A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria: Book 1) by Danielle Lori

Title: A Girl Name Calamity

Author: Danielle Lori

Publisher:

Date of publication: July 13th, 2016

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult

Number of pages: 259

POV: 1st person

Series: Alyria

A Girl Named Calamity – Book 1

A Girl in Black and White – Book 2

Where you can find A Girl Named Calamity: Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Book synopsis (from Goodreads):

*This is a New Adult Fantasy Romance*

I was a simple farm girl living in the magical land, Alyria, where men ruled and women only existed.

Call me sheltered. Call me naive. I was probably both. I never expected to be the key to Alyria’s destruction.

The journey I was on wasn’t only one to save me. But one where I had a lot of learning to do. With men. With magic. And with myself.

But I wasn’t alone. I had an escort. One I wasn’t so sure about. But one I couldn’t afford to lose and one I wasn’t so sure I could even leave.

I had many hopes. But the most important one was that my name wouldn’t become my fate.

WARNING: This novel contains blood, violence, profanity, and some sexual content.
It does end on a cliffhanger.

Trigger Warning: None

My review:

I was intrigued by the blurb when deciding to accept the author’s invitation to review the book. I am so glad that I did accept the author’s invite. I enjoyed reading A Girl Named Calamity. This has shot to the top of my personal favorite list.

The plotline was very interesting. Calamity was a farm girl living in a magical land called Alyria. Alyria is a male-dominated land, meaning that women have no say in what happens to them. That the men rule. Her whole life, Calamity has worn silver cuffs on her arms as long as she could remember. Her grandmother told her that under no circumstances should she remove the cuffs. She offered no reason. Well, she finds out why the same night her long-lost mother shows up, tries to steal the cuffs and removes one. After getting it back, her grandmother tells Calamity that she needs to get the heck out of Dodge. That she is the person that can break the seal that was placed to seal the magic in Alyria. She is a hot commodity for anyone or thing who wants that seal to be broken. So her grandmother sends her away, to find shelter with friends in a faraway city. She will need to hire an escort once she got to another city. That is where the story takes off.

Now I can see why some people thought this book was a romance. The interactions between Calamity and Weston definitely had me wondering that. It most definitely isn’t a romance. Well, not one in a typical sense. Calamity was very attracted to Weston,  I couldn’t tell because of Weston’s actions. The fantasy angle was brilliant also and not overdone.

Calamity has to be the snarkiest, wise-butt person I have read in a while. I was dying at some of the one-liners that she zinged off of Weston. She also proved that she was pretty good at getting away from Weston. She landed in some pretty unusual situations. That was because of her being headstrong and she refused to listen to Weston. OMG, when she was aroused, she was hilarious. Poor Weston, I actually felt for him during that part of the book. That was the part of the book that made me go “Hrmmm” about his feelings for her.

Weston was one of those men that you love to hate. From the moment he was introduced in the bar, I knew that there was going to be trouble with him. He was an assassin, a lethal one. He was also a Titan. The best way to describe a Titan is that they were an élite warrior class think Spartans. He decided that he would escort Calamity to where she wanted to go but at a price. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he had his own agenda with her. When it was revealed, I wasn’t shocked. I also had a hard time reading him. I couldn’t figure out if he was in lust with her, liked her or wanted to get what he wanted to do over and get rid of her.

I am going to stress here that there is no sex in this book. There are some very steamy sexual situations between Calamity and Weston. I had to laugh because Calamity wanted to lose her virginity so bad and Weston kept resisting. That was a first in a book. A guy resisting sex…lol. It didn’t help that Weston could read Calamity’s mind and picked up on her naughty thoughts….lol. The best scene was the one at the end of the book. I kept screaming to myself “Do it already“. But I am glad that they held off.

The last chapter of this book messed me up. It went from one extreme to another. I didn’t think that I would recover from the shock that I got from the ending. Like the blurb says, this book does end on a cliffhanger. I know I have complained about cliffhangers in past reviews. I don’t like them. But I will make an exception to my dislike of cliffhangers. A Girl Named Calamity is such an exception. The end made me want to go and buy book 2 to see what happens!!!

5 Stars

My Summary of A Girl Named Calamity:

I loved this book. The main characters were snarky, sexy, and dangerous. The plot of this book was fantastic and definitely kept me glued to the book. Put it this way, I would recommend this book to everyone. That is how much I liked it.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Sexual situations (but no sex), language and violence

I would like to thank Danielle Lori for allowing me to read and review A Girl Named Calamity

All opinions stated in this review of A Girl Named Calamity are mine and I received no compensation for this review

**I received a free copy of this book and volunteered to review it**

3 thoughts on “A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria: Book 1) by Danielle Lori

    1. It was. Being told only from Calamity’s view was interesting too. You don’t get to see what Weston is thinking. Which was a huge appeal to me.

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