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Hawthorn & Aster

Reader Hub

Your one-stop portal for ARCs, tours, blasts, and exclusive reader opportunities.

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  • I Hate Nothing About You Mini Blas

    August 11th, 2026

    Help us promote I Hate Nothing About You by Ella Sparkle, Book 2 in Stormy Love’s ARC Team by sharing this mini blast!

  • Glitchborn Heart by H.J. Spence, Book 1 in Dreamless, a dark dystopian debut romance. A dripping metallic heart over a glitchy background. Neon text that reads the book's title and the tagline, "She is magic. He is control."

    Join H.J. Spence's ARC Team for Glitchborn Heart

    Join us in promoting H.J. Spence’s debut dark dystopian romance, Glitchborn Heart. Releases August 31st, 2026!

  • ARC Readers wanted for T.L. Johnson's, The Rite of Recognition, Book #1 of Velkyn's Hollow

    Join T.L. Johnson's ARC Team for The Rite of Recognition, Book #1 of Velkyn's Hollow

    Join us in promoting T.L. Johnson’s, The Rite of Recognition, Book #1 in Velkyn’s Hollow. Releases September 10th, 2026

  • Join When The Sky Breaks, Skyfall #1 by Grace R. Hughes ARC Team

    Join Grace R. Hughe's ARC Team for her debut dark fantasy romance, When The Sky Breaks

    Join us in promoting Grace R. Hughe’s debut novel, When The Sky Breaks, Book #1 in Skyfall. Releases August 18th.

  • Join Lynne Billings ARC Team for her debut Roomed: A Prep School Consequence, Book #1 of the Max Rocks the '80s Series

    Join Lynne Billings ARC Team for her debut Roomed: A Prep School Consequence, Book #1 of the Max Rocks the '80s Series

    Join us in promoting Lynne Billings’ debut novel, Roomed, Book #1 in Max Rocks the ‘80s. August 20th!

  • I Hate Nothing About You by Ella Sparkle, Book 2 of Stormy Love

    Join Ella Sparkle's ARC Team for I Hate Nothing About You, Book #2 of Stormy Love

    Join us in promoting Ella Sparkle’s second installment of the heart-felt Stormy Love series, I Hate Nothing About You. September 8th, 2026!

  • ARC Team for Nakita Kirwan's Ballad of the Broken, Book 2 of Crowns of Gods and Monsters

    Join Nakita Kirwan's ARC Team for Ballad of the Broken, Book #2 of Crowns of Gods and Monsters

    Join us in promoting Nakita Kirwan’s second installment of Crowns of Gods and Monsters, Ballad of the Broken. October 24th, 2026!

August 11th

Mini Blast Blast

When The Sky Breaks

Sorcha wasn’t meant to inherit the Outer Court like this.
One moment, the day was calm. The next, a portal tore open—light, sound, wrongness—and an eldritch creature killed her father where he stood. By dawn, Iksura of the Inner Court had already begun her coup.

With rivals closing in and portals appearing across the continent, Sorcha is forced into the one alliance she never expected to need: a strategic marriage to Neal, her father’s steward.

Their union was meant to secure her claim.
Instead, it becomes the first crack in everything holding her world together.

Neal is loyal to a fault—steady hands, steady heart, and a devotion he refuses to name. But even he can’t shield them from what waits beyond their borders: cults worshipping the abominations, creatures slipping through the seams of the world, and magic bending in ways it never should.

Sorcha and Neal flee across nations and oceans in search of answers, joined by Ansel, the Outer Court’s monster-hunter—sharp-eyed, unflinching, and far too acquainted with the things that crawl out of the dark. From desert roads to storm-lashed ships and haunted cities, each stop reveals another piece of a threat older and far more sinister than they imagined.

And with every mile traveled, one truth becomes clearer:

It isn’t the monsters they should fear.
It’s what they’re becoming to each other.

Tropes

  • Arranged marriage

  • Slow burn

  • Age gap

  • Found family

  • Reverse grumpy x sunshine

  • Touch her and die

  • Golden retriever MMC

  • Low spice

  • Intentional pregnancy

  • Cryptids and magical creatures

  • Eldritch demons and occultism

  • Political intrigue


  • Graphic, gory, and occult violence including animal mutilation and human sacrifice

  • Pregnancy including maternal/infant mortality

  • Loss of parent (on page and mentioned)

  • Mentions of child neglect

  • Cancer (brief)

  • Some religious content 

  • Brief discussions on xenophobia and classism 

Book #1 of Skyfall

by Grace R. Hughes

Part of the ARC Team?

Roomed

Book #1 of Max Rocks the ‘80s

by Lynne Billings

Max never planned on failing freshman year.


But in the fall of 1985, one academic collapse sends him to Hillside Moore Academy—an elite New England boarding school where expectations are high and anonymity is impossible.


New roommate.
New rules.
No safety net.


Meet Max.


He’s energetic, sharp-witted, and used to skating by on personality.


“I’m not a one-size-fits-all kinda kid.”


School, however, has never come easily.


As a sophomore transfer student, Max discovers that prep school demands more than charm—competitive academics, social hierarchies, and a family legacy that quietly raises the bar.


When his learning differences begin surfacing in ways he can’t ignore, he must confront more than homework. He must confront who he is without the armor of humor.


Privilege doesn’t eliminate pressure.
Charm doesn’t replace discipline.
Growing up doesn’t wait.


Set against the cultural pulse of the 1980s, Roomed is a coming-of-age novel about identity, expectations, vulnerability, and the fragile confidence of a teenage boy learning who he is when everything shifts.

Tropes

  • Young Adult

  • Coming of Age

  • New to Town

  • Charming MMC

  • 1980s Nostalgia

  • Boarding School Drama

  • First Love

  • Sweet Romance

  • Neurodivergent-Coded Protagonist


Sexual Content - PG 13 level
Language - Curse words, 1980s boy banter dialogue
Max's family is Jewish, the word anti semitic is used. No derogatory words directed at anyone

Part of the ARC Team?

Glitchborn Heart

Book #1 of Dreamless

by H.J. Spence

In a neon-drenched city that never sleeps, falling in love is the ultimate glitch. Would you fall for the man who trapped your soul in his AI? What if he were the only one who could save you?

Dr. Kael Ryudon designed the corporation's largest AI system to be his generation's sanctuary. Instead, it became her prison...and his obsession. Now the system is slipping into The Void, and he's trapped on the outside of a heart he no longer knows how to reach.

He was supposed to rescue her...but now she's his only hope.

Tropes

  • Enemies to Lovers

  • Morally Grey MMC

  • Fierce FMC

  • Tech Magic

  • Forced Proximity

  • Found Family

  • Touch Her and Die

  • Obsession

  • Slow Surrender


Content Warning: Threats of violence, explicit language, sexual scenes, casual alcohol use, light drug use, morbid humor, light BDSM, sword play, and rope play.

Part of the ARC Team?

The Rite of Recognition

Book #1 of Velkyn’s Hollow

by T.L. Johnson

In Velkyn’s Hollow, bonds are not discovered. They are sanctioned.

Ritual decides alignment. Law decides love. The square bears witness.

After watching yet another arranged binding seal two strangers into permanence, blacksmith Nuria Vale does something forbidden: she forges a ring meant to answer only to mutual will. She carves no name into the metal. She makes no claim. She expects silence.

Instead, the ring answers Kayd Merrick—the man exiled years ago for refusing the bond the council chose for him.

Their recognition is quiet, intimate, and impossible for the council to classify. It does not command, pull, or claim; it reveals a truth that exists beyond sanction. When the council threatens to name, correct, or dissolve what has found them, Nuria and Kayd must decide whether they can choose each other without allowing magic—or law—to choose for them.

The Rite of Recognition is a romance-first fantasy about ritual magic, forbidden bonds, an exiled hero, a blacksmith heroine, and the power of mutual choice. It is the first interconnected standalone in the seven-book Velkyn’s Hollow cycle.

Tropes

  • Blacksmith heroine

  • Exiled hero

  • Forbidden magical bond

  • Fated bond with agency

  • Consent-forward romance

  • Mutual yearning

  • Ritual magic

  • Defying institutional control

  • Public reckoning

  • Interconnected standalone

  • HEA


Institutional coercion and control; threatened forced alignment and dissolution; social exile and ostracism; ritual cutting and blood; brief threats of physical force; consensual open-door sexual content, described non-graphically.

Part of the ARC Team?

I Hate Nothing About You

Book #1 of Stormy Love

by Ella Sparkle

Cassie

I have one rule when it came to guys: no more than two dates. Anything more and there’s a risk of catching feelings. Once you have feelings for someone it opens you up to a broken heart. I’ve been down that road before, and there’s no way I’m getting close to it again.

Because when you love people, they leave. It’s really that simple.

But now Mike has entered the scene and suddenly I want to go beyond two dates. Things with Mike feel…different. He’s the calm to my chaos, the rational to my emotional, the black Converse sneakers to my stiletto leopard-print heels, but somehow when we’re together it just works…

Except for that whole ‘I can’t ever tell him I love him because I don’t want him to leave’ issue.

Mike

I’m pretty certain the first moment I saw Cassie Charles, I fell in love with her. Bright red hair, legs for days, and a personality that I find both incredibly sexy and a tiny bit frightening. She’s passionate, driven, and one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known. She’s it for me.

I might be a bit rusty at the whole dating game…okay, a lot rusty…but I’m going to take down those walls Cassie has built around her heart, brick by brick. It feels like nothing could tear us apart…

Except for a nagging voice in the back of my mind that the other shoe has yet to drop.

Tropes

  • Opposites attract

  • Bold MFC x Shy MMC

  • Engaged in therapy

  • Found Family

  • Closed Door/Fade to Black

  • Learning to love

  • New Adult


Part of the ARC Team?

Ballad Of the Broken

Book #2 of Crowns of Gods and Monsters

by Nakita Kirwan

The mortals are freezing. The Fae are being hunted. The Hells are burning.

All because the Throne of Gods is broken.

But the price to mend it will shatter Lyra’s heart…

Dragged into the Seven Hells, Lyra is forced to marry the fallen god who betrayed her. Yet Riven is no ordinary captor, and in the Hells, nothing is as it seems.

Bound to a past Lyra cannot remember, she will do anything to find a cure for the curse consuming Rythos—even if it means marrying her enemy. But the deeper she falls into the Hells, the more she realises her connection to Riven threatens far more than her heart.

Above the Hells, the Commander of Death is running out of time. The bond torments him, forcing him to feel Lyra falling for another while the curse rots him from within.

Determined to hold Lyra one last time before he dies, he sails the Dead Sea in search of the only woman he has ever loved.

But when Lyra uncovers the monstrous truth behind the broken Throne and the Commander’s curse, she realises only one sacrifice can stop the kingdoms from collapsing forever…

Caught between the monster made to kill her and the god who refuses to let her go, Lyra must decide between saving the Kingdoms, or her heart.

Because the throne demands more than blood.

It demands heartbreak.

Tropes

  • Morally Grey

  • Why Choose (MMF)

  • Fated Mates

  • Dual POV

  • Cursed Oceans

  • Forced Proximity

  • Captor Romance

  • Spice

  • Enemies to Lovers


Graphic violence, Descriptive Gore, Death, Grief, Torture, Emotional Abuse, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Unhealthy Relationships, Religious abuse and cult themes, Sacrifice, Sexual content (explicit/open door), Dubious consent (contextual), Captivity, Manipulation, Coercion, Blood and Body Horror, Psychological trauma, Suicide references, Monster Romance, Morally grey love interests, Why Choose (MMF)

Part of the ARC Team?