Top 5 Paranormal Romance Reads with Juliette Cross

It’s Romance Awareness Month and we’re dishing all month long about everything romance related. Juliette Cross is sharing her top 5 paranormal romance reads.

So what makes a paranormal romance stand out above all others? What grabs us with a vise-grip and compels us to give up sleep and food to turn the pages till we reach the HEA? For me, it comes down to three crucial elements. World-building, characterization, and emotional depth.

The paranormal world must be unique, believable (even though it could never exist in reality), and seductive. The kind of world I never want to leave. Secondly, the hero and heroine must stand out among the crowd, hooking the reader into their inner turmoil as if it were our own. And lastly, the emotional intensity must be heightened. This is true for any books, but I especially believe paranormal readers yearn for intense depth of emotion—love, lust, betrayal, anger, revenge—to propel the characters toward a cathartic end. My inner Goth girl smiles when she finds a read that does this well.

My Top 5 PNR reads speak to me on all these levels.

5. Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian—Unique vampire world and sexy-as-sin heroes

4. Nobody’s Hero by Bec McMaster—Compelling world where Mad Max meets zombie apocalypse and the characters won’t let you look away

3. First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones—Extremely original and snarky, funny hero and heroine with a heavy dose of scintillating lust

2. Angels’ Blood by Nalini Singh—Kickass heroine, terrifyingly powerful, sex-on-a-stick hero, and cool-as-hell world

1. Kiss of Steel by Bec McMaster—A world of Gothic beauty and sexual tension that sizzles off the page

Thanks for joining me today in our celebration of Romance Awareness Month! What are some of your favorite PNR reads?

Add Juliette’s upcoming release, The White Lily, to your Goodreads shelf!

To the north of the Varis empire, a mysterious faction spreads propaganda against the vampire monarchy. Friedrich Volya, the Duke of Winter Hill, seeks to discover who they are before his uncle finds them first. King Dominik will punish the traitors with brutal force.

Local schoolteacher, the raven-haired Brennalyn, is on her own mission—to spy on the duke and discover what she can for the Black Lily. She longs to help the commonwealth and bring justice to the many orphans left behind from the ravages of the blood madness, like the children she lovingly keeps in her care. What she doesn’t plan for is the heart-pounding attraction she feels for the duke, enemy to the Black Lily.

But when Brennalyn’s secret puts her life and the life of her children in danger, Friedrich steps in as her protector, she finds out there’s more to the duke than she thought.

Juliette calls lush, moss-laden Louisiana home where the landscape curls into her imagination, creating mystical settings for her stories. She has a B.A. in creative writing from Louisiana State University, a M.Ed. in gifted education, and was privileged to study under the award-winning author Ernest J. Gaines in grad school. Her love of mythology, legends, and art serve as constant inspiration for her works. From the moment she read JANE EYRE as a teenager, she fell in love with the Gothic romance–brooding characters, mysterious settings, persevering heroines, and dark, sexy heroes. Even then, she not only longed to read more novels set in Gothic worlds, she wanted to create her own.

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