I really really tried. I wanted to DNF in the first 2 chapters but I made it halfway through the book before I could really bring myself to do it. Basic premise is that Rasputin is actually young and hot and Anastasia has magic and I guess they plan on overthrowing the Romanovs together??? If you don’t know the fall of the Russian royal family is one of the time periods of history I’m always down to watch a documentary about but not like, one of the ones I’m really obsessed with (looking at you MA in ancient history) so I was really excited to see what the author would do with it, spoiler alert, nothing interesting. By the time the story really starts we are already wildly outside of actual history, all the Romanov children are grown up and married (which they never got to do) even Alexi the prince and so far it just seems like he straight up doesn’t have Hemophilia which was the whole reason Rasputin was even brought to the royal palace in the fist place??? Basically there is a really interesting and complex thing going on in actual history and the author says what if not that and I make the king and queen evil to their one daughter (which as far as I am aware they were actually pretty loving parents for royals?) for no real reason. Basically this story would have been so much better if the author had just made up a completely fictional setting for the story but has to make so many changes to historical fact that it is so not worth it, also the magic system is bad and dumb and makes no sense and is a completely over powered fix it for completely contrived conflict. Also Anastasia is the main character and she is characterized so completely shittily I can’t even handle it, her inner monologue is draining, as is Rasputins, actually every POV character is exhausting and sounds like they were written by an overly dramatic 12 year old. I really did not like this book.

The second follows another group of preternaturals who all live together in an apartment in Boston hiding out from the traffickers and attempting to create a life/ school together but are under threat of being captured. The leaders of the group reach out to the shifter and vampire communities in the Dark River Days series and together they decide to open a school/ safe community for everyone and call it Eden (the tech billionaire from the other prequel funds it). This series similarly has reverse harem, dangerous traffickers etc. 

This follows a normal human Isla who all of the sudden is given a small child to raise by her friend and forced to run to keep the child safe abandoning her 3 male friends who she was surprisingly close with. These 3 men of course are actually lion shifters who decide that Isla is their mate and they eventually find her a few years later. They find her just in time to save her and the child from existential threats. It was a sweet little book just on it’s own and then ties into other series later on.