Rhapsodic ♥ Laura Thalassa ♥ The Bargainer #1

Published November 2016 ♥ Published by Bloom Books

I judge books by their covers, and I am not ashamed of it. I was immediately drawn to this book before knowing anything about it.   Rhapsodic showed up in my Instagram feed, and I was captivated by it. After reading the first line in the synopsis – I had to read it. I LOVE sirens, love them.

Rhapsodic is book one in The Barganier series by Laura Thalassa.  It was published in 2016, and three more books followed it.  So there will be reviews for them eventually as well.

Our story follows the POV of Callypso Lillis, the fierce bad-ass heroine of my dreams.  Long before we meet her, she was just a terrified little girl who made a bargain with the devil – over three hundred bargains, to be more precise.  The beads of favours she owes wrap up her entire arm—the mark of the Bargainer.

When the Bargainer finally comes to collect, it has been seven years since they have seen each other.  Thalassa brilliantly uses flashback passages to show the growth and progression of their relationship. We learn how Callie came to owe the Bargainer so many favours and why it’s been so long since they have seen each other. Their relationship has roots that run deep and strong. Underneath everything, this was a love story, and it was beautiful.

In the present, women have been disappearing from the Otherworld; those returning are as silent and still as death itself.  They return to the Otherworld with strange babes who live off blood and spout cryptic words of the future to come.  The Bargainer needs Callie’s siren to figure out who is threatening him and his realm.

I loved the underlying mystery of this story, and I’m interested to see where Thalassa takes it next.  I thoroughly enjoyed the creepiness of the Otherworld – the silent, petrified women, the blood-sucking future telling children.  Book one was an excellent introduction to what I hope is an even bigger better creepier story to come.