Book Title: True North (Yule Lads #1)
Author: TA Moore
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Cover Artist: TA Moore
Release Date: December 15, 2023
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Santa’s missing. Presumed Dead.
Despite what his co-workers say Belling, Montana paramedic Dylan Holly does not hate Christmas.
It’s just that as an ex-foster kid he learned early on that Christmas just didn’t have much relevance to his life. He’s seen no evidence since then that he’s wrong.
That said, if Santa ever delivered a six-foot plus wall of hot muscle under his tree he’d be willing to reconsider. He’s even sourced an available one locally in the taciturn Somerset North and his impossibly blue eyes.
So really, at this point the ball is in Santa’s court.
There’s just one problem. Well, just one to start with anyhow. The battered, dying man someone dumped from a height onto Dylan’s car outside the Just-as-High, Somerset’s bar. He gave Dylan an old, well-worn watch and begged him to keep it safe.
Now Christmas is relevant to Dylan’s life in the worst way. The Winter Court has loosed their Wolves on the world and Dylan is on the run with Somerset North. A man who seems to know a lot more about what is going on than a Montana bar owner with exceptional shoulders should.
It turns out that Santa is missing, presumed dead. And the key to the hotly disputed succession crisis is a foster kid who never celebrated the season.
It is the first book in the Yule Lads series.
It does not end on a cliffhanger.
Goodreads
Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK
True North by T.A. Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dylan is an EMT. His night was going along fine until he’s called to his favorite bar. When a stag party goes steroidal, his life as he knows it is screwed. But at least he has Somerset North, the bar owner, along for the ride. Dylan loved looking up at the “solid wall of Somerset”, he just wasn’t ready for the crazy that ensued.
This story kind of sets the Santa legend on its butt, but in a good way. Peopled (or in this case, paranormaled) with imaginative players. Most, if not all, aren’t really likable, but that’s what made the story readable. The ability to take detestable characters and make them interesting enough to want to know their stories is an art.
I did feel at times like I was dropped into an all ready developed storyline. There were things that didn’t have enough background for me to readily understand them. But this book was still enjoyable.
I would of liked to see more of the developing feelings between Dylan and Somerset. With this being the first in a series I guess I will get that eventually.
Review Copy requested and reviewed on behalf of OMGReads.
Excerpt
TWENTY YEARS SINCE Somerset had tried to tap the power of his old position. Now he had done it twice in one night. He would never admit it, but as the wind blew up into his armpits, he wasn’t sure the magic he’d set aside would answer.
Apparently though, there were no hard feelings.
Cold filled his chest and soaked out into his body. It spilled out of his mouth on white fog and turned his marrow into frost. The only heat in him came from the prickle of pain as a dozen tiny fractures crazed along the bones of his arms and legs. The threads of the North Wind surged up around him and thickened under his feet. His boots skidded on the slick, snow-vapor surface at first. It was solid, but not still. The wind blew and eddied under his weight. It made for unsteady footing.
The weight of Dylan as he swung awkwardly from Somerset’s grip didn’t help. Somerset briefly indulged the thought of letting him drop. He was not a sentimental man at the best of times, that wasn’t what his kind had been made to be, and the chill of Winter magic in his bones reduced the idea of logic and odds.
Mostly.
Dylan didn’t scream or thrash. He gripped Somerset’s wrist with white-knuckled fingers and kept his eyes closed so he didn’t give in and look down. Somerset had always liked that quality about the wiry paramedic. No matter what happened around him, Dylan was always the calm at the heart of the storm. It made him… pleasant… to be around.
Something in Somerset’s chest, buried down deep under permafrosted meat and organs, felt warm. The rest of him was too Winter-numb to put his finger on what the feeling was. Guilt maybe. Or something stupider.
Either way, as he remembered the knack to riding the storm, he dragged Dylan into his arms. The other man resisted at first—Somerset didn’t take it personally—but the only other option was to fall. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Dylan pressed against Somerset’s chest, arms wrapped around him so tightly that Somerset could feel knuckly fists dug into the small of his back.
Somerset enjoyed the feeling of the warm, lean body pressed against him for a moment, then he had to focus on what he was doing.
“You can fly?” Dylan asked, his voice ragged and his breath warm against Somerset as it seeped through the cotton T-shirt. When Dylan laughed, it was a thin, nervous sound. “Explains what happened to my car.”
Somerset hesitated as he narrowed his eyes. He could see the snow caught in his lashes. Dylan was right; that probably had been what happened.
As many questions as that answered, though, it raised more. Wolves couldn’t walk the storm, so who’d brought Gull down? Had he already been injured?
The wind took advantage of Somerset’s distraction and tried to drop from under him. He stumbled, caught himself, and did his best to ignore the way Dylan’s arms tightened around him.
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TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide.
Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.
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