★★★★☆

Blackthorn is a fever dream masquerading as a romance novel. It’s dark, lush, and soaked in legacy, lust, and layered betrayals. Geissinger delivers a genre-blending experience that moves from second-chance enemies-to-lovers into gothic horror and full-blown paranormal prophecy without missing a beat.

Maven is everything I love in a protagonist: sharp, skeptical, and unapologetically powerful, even when the world gaslights her into doubting her own senses. When she returns to her cursed hometown with a child in tow and trauma barely packed away, she collides with Ronan, her wealthy, possessive ex who broke her heart once and seems dangerously eager to do it again. The chemistry is volcanic. The history is bloody. And the nickname “little witch”? Absolutely devastating in all the right ways.

What starts as small-town intrigue quickly spirals into something mythic: ancestral sins, bloodline curses, missing corpses, generational matriarchal magic, and a heroine caught between reclaiming her power and resisting the man fate won’t let her forget. There’s a supernatural element that unveils itself slowly, but when it hits, it hits hard. Fallen angel vibes, monster lore, and seven nights a month of dark, carnal consequences? Yes, this book takes bold risks, and for the most part, they pay off.

One scene did push into my personal ick zone. Particularly a hyper-explicit sex scene with detail that felt less erotic and more extreme than necessary. While some readers may enjoy its transgressive audacity, others (like me) may flinch. That said, it didn’t detract from the overall power of the story or the emotional depth between the characters. Consent and emotional clarity eventually ground even the most intense moments.

Geissinger’s writing remains sharp, cinematic, and emotionally charged. Blackthorn is an ambitious, genre-blending, morally tangled tale about fate, fire, and finding truth in the monsters we both fear and crave. If you like your romance with a side of ancestral reckoning and literal wings? This one’s for you.