Warrior

by Lori Brighton

To say my life has been one dreary event after another would be an understatement. Fact is, I’m no one special, just a girl from a broken home trying to make it through high school so I can leave behind my heavy baggage. And everything is going as planned…until he arrives, spinning stories of magic, fairy tales, and a mythical kingdom where I belong.


He says I will save my kingdom…which is unfortunate because to save my kingdom, I’ll have to destroy his. He has to stop me. It’s nothing personal. But the longer we’re together, the more personal it feels, and every day it’s growing harder to ignore my attraction to this arrogant and charming guy. In the end, when he’s forced to decide, will he choose his people or a simple girl from New York?

Genres: Fantasy

ebook

Published July 9, 2018

About the author

As a child, thoughts of far-off places and adventure consistently kept Lori up late at night. After graduating high school, she came to the conclusion that there was no better way to seek adventure and nourish her love of history than to become an archaeologist. She went on to receive a degree in anthropology, but digging in the dirt during humid Midwestern summers wasn’t exactly as fun as she thought it would be.

Instead, she went to work in an air conditioned museum where she spent her days surrounded by creepy Victorian animal mounts. Still, she wasn’t satisfied.

Deciding the people in her imagination were slightly more exciting than the dead things in a museum basement, she set out to write her first romance novel. That book was soundly rejected. As was the next. Years went by and she began to wonder if she’d ever see her dream fulfilled. Until one day she came up with an idea for a book that brought together her love of history and adventure: a book now titled Wild Heart. Since Wild Heart's release, Lori has written Historical Romance, Contemporary Paranormal Romance and Young Adult.

Lori currently resides in the Southern U.S., where she juggles her time between a husband, a son, a golden retriever, a cat and the many, many people in her imagination.

Reviews

[Coco.V]

🎁FREE on Amazon today (4/10/2020)! 🎁

[Lucy Gardiner (luc_lostinbooks) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a story of a teenager from New York called Shay who ends up stumbling into two fae men and is whisked away to faerie land.

It’s something I think we’ve all read before so I wasn’t too hopeful when I realised what was going on.

I actually liked Shay as a character she wasn’t too whiny or too overly aggressive “I’m a total badass”

Unfortunately for me I cant rate this book any more than two stars due to the amount of grammar and spelling mistakes.

I never normally am so picky when it comes to a few errors but there was actually parts of the book where there was no spaces in between words several times and the grammar was all over the place.

I had to grit my teeth to read through the story and I wasn’t enjoying it or really invested at all. I feel this is nothing new, but maybe younger readers will enjoy it if they aren’t so bothered by the mistakes as I was.

Thanks to netgalley for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Rebecca Delgrosso Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much! Lori Brighton takes you on a magical adventure through another realm. I could not put this book down. One of my favorite tropes is when the normal girl gets taken to a different/fae realm. I loved the character of Shay so much and fell a little bit in love with the arrogant Mak. I can’t wait for the next book to see what happens to the kingdoms. If you’re a fan of books about Fae or girls who discover they have a destiny to fulfill, this book is one for you.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.
This a good YA fantasy.
The characters keep you engaged.
Unfortunately I found the story slow in places making it hard work to continue.
Overall a reasonable read though.

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

I think my biggest issue with this book is that it tried too hard, though I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense. You know how some people (teenagers especially) view things with more drama than they are worth? That’s the best way I can think of to describe it. It wasn’t terrible or anything; it just wasn’t great.

The story had potential, but the execution fell short. I wish it had all been resolved in one book (I had gone into it thinking it was a standalone), as I do not plan to continue the series.

Shay (16 then 17), the main character, was one of those “I’ve had to take care of myself because my guardian neglected me, so I think I’m extremely mature” characters. She was also very, very sensitive about people not thinking she was capable of things because she’s a girl—even though, in reality, she was unprepared and inexperienced, which did make her less than capable of the activities in question. Just saying.

The love triangle was forced—it existed simply to exist. Makaiden (18 then 19) had his moments, but I wasn’t a huge fan. His promiscuity was established early on, but then it was ignored. Why include it anyway? Brynjar (18 then 19) briefly appealed to me more, but he wasn’t in the book much, and Shay hated his chivalry and protectiveness.

I hope the technical mistakes were corrected before final publication. One thing that bothered me was the frequent use of some awkward sentence structure. For example, look at this sentence (this one is made up, the it’s patterned after its many likenesses in the book: “The morning brought with the warmth of the sun.” Something is missing, yes? “The morning brought with IT the warmth of the sun.” All throughout the book. Just add those two letters!

How it ends: Shay and Mak get separated from Bryn and the rest of the Acadian soldiers as they’re looking for the fairy hive. The two soldiers who crossed the ravine with them try to kill Shay, but Mak kills them. They’re found by Queen Iduna, queen of the wood nymphs, who takes them to her kingdom, where they are for a year (they forget what they’re doing and lose track of time).

When they return, they find out they were gone a year and there is war between their kingdoms. Her maid servant, Helen, is there and she helps them get to where Bryn and the battle are.

She finds out she’s not the princess (Queen Iduna had told Mak) but wants to help anyway. The general is her father, and for some reason she is angry at him for sending her to earth even though she wasn’t angry at the royal parents she assumed had sent her there. King Aksel, Mak’s uncle, accuses him of being a traitor, and war continues.

Mak decides to reveal that he’s a dragon. Shay has an ability to control animals, gifted to her by Queen Iduna. Mak turns into a dragon, and Shay helps him destroy the Cashel army. She falls.

A few months later, she and Bryn are going to return to earth to find the other two girls who were sent there. Mak is going to search for his sister. Rumors say Aksel is still alive.

Note: Some swearing, including an f word.

[Jillian Cassel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was...fine. The story was nothing special, but it was cute. The major story arc was predictable, I guessed the vast majority of what would happen before they even left Acadia. There's minimal world building, but I'm happy with most of the character development. Mak and Shay focused a lot on how they were "stronger together" as opposed to the typical "I NEED YOU I AM NOTHING WITHOUT YOU" view of a romance redemption, which was nice. I did not like how Mak's redemption line focused a lot on how he was changing *for* Shay. If you change for someone else, it's not real change. It's dependent on that person being with you and that's not really something we want to teach young adults is acceptable or desirable. Though, I did love that Shay started as a good, strong person and only became stronger through the book. I also loved that that was what drew Mak to her.

P.S. Mak's internal dialogue in the beginning of the book is the most annoying dialogue I have ever read from a male character.
Mak: What does it say about me that I'd kidnap an innocent girl and give her to my uncle to kill? I really want my sister to be proud of me. *5 minutes later* I'm going to kidnap her again.
Mak: *is literally invisible* these idiots don't even know we're here!

I felt like the author used magic as a crutch. Every single thing in this book had to do with magic. Shay also didn't seem jarred, like at all, about it. Here's someone coming from New York with zero magic to whatever realm this is with magic, unicorns, portals, fairy dust healing, fairy dust paintings, fairy dust everything, and she's just like "Oh. Ok, cool." But then the castle staff treats her like royalty (because they think she's royalty) and WOAH NOW. This is where we draw the line of things we can accept. Apparently.

There's plot lines in this story that lead absolutely nowhere. The "love triangle" is the most useless part of this story. (Well, besides Sarah, but we'll get to her.) I hesitate even calling this a love triangle because there was no competition from the start. She was always going to choose Mak, she told him as much during the final battle. Bryn wasn't even present through 2/3 of the book. Why bother making him an interest? Just make him a friend. Guys and girls can be just friends. It won't kill you, authors. Sarah, the abusive guardian, is another useless plot line. She has about 2 pages in the beginning, is vaguely referenced for her abuse in Shay's thoughts, and then appears in the final battle threatening to spill some secret (but never does) that all the major players already know. Her entire character could have been relayed through the first 2 pages and Shay's memories. Also Shay was protecting her for some reason? Let's teach kids that we protect the people who abuse us. Cool.

All in all, it was fine. I wouldn't rave about it but it was cute and a nice, light read.

[Caroline (CozyBookTraveller) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars - “Wonderful. I’m trapped in the Medieval Era, […] Well, at least the cakes are good”

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. Don't really know shy but when I read the synopsis it felt like Shay would be the moody type of character that nothing can make her happy. So I was glad when it turned out to be competently wrong.
Sure Shay's life is pretty bad, with a terrible mother and no friends, but she's not moody just a sensible young woman stuck in a bad environment. I took a really quick liking to Shay, she actually felt like a real human being as a lot of the times she reacted to this magical land I would do to in her shoes if one day I discovered that magic was real. I also really enjoyed the supporting characters, Bryn and Helen especially, though I had a hard time with Makaidan. He's just a douche to me and the love story never grabbed hold me. That story line wasn't anything that I find interesting. I would rather have loved to read more about Shays journey to save this world, in her own way, and adjusting to this strange new world that's her home now. I also really enjoyed the grey morality of Queen Iduna, and would have loved to see more of the fairy realm (maybe I get that in the sequel).

The world was very well balanced in terms of the magical creatures living in it, but as an history nerd the descriptions of the buildings left me questioning a bit how they have Renaissance style buildings. medieval one I get as it's pretty standard style for buildings in fantasy worlds. Could just be that it's the way Shay sees it as her brain probably would try to connect the new things in the magical world to known things from our world.

The writing was good, the world interesting and Shay is a main character I really enjoyed taking this journey with, could have skipped the romance with Makaidan though. I'm really excited to continue reading about Shay quest to save her magical world.

**I got this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review**

[Ahana M Rao (Heart’s Content) · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can find my whole review for this book here: https://tohscontent.wordpress.com/201....

Received an Advanced Reader’s Copy from publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I read the blurb for Warrior, I was utterly and confidently sure what I was getting to. In my defence, the blurb seemed like something that spoke of the usual fantasy, with typical tropes, a famous story-line that has been known to work always.

Except, Warrior wasn’t a typical book. I think the book takes everything that the blurb describes and turns it over its head. At the beginning, I think I faced a lull for a bit, because it didn’t seem very entrancing. But then suddenly, every time I picked the book, I was slowly getting drawn–further and further–into the story line. There are many typical tropes here that even a really good author can seem to sometimes hit and miss. But somehow Lori finds the mark.

The plot line starts off seeming predictable and usual and then spins and spins in directions we can never predict and there was more than once that I was shocked, you can never guess truly what’s going to happen next and what the protagonists are hiding and frankly, the plot twists were never on my list of I-totally-guessed-this, which is a BIG DEAL, because Ahana is basically Notre Dame (self-nominated).

There’s a girl and her destiny. And then, it all unravels and there’s so much more. The writing is magical, pulling us straight into the world that it describes. And it reads like it were written in magic. The mystical world that we enter, the dangers and wonder there, the entrancement and greed, the prince and the princess…

If you are looking for a read about magic, love and a story about characters who, having been ostracised all their lives, find home in their purpose, Warrior is the book for you. Lori, ❤ ❤ ❤

Happy Reading!

[Elda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done Ms Brighton!

I loved reading this book! Well written Lori Brighton! I have read many books by Ms Brighton that I couldn’t get enough of. When I had the chance to read this one, I jumped right on it. This story begins in the poor part of New York City and then you are transported into a world of wonder. A world where you will find kings and queens, princes and princesses, mystical creatures, fairies, sprites, unicorns....but it is not without its challenges. Shay never believed that she was the princess that was prophesied to save the world of Acadia from their enemies. And yet Prince Makaiden of Cashel and Bryn Meade of Acadia both found her in New York and transported her back believing she was the one. From here on out we travel through many twists and turns, many challenges, hardships, and the wonder of a mystical world. We are also witness to an on again off again, hot, cold, slow burn romance between Shay and the prince. Very romantic (sigh!). Shay also discovers that she has been blessed by the queen of the magical realm with a gift of communicating with the animals. This gift proves very useful when the kingdoms of Cashel and Acadia clash in a war where all seems hopeless for Acadia. And wow, we are also witness to a blockbuster of a reveal that puts a halt to the war. However, this is not the end. There is no cliffhanger pre se, but we have hints of a second and third book in this series. I am totally stoked to see what happens next. This is a book that I can easily highly recommend for all you high fantasy lovers everywhere. Happy reading.

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shay is a 16 year old girl living in New York with her drug addicted mother. One night after trying to get away from her mother, Shay is caught and taken away to another realm by two men. Here she finds out she is the lost princess to one of the men's kingdoms, and the enemy of the other man's kingdom. Through several fights Shay is found stuck with the enemy prince Makaiden and forced to work together to get back to their respective kingdoms. After some minor surprises, we are left with a cliff hanger leading into the next book.
I'm slightly torn on how to review this. On one hand, this seems to be a story line that we see far to often, but with some slight differences: long lost princess, falling for the enemy prince, wars started for slightly unknown reasons. On the other hand, this is my first book by Lori Brighton and I really did enjoy her character and world building and enjoyed her take on a common story line. I do look forward to the sequel and finding out how things end.

I received a complimentary copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[i_hype_romance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was provided with an ARC of this title from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Shay ekes out her existence working at Romano's and escaping the tempermental rants of her mother. Her life changes in an instant when she is kidnapped by a green-eyed stranger named Mak.

When she wakes up she discovers that she is valuable, although no one will tell her why. She fights an awkward attraction to her captor that she knows will do her no good.

Then they are ambushed. She is rescued and
finds out who she really is - and why anything she feels for Mak can never be realized.

An assassination attempt, a daring escape, and a near miss bring Shay and Mac closer to each other and closer to the truth.

This was an enthralling story and I cannot wait to read the next installment in the series.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows the story of a teenage girl, Shay, who believes herself to be a regular, hard-on-her-luck, teenager for Earth. All that is shattered one night when two men with swords appear and fight over taking her back to their realm. They unbelievably tell her she is a Princess from another realm and she was sent away from her home realm for her safety. As Shay tries to navigate the new world she is brought into, one of magic and unicorns, she becomes very close to the ruler of the rival kingdom. As their relationship deepens against both of their wishes, war and manipulation swirl around them. The characters in this book were sympathetic and I loved the message of girl power embedded in the book. I am looking forward to the next installment in this series.

[Norma Nikutowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story starts with Shay, the protagonist, being startled by a thunder and rumbling noises. It’s a cold New York winter night. She wears a thin, donated jacket. Her mother is desperate for heroin. Shay stole her mom’s twenty dollars and escapes the apartment by jumping to the alley as she can’t deal with her mom that nigh. Shay is a regular girl from a broken home who struggles through high school. She has an ordinary life until she is kidnapped by a weird stranger named Mak and she learns how special she is. I enjoyed all the twists and turns and couldn’t put the book down. If you like fantasy adventures, you will love this book.

[Nerdy Housewifey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love fantasy so I was excited for this. Modern girl stuck in a fantastical world? What’s not to love? Warrior though read a little slow. It was hard for me to connect with the characters (done even get me started on the ‘romance’) and without that connection to the characters I didn't care about what was going on. And frankly I really didn’t like Mak the male love interest, any book that’s supposed to have romance that has a cut away scene with the male sleeping with some other girl and thinking ‘she’ll take my mind off it’ automatically kind of turns away my interest.

[Suze · Rating 5 out of 5]

In one word, this book is excellent.

Once again, Lori Brighton manages to capture her audiences interest from the very beginning and keep it to the very end. Taking her readers on a magical fantasy adventure, to another mystical world. The two main characters are faced with many challenges, and face death threats and betrayal, but through it all, they learn to trust themselves and each other and fight for the greater good.

The emotional and physical attraction between the two main characters, sizzles throughout the book, but it doesn’t detract from the story and there is also a surprise at the end that the reader is totally not expecting.

I can’t wait to see this book turned into a movie or TV series, because it has everything going for it and more.

I’m so excited to see that there are more books planned in this series, and I’m placing my order now!

[Morgain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love this book

An amazing story that you can not put down artfully wrote to make you feel everything that the characters are feeling. I recommend this book 100%.