Book Review: Aubrey Wants to Die by Pip Knight

Aubrey Wants to Die
by Pip Knight
March 3, 2026
"Sexy and laugh-out-loud funny, full of delicious drama and surprisingly moving – Aubrey’s chaotic undead rollercoaster of a journey had me cackling, yearning and questioning my entire existence." —Anna Downes, bestselling author of Red River Road

Love is hard. Being undead is harder ... Dolly Alderton meets True Blood in this dark, funny hell of a story

Aubrey is not what she seems. She's young, beautiful, romantic, obsessive and ... a vampire. All she wants is to be human again, and failing that, she wants to die. But the problem is, she can't. Not by stake through the heart or holy water or crucifix or garlic or fire. And she'd know, she's tried every method ... Twice.

So she's stuck here on this earth, all alone. Even the vampire who made her this way - an aristocratic douchebag called Oscar - has abandoned her.

But everything changes when one fateful night, she meets Jonathan. He's everything Aubrey's ever dreamed of, and what's more, he's her soulmate. Her Bella-Edward story. For the first time in 150 years, she has a reason to hope - eternal life might be bearable after all. So when Jonathan unexpectedly breaks up with her, she'll do anything to get him back.

But that's the exact moment Oscar swoops back into her life. And he has other plans for her. Soon, she's thrown into a world of glamour, glitter, blood and hedonism, a world that has her questioning everything she knows to be true-about life, but also about herself. A world where nothing is simple ... And no-one is safe, either. 

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Aubrey Wants to Die by Pip Knight is the first installment in a new vampire romance. This one is certainly a vampire with a big twist and tons of adult Twilight vibes.

I love Twilight. I love True Blood. So, of course, I was sold on trying this one. So glad I did. It is freaking hysterical at so many points, our leading lady is FUNNY and snarky but not over the top. I love some comedy in a story. But you add in action, romance, and vampire lore, and this gal is enjoying every single page.

Sometimes you have to take hold of a lover and make them face their feelings of love and vulnerability. That's probably the nicest way I can explain what Aubrey is trying to do. Make the guy she loves understand he should love her back! Sounds kinda crazy, certainly is. Which just adds to the fun and non-stop writing in this.

I loved it, would read this again and again. But hopefully the author writes more stories with other characters and keeps this one undead for a long time!

Getting 4 and 1/2 Sheep

 

 

 KD

About the Author:

Pip Knight is the bestselling Australian author of five novels, writing under a new name. Her hugely popular dark and sexy psychological thrillers feature a dash of romance and black humour, featuring brilliantly flawed women. With Aubrey Wants to Die, Pip Knight brings all the exciting trademarks of her much loved novels - just with vampires. She lives in Sydney. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. 

Excerpt: Red Queen, Yellow King (The Book of Alice #1) by Jack Finn + giveaway

Welcome back to Wonderland.
Nothing here survives unchanged.

Red Queen, Yellow King (The Book of Alice #1)
by Jack Finn
December 28, 2025
Genre: Dark Epic Fantasy, Alice in Wonderland Retelling
This is book #1 of The Book of Alice duology.
Wonderland has fallen. And something older than kings has taken its place.

Alice returns to consciousness in a ruined palace, her body broken, her mind fractured, her sister enslaved by a queen who wears a crown of thorns and a smile of knives. The Looking Glass is shattered. The Hatter has turned. The White Queen is dead.

But beyond the bloody thrones and broken teacups lies something even stranger—an echo of a play that should never be performed, whispered by a masked god in yellow.

To save what little remains, Alice must navigate a sea of madness, hunt down a missing monarch, and confront the truth behind her own unraveling story.

Some fairy tales end in fire. Others in silence.

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The Red Queen played the long game. She murdered the White Queen and spared Alice, Ava, Hatter, and Lady Cheshire the purge that followed; even Tinker was allowed to live just long enough to complete his devices for the journey. Holding Ava and the Cheshire girls hostage, even releasing the giants, was all part of a plan the Red Queen had mapped out in her mind well in advance. She wanted the Azure Queen dead and the Red King back. Now all her pieces were in play on the chessboard.

Like every game, chess had rules.

Alice never played by the rules.

She would make her own rules.

She would beat the Red Queen at her own game.

Alice doing Alice things.

About the Author:
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Jack Finn is a horror author and active Horror Writers Association member living in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two fiendishly clever dogs. He is a lifelong believer that the Tooth Fairy proves you can trade body parts for cold, hard cash.

His books by the include, The Wolves of Kalinin werewolf duology: Prey Upon the Lambs (Anuci Press 2025) and The Desolation of Hunters (Anuci Press 2025); the horror collection They Come When You Sleep (Velox Books 2025), a re-envisioning of the Dracula mythos in the standalone novel The Seven Deaths of Prince Vlad (Anuci Press 2024), and the folk horror collection, Legend of the Deer Woman (Crow Street Press, 2023).

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
Enter the Red Queen, Yellow King Giveaway Here

Religious Science Fiction: IKONA by M.D. Dixon + excerpt

The concept of interconnectedness surfaces in a vision that spans from contemporary cityscapes to a fractured future in IKONA by M.D. Dixon. 

This story follows four strangers who are unknowingly linked by an ancient, healing cross, examining how personal sacrifice and collective evolution are often intertwined. It is a contemplative look at how the choices made in the present ripple through the fabric of time.

As the resonance of the cross pulls them together, these four must navigate the shifting realities of their existence. The ultimate question becomes which future they will inhabit and what price they must pay to secure a path toward healing.

IKON
by M.D. Dixon
February 20, 2026
Genre: Religious Science Fiction & Fantasy, Genetic Engineering
A mysterious Russian Orthodox cross, a holy icon with inexplicable healing power, begins to surface across cities, lifetimes, and fractured timelines.

Four strangers find themselves drawn into its field—from the bustle of Sydney, Hong Kong, Atlanta and Berlin to the stark quiet of Siberia’s post-apocalyptic tundra.

In Atlanta, Kate Davies witnesses the icon’s strange effect on a sick child. In Sydney, Finley Minor is haunted by visions of possible futures and the quiet weight of consequence. Jia Li MacPherson, former thief and Shibari performer, holds secrets that powerful forces would kill to keep buried. Wallace Deng Moroz, a monk living a century ahead, clings to visions of a cure in a world where a genetic engineering catastrophe has nearly ended humanity, and the political landscape is dangerously polarised.

The convergence of these four heroes feels destined, yet it is shaped by choice – and the deeper they move into the cross’s resonance, the more the question shifts:

Which version of the future will they choose to inhabit?

And what must be surrendered to reach it?

IKONA is a visionary novel of shifting realities and inner reckonings—a meditation on time, memory, and healing.

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Excerpt
———
FINLEY & THE SEA 
MAY 2019 
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 

Finley Minor was by his own accounts an empty man, a listless man, spiritually and emotionally sparse. Blink a thousand times and his course in life would not have shifted an inch. He was motionless like a chameleon in the presence of a threat. But this was not fact, only fear, and that of a man who knew that he’d not lived at full throttle and had succumbed to the fate of it —a slow and shallow life. He ruminated on it. He judged himself for it. He laughed at his own expense, without thinking he might ever change a thing. 

In the way one always has a beginning, a great excuse, this was Finley’s: at the age of seven, in his native England, he sat on the beach as his stick wove tessellations in the sand (almost of its own accord, it seemed in retrospect), and he looked to the horizon towards France with the open, impressionable curiosity of his young age. He wondered at the sea’s depth, its great distance, how one might (as many had) swim across the channel, what creatures might lurk there, what they might feel like against bare skin. He imagined something slimy and cold, fanged, and slithering. The waves seemed to roar at him, even though they descended in the rockpools with the gentleness of pooling cream.

He stood, determined to satisfy his curiosity. He took halting steps over the rocks and shells, straight ahead, then bearing left around a rock face that jutted into the sea. He sat on a big, flat rock and stared into the gray water. He heard his father calling out his name, but ignored him. The water rushed in again and again, and each time reached further and further, first sucking at his toes, then his heels, then his knees. His curiosity fled; he became afraid, and all sound was magnified, the dull ocean roar, the seagull squawking a few feet away, his heartbeat. He knew he had to go back to shore. He waved to his father, stood, and took a faltering step. There was a low murmur; the water fizzled once more in retreat from the rocky sand like the gasping breath of a dying man. He felt dizzy and fell to his knees. He crouched on all fours and steadied himself as the water swirled and grasped at him, and the sky looped and the clouds fell from the corner of his eyes. He felt his head winched back towards the horizon, and the sea reached for his throat. Blackness. 

When he came to, dragged back to shore by his father, he announced that his aunt would never return from her Côte D’Azur holiday. He wagged his finger towards the surf and pulled a face, “Over there, there is smooching.” 

The official prognosis was that he’d had an epileptic fit, though none of the tests proved it. He must have passed out, in that case, the doctor pronounced, low blood sugar, a low-level virus, dehydration. 

But Finley knew, only he knew. 

The ocean had rent a hole in his soul, and let in the future.

About the Author:
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M.D. Dixon is a novelist, somatic therapist, and explorer of the intersections between the psyche and the sacred, science and mysticism, trauma and transformation. Holding a Ph.D. in the social sciences with a focus on Russia and Ukraine, Dixon has spent nearly fifteen years in therapeutic practice in Sydney, Australia. Dixon’s debut novel, IKONA, weaves visionary fiction, myth, and metaphysics to illuminate the evolution of consciousness. Dixon also hosts The Shattering Place, a podcast on multidimesional healing and the awakening human story, launching in early 2026.

Bad Wolves: Wolf Shifter Fairytale Retelling Romance by Harper A. Brooks, Brea Viragh

Bad Wolves: Wolf Shifter Fairytale Retelling Romance
by Harper A. Brooks, Brea Viragh
February 26, 2026 

Genre: Paranormal Romance, RH
Cover Designer: Phoenix Premade Designs
Hosted by: Lady Amber's PRn
Collects books from: Bad Wolves
Fairy tales warned me about monsters. I never thought I’d become one.

A deal with a goddess gave me life. Twenty-five borrowed years, and now the debt is due. With my final birthday looming, I set out to save myself. Instead, I end up caught between two warring packs and hunted by rival alphas and their betas. Torin, Noble, Mathis, and Dax are dangerous, ruthless, and powerful beyond imagination.

They scent what I am the moment I step into their territory. And they refuse to let me go.

But I’m not prey. I’m something more—moon-touched, goddess-marked, with claws sharp enough to draw blood.

When I’m taken by the deadliest pack in the country, something ancient awakens inside me. Now my four wolves stand at my side as war closes in and the Blood Moon Pack threatens to tear everything apart. Loving them should make me stronger, but I might be the key to saving the packs…or destroying them all.

These wolves may think they’re the apex predators, but Little Red has claws and I bite back.
This omnibus contains all three books from the Bad Wolves series: Never Prey, Never Submit, & Never Tamed. Please note that this series is loosely based on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale and contains a why choose twist, meaning that the heroine will end up with more than one love interest.

Available:
On Amazon in ebook & paperback

Sprayed Edges available in Harper & Brea’s website shops

• Bad Wolves Omnibus Paperback Includes:
• Complete Bad Wolves Collection (3 books)
• New Cover Art featuring Mathis
• New Two-Page Book Spreads
• New Chapter Headers
• Metallic Red Sprayed Edges

OR PURCHASE YOUR SIGNED SPECIAL EDITION
FROM THE AUTHORS!
HARPER A. BROOKS
BREA VIRAGH

 

About the Authors:

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Harper A. Brooks lives in a small town on the New Jersey shore. Even though classic authors have always filled her bookshelves, she finds her writing muse drawn to the dark, magical, and romantic. But when she isn't creating entire worlds with sexy shifters or legendary love stories, you can find her either with a good cup of coffee in hand or at home snuggling with her furry, four-legged son, Sammy.

She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

• RONE Award Winner
• USA TODAY Bestselling Author
• International Bestselling Author

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BREA VIRAGH is a contemporary and paranormal romance writer based in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is a proud Gryffindor, a graduate of Brakebills, and a member of Fairy Tail. Can you tell she loves anything magical? Her addictions include good books with delicious heroes, traveling pretty much anywhere, and food. If she could eat anything she wanted without repercussions, it would be amazing!

She is the author of the Promise Me series, a small-town contemporary romance, and the Cavaldi Birthright, a witchy paranormal romance. All her stories have a tantalizing mix of sweet and heat and are a guaranteed happily ever after!

Excerpt: The Obscura Syndicate: A Dark Gothic Romance by Raven Storme + giveaway

 A dark, seductive story of prophecy, power, and a love so intense it could topple a kingdom.

The Obscura Syndicate: A Dark Gothic Romance
by Raven Storme
January 31, 2026 

Lira was meant to die for the throne.

Cassian Vale was trained to be the blade that ended her.

But the moment he hesitates—one heartbeat, one breath—everything forbidden ignites.

Now the deadliest man in the Syndicate is the only thing standing between Lira and a prophecy that demands her blood. He should fear her. He should kill her. Instead… he can’t stop wanting her.

She’s the girl marked for sacrifice.
He’s the weapon shaped to obey.

Together, they become the spark that threatens to burn Obscura to ashes

As Lira’s power awakens and the throne tightens its grip, their desire becomes its own kind of danger—raw, consuming, and impossible to survive untouched. Enemies hunt them. Shadows follow them. And the kingdom whispers one truth:

If Cassian doesn’t ruin her, she’ll ruin him.

A dark, seductive story of prophecy, power, and a love so intense it could topple a kingdom.

Amazon

 

Excerpt
“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” Cassian said.

I didn’t stop.

“How should I look at you?” I asked, stepping closer, close enough to feel the heat rolling off his body. “Like a monster?”

His jaw clenched. “Like someone who can ruin you.”

I smiled. “You already have.”

His hand came up fast, pinning me to the wall—not violent, but unyielding. His body crowded mine, every inch of him a warning I ignored willingly.

“You don’t understand what you’re inviting,” he murmured.

“I understand exactly,” I said, fingers sliding into his coat, finding the steady thrum of his heart. “You don’t touch things you don’t intend to keep.”

His breath stuttered.

“Say that again,” he said.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

That was the moment he lost control.

His mouth crushed to mine, all restraint burned away, and the world narrowed to breath, skin, and the terrifying certainty that neither of us would walk away unchanged.

About the Author:

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Raven 🐦‍⬛ Storme writes dark, smut-heavy romance for readers who crave obsession, power struggles, and secrets whispered in the dark. Living in Pennsylvania, she’s been married for fourteen years and shares her life with fourteen dogs—because calm has never been her aesthetic. Her debut series, The Obscura Syndicate, dives into forbidden desire, shadowy loyalties, and characters who blur every moral line. Raven believes love is messy, passion is dangerous, and the best stories live in the dark.

GIVEAWAY

Raven Storme will be awarding a signed paperback and book plate to a randomly drawn winner. 

Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better their chances of winning. 

The tour dates can be found here: 
https://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2026/02/book-blast-obscura-syndicate-by-raven.html