'll forget five pages later. It's such an easy balance to get wrong and I think Bright Dead Things is probably one of the cleanest examples I've seen in a long time of how to do it right.
You're given exactly enough information to ground yourself and then everything else unfolds naturally through discovery. The characters learn things, so we learn things. Information appears when it matters instead of being frontloaded and because of that, the world feels massive without ever becoming exhausting.
This book takes familiar mythology that readers of Hailey's previous work will probably recognise and turns it into something darker, stranger and honestly at times, horror. There is this constant lingering tension throughout the entire book that never really lets go of you. Every time I thought things were calming down or we'd get a second to breathe, there was always this underlying feeling that something wasn't right. Even in the quieter moments, there is this sense that danger is waiting just out of sight.
And I absolutely loved that.
Something else I absolutely loved was the way the setting evolves throughout the book. It starts in this small-town atmosphere that almost feels like a mystery at times. Strange attacks, local folklore, things hiding in the woods, people knowing just enough to make you suspicious but not enough to understand what's really happening. If you know me at all, you'll know that small-town supernatural mystery settings are basically made for me, so I was immediately invested.
And then slowly, without ever feeling jarring, the world opens up into something so much bigger. Suddenly you're dealing with ancient magic, larger politics, mythology and places that feel impossibly vast in comparison to where we started, but somehow it never loses that grounded feeling. The transition between those two scales was handled so expertly that it never felt like stepping into a different book. Instead, it felt like the world naturally unfolding and showing just how much existed beyond what we could initially see.
The atmosphere in this book is phenomenal. The forests, the old magic, the things lurking where they shouldn't be, the way folklore and supernatural politics weave together. All of it felt so believable that I completely lost track of time reading. I ended up reading this in one sitting because every chapter ended with me needing to know just one more thing.
Now onto Bran and Cillian.
I adored these two.
Their relationship at the beginning of this story is... damaged, to say the least. Childhood best friends separated for years after one kiss changed everything and then thrown back together through grief, responsibility and circumstances that absolutely do not care that their feelings are complicated.
What I loved most is that this never becomes exhausting.
That first kiss hangs over the entire narrative despite happening years before the story starts and I was fully prepared for this to become one of those really dramatic back-and-forth situations where nobody talks and everyone suffers in silence for 400 pages.
It isn't that.
You absolutely feel the weight of what happened and how much the separation affected both of them, but the story doesn't linger unnecessarily in the past and I'm so grateful for that. We understand what happened. We understand why it hurt. And then we move forward.
If you've read Hailey's work before, especially Soulbound, you'll probably already know one of her greatest strengths: she writes adults like adults.
There is hurt here. There is history. There are regrets and moments where both Bran and Cillian could easily retreat into old habits. But they communicate. They talk. They choose each other again and again despite everything happening around them.
There isn't endless miscommunication or artificial drama keeping them apart. Instead, there's this really beautiful feeling of two people trying to find each other again after years apart while also surviving things far bigger than themselves.
Even early on, there was already so much in their quieter moments together that had me completely invested in where this relationship is going.
I also really loved that despite all the huge fantasy elements and the stakes constantly escalating, the emotional core never gets lost. At the centre of all of this horror, magic, politics and violence is still family, grief, duty, and people trying to protect each other.
Bright Dead Things is honestly one of the strongest starts to a fantasy series I've read in years. It's darker than anything Hailey has written before, but never loses the heart that makes her books work so well.
If you're already a fan of Hailey Turner, I think you're going to have an incredible time with this.
And if you've never picked up her work before and love MM fantasy with phenomenal worldbuilding, mature relationships, mythology, horror elements and a romance that feels earned rather than rushed, I cannot think of a better place to start.
Book 2 cannot come soon enough.
As this is a darker offering from Hailey, be sure to check the content warnings before you read.
Content Safety Warnings:
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
I received a copy of this book from Gay Romance Reviews, and this is my honest review.
Bright Dead Things is the start of Hailey Turner's new series, Bitter Legacies, and I genuinely don't know how this author keeps doing it.
Soulbound is one of my favourite series of all time and has been for years now, so going into a brand new series from Hailey always comes with a strange mix of excitement and nerves because those are impossibly high expectations to live up to. Somehow though, Bright Dead Things not only lived up to them, but I think this might genuinely be up there with On the Wings of War as my favourite thing she's written. Potentially even my favourite, full stop (which feels slightly ridiculous to say after one book, but here we are).
Before I talk about anything else, I have to talk about the worldbuilding because I truly think Hailey Turner remains one of the best authors writing MM fantasy and supernatural romance right now.
Starting a new fantasy series is hard. You have to convince readers that your world exists while also not overwhelming them with lore dumps, new terminology, politics, magic systems and twenty names you'll forget five pages later. It's such an easy balance to get wrong and I think Bright Dead Things is probably one of the cleanest examples I've seen in a long time of how to do it right.
You're given exactly enough information to ground yourself and then everything else unfolds naturally through discovery. The characters learn things, so we learn things. Information appears when it matters instead of being frontloaded and because of that, the world feels massive without ever becoming exhausting.
This book takes familiar mythology that readers of Hailey's previous work will probably recognise and turns it into something darker, stranger and honestly at times, horror. There is this constant lingering tension throughout the entire book that never really lets go of you. Every time I thought things were calming down or we'd get a second to breathe, there was always this underlying feeling that something wasn't right. Even in the quieter moments, there is this sense that danger is waiting just out of sight.
And I absolutely loved that.
Something else I absolutely loved was the way the setting evolves throughout the book. It starts in this small-town atmosphere that almost feels like a mystery at times. Strange attacks, local folklore, things hiding in the woods, people knowing just enough to make you suspicious but not enough to understand what's really happening. If you know me at all, you'll know that small-town supernatural mystery settings are basically made for me, so I was immediately invested.
And then slowly, without ever feeling jarring, the world opens up into something so much bigger. Suddenly you're dealing with ancient magic, larger politics, mythology and places that feel impossibly vast in comparison to where we started, but somehow it never loses that grounded feeling. The transition between those two scales was handled so expertly that it never felt like stepping into a different book. Instead, it felt like the world naturally unfolding and showing just how much existed beyond what we could initially see.
The atmosphere in this book is phenomenal. The forests, the old magic, the things lurking where they shouldn't be, the way folklore and supernatural politics weave together. All of it felt so believable that I completely lost track of time reading. I ended up reading this in one sitting because every chapter ended with me needing to know just one more thing.
Now onto Bran and Cillian.
I adored these two.
Their relationship at the beginning of this story is... damaged, to say the least. Childhood best friends separated for years after one kiss changed everything and then thrown back together through grief, responsibility and circumstances that absolutely do not care that their feelings are complicated.
What I loved most is that this never becomes exhausting.
That first kiss hangs over the entire narrative despite happening years before the story starts and I was fully prepared for this to become one of those really dramatic back-and-forth situations where nobody talks and everyone suffers in silence for 400 pages.
It isn't that.
You absolutely feel the weight of what happened and how much the separation affected both of them, but the story doesn't linger unnecessarily in the past and I'm so grateful for that. We understand what happened. We understand why it hurt. And then we move forward.
If you've read Hailey's work before, especially Soulbound, you'll probably already know one of her greatest strengths: she writes adults like adults.
There is hurt here. There is history. There are regrets and moments where both Bran and Cillian could easily retreat into old habits. But they communicate. They talk. They choose each other again and again despite everything happening around them.
There isn't endless miscommunication or artificial drama keeping them apart. Instead, there's this really beautiful feeling of two people trying to find each other again after years apart while also surviving things far bigger than themselves.
Even early on, there was already so much in their quieter moments together that had me completely invested in where this relationship is going.
I also really loved that despite all the huge fantasy elements and the stakes constantly escalating, the emotional core never gets lost. At the centre of all of this horror, magic, politics and violence is still family, grief, duty, and people trying to protect each other.
Bright Dead Things is honestly one of the strongest starts to a fantasy series I've read in years. It's darker than anything Hailey has written before, but never loses the heart that makes her books work so well.
If you're already a fan of Hailey Turner, I think you're going to have an incredible time with this.
And if you've never picked up her work before and love MM fantasy with phenomenal worldbuilding, mature relationships, mythology, horror elements and a romance that feels earned rather than rushed, I cannot think of a better place to start.
Book 2 cannot come soon enough.
As this is a darker offering from Hailey, be sure to check the content warnings before you read.
Content Safety Warnings:
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
I received a copy of this book from Gay Romance Reviews, and this is my honest review.
Review of advance copy
Bright Dead Things is an MM, urban fantasy romance. Cillian is a park ranger who is called out to a murder in the forest. Someone is gutted and it looks like a bear attack. Turns out there are more deaths, including the lives of his once best friend’s Mother and Step Father. There is also the disappearance of Aisling, their daughter. He finds her but he is traumatized and won’t speak.
Bran comes back to town after hearing the news of what happened to his family. He has lived in Boston the last seven years, staying away from Cillian after he rejected him when they were teens. Still hurt, he won’t speak to the taller man.
Bran is now the head of the Gallagher coven, and the only one. He job to protect the town from the lights that come out of the forest. He uses his familiar, a Raven, named Jupiter, to help him navigate his way!
While trying to get settled they are attacked and his sister is taken from him. He decides to follow the creatures and the elf lord to save her. There is a portal that leads to the Otherworld, where the Fae live. Cillian follows, learning the existence of magic and fae on the way.
Once over the other side, they are captured and it’s revealed Cillian is more than what he seems.
This is a whole journey to save Bran’s sister, save themselves, learn some hard truths and try to get home. It has a HFN ending and an adorable bonus scene that is linked at the end!
I freaked out getting this book!! I have been hearing about these “dumb fae boys” from Hailey for a while now and I am so happy to finally dive into this world and meet these characters! Now I love the mix of our modern world and the ancient fae. I love the horror elements and the lore and mystery. I love Bran and his need to protect his sister and Cillian’s loyalty and determination to help Bran to the end.
I’m OBSESSED with how possessive Cillian is of Bran and how he loves to see his collar and leash on the smaller man. I loved the size difference and over protectiveness!
Sigh….I’ll be thinking of this book for a while and I am so happy for more!!!!! ☺️
Tropes:
Urban fantasy
Fae lore
Magic/covens
Mystery
Fated Mates
Size difference
Possessive MC
Collars/leash
Slow burn
Protective
Childhood friends
Loss of family
Portals
Scary forest
Second Chance
Old family grudges
Witches treated like slaves
Navigating Fae court
HFN ending
Bran comes back to town after hearing the news of what happened to his family. He has lived in Boston the last seven years, staying away from Cillian after he rejected him when they were teens. Still hurt, he won’t speak to the taller man.
Bran is now the head of the Gallagher coven, and the only one. He job to protect the town from the lights that come out of the forest. He uses his familiar, a Raven, named Jupiter, to help him navigate his way!
While trying to get settled they are attacked and his sister is taken from him. He decides to follow the creatures and the elf lord to save her. There is a portal that leads to the Otherworld, where the Fae live. Cillian follows, learning the existence of magic and fae on the way.
Once over the other side, they are captured and it’s revealed Cillian is more than what he seems.
This is a whole journey to save Bran’s sister, save themselves, learn some hard truths and try to get home. It has a HFN ending and an adorable bonus scene that is linked at the end!
I freaked out getting this book!! I have been hearing about these “dumb fae boys” from Hailey for a while now and I am so happy to finally dive into this world and meet these characters! Now I love the mix of our modern world and the ancient fae. I love the horror elements and the lore and mystery. I love Bran and his need to protect his sister and Cillian’s loyalty and determination to help Bran to the end.
I’m OBSESSED with how possessive Cillian is of Bran and how he loves to see his collar and leash on the smaller man. I loved the size difference and over protectiveness!
Sigh….I’ll be thinking of this book for a while and I am so happy for more!!!!! ☺️
Tropes:
Urban fantasy
Fae lore
Magic/covens
Mystery
Fated Mates
Size difference
Possessive MC
Collars/leash
Slow burn
Protective
Childhood friends
Loss of family
Portals
Scary forest
Second Chance
Old family grudges
Witches treated like slaves
Navigating Fae court
HFN ending
May 23, 2026
5 stars, and all the love in my heart. I fucking LOVE how this author depicts the legends and myths they build their books around. They make long-established lore their own while still respecting its origins and that’s never going to be something to scoff at. I’m invested in the story and the world already, and I love the characters even when they’re making me want to bang my head into the goddamn wall. I’m trying to keep my pining for the next installment from being rude, so I’ll keep slapping my gremlin grabby-hands down when they appear, but the whining in my head might not always stay there. Fantastic all-around, and now I’m gonna go pout for a bit.
—I received an ARC from Gay Romance Reviews (GRR). All ratings reviews, and unwanted opinions are my own.—
—I received an ARC from Gay Romance Reviews (GRR). All ratings reviews, and unwanted opinions are my own.—
May 23, 2026
Bright Dead Things is the first book in the Bitter Legacies series and ends in a HFN.
RTC
🐦⬛ MM Fantasy Romance
👀 Former childhood best friends
💕 Second chance romance
🚫 Forbidden love
🌲 Dangerous magical forest
🏘️ Small town
🧝♂️ Fae and witches
🫣 Fantasy horror vibes
☘️ Celtic mythology
Plot: 📚📚📚📚
Character rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
World building: 🌎🌎🌎🌎
Sexiness: 🔥🔥🔥
Feels: 🖤🖤🖤🖤
Writing style: 🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊
RTC
🐦⬛ MM Fantasy Romance
👀 Former childhood best friends
💕 Second chance romance
🚫 Forbidden love
🌲 Dangerous magical forest
🏘️ Small town
🧝♂️ Fae and witches
🫣 Fantasy horror vibes
☘️ Celtic mythology
Plot: 📚📚📚📚
Character rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
World building: 🌎🌎🌎🌎
Sexiness: 🔥🔥🔥
Feels: 🖤🖤🖤🖤
Writing style: 🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews