Book Reviews

Book Blurb

When Sunny retires to the northern Ontario wilderness to mourn his parents’ deaths, he’s hoping the change of scenery will afford him some peace and quiet.

 

His hopes are soon spectacularly dashed.

 

In self-imposed exile, dragon Emile runs across the Fold between his dimension and Sunny’s—and right into Sunny’s arms. Centuries out of touch with human culture, bright, beautiful Emile incinerates any hope Sunny had for an ordinary existence. With dryads and water sprites coming to life all around them, Sunny can’t deny the magic Emile brings to his life—or his heart. But that same magic leads the unrelenting dragon who would keep Emile captive right to them. To save his love, Sunny will have to reach deep and find some magic of his own.

 

Book Review

Magic. Dragons. Fey. A realm of existence next to the human realm, one where fantastical beings exist, and where Emile (aka Emikku) escaped from his broodnest companion, Hakko. Sunny, who has left the city and moved to a cabin on 150 acres of wooded land to escape the pain of his parents’ death. Two men, never meant to interact, thrust together in an existence where danger and the unbelievable are stirring, is the world Jamie Samms has brought into being in ‘Sunshine in the Dragon’s Heart’. A world I was instantly captivated by and couldn’t stop reading until the last page was turned.

Sunny’s parents were killed in a car accident a year ago and he tried to return to the family business but he couldn’t work in the nurseries, with the plants, without his mother as they had always done it together. Everywhere he looked he could see them and his mood grew more angry and his interactions with employees worse until he knew he couldn’t stay. So he bought a cabin on wooded acreage and moved to the forest in the hopes that his love of plants would eventually return as he worked to soothe his soul. Little did he know that what he would find would transform him in more ways than one.

Emile escaped from Hakko and the restrictive social system he abhorred by crossing the Fold, a bend between the realms, and ended up naked, alone, and very weak from magic loss. In his world Emile is set to be an Egg-bearer, to accept the eggs from the other Houses, incubate and bear them, and then be left to rear them all alone while being locked inside an opulent, but no less regulated, cage. A prison, in all senses of the word. Emile would be given everything he could desire except his freedom.

“Being chosen to carry the eggs for your House or Enclave is among the greatest of honours for my kind. So to us, being called an Egg-bearer isn’t such a tragedy. It means you will be pampered and cared for—worshipped, even—by the Sires whose offspring you will be blessed to raise, and by the House or Enclave they will eventually join. It is truly something many of us aspire to. A ‘designation’ any one of my kind would be proud of.” Emile swallowed hard. “Most of the time.”
“And there’s the story.” Sunny settled onto the bed. “Explain.”

At this point in the book, where Emile has inadvertently “come out” as a dragon shifter to Sunny and is explaining how the dragon culture works, I was completely transfixed by the worldbuilding. The idea of gender being fluid, the significance of being able to fluctuate between a hard shell and male form to a soft shell and female form, and the concept that it takes three dragons to create an offspring: the Offerer, the Donor, and the Sire. Each of those three dragons cannot be related to the other as this prevents any one dragon from becoming too powerful. I’m not saying anything more about this incredible worldbuild or Emile’s role in all of this as it’s far too spoiler-y.

In a million years I couldn’t have predicted how this story was going to progress. I never could have imagined the incredible beauty of this world the author created nor its hidden disease of lust, power, and greed. The love story between Sunny and Emile was stunning, especially intertwined as it was with the magic flowing between them. I absolutely adored every moment of this tale and don’t regret reading late into the night because I truly couldn’t put this down!

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 226 pages/74792 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	04-December-2018
Price	$6.99 ebook, $14.99 paperback, $14.99 bundle
Buy Link	https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/sunshine-in-the-dragons-heart-by-jaime-samms-10014-b