Welcome to the
Hawthorn & Aster
Reader Hub
Your one-stop portal for ARCs, tours, blasts, and exclusive reader opportunities.
What’s Happening Now…
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July 27th - 31st, 2026
Help us promote Tracey Magruder’s Kickstarter Campaign for these gorgeous special edition editions of Great Missenden Ever After series.
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Join E.L. Deliza's Tour Team for It Happened One Spring
Join us in promoting E.L. Deliza’s fourth installment of Seasons of Love, It Happened One Spring. We are looking for influencers, readers and hype squad members. Tour is July 20th - 24th, 2026!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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
July 27th - 31st
Weeklong 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?
It Happened One Spring
by E.L. Deliza
book Four of Seasons of Love
July 20th - 24th, 2026
An unfortunate turn of events leaves Brooklyn without accommodation during the final year of college. All her roommates couple up with their significant other.
Adam Serra-Valle, star player of DTU soccer team and her friend since the first year of college offers his spare room to her.
Though she had been hesitant at first, never wanting to burden anyone, things turn around and being roommates with Adam wasn't bad at all. Especially when they started spending more and more time together.
Between Brooklyn volunteering for charity, her school work and Adam varsity soccer schedule, they didn’t have time to date. They soon realize that they had the perfect schedule for each other and tension raises between them.
Adam proposes a deal, to start seeing each other casually. It’s nothing but purely physical, no strings attached. With no clingy partner to worry about, Brooklyn accepted the offer.
Their new relationship seemed perfect, no one understood them better than each other suddenly, being roommates helped too. Between their hikes, grocery shopping, cooking dinner together and heading out together it became clear they loved each other’s company— beyond everything being too casual.
But Adam would go pro and leave, Brooklyn wasn’t even sure if she could stay in the city. Adam was only meant to be a friend, a good friend and she didn’t ever want to lose one of those.
Still, the passion grew as did her feelings for him and worse, he might even feel the same way— now she’s unsure what to do.
Tropes
Friends to lovers
Roommates
Forced proximity
College sport romance
Mutual pining
No strings attached
Dual POV
