convictionRating: 4.25 stars
Buy Links: 
 Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


Over the past several months, Kelly Harding has become close friends with Seiran Rou and his little family. After Seiran went through some traumatic attempts on his life and that of his vampire partner, Gabe, Kelly has bonded even further with the pair and Sieran’s brother Jamie. They have become a little family of sorts, with Kelly living with Sei and helping look out for him. But Kelly’s feelings for Jamie are definitely more than familial, however he doesn’t think Jamie is interested, nor does he think getting involved with his best friend’s brother is a good idea.

The four men decide to take a little vacation to relax a little after the stress of the past few months. They go to a remote resort for some skiing and quiet. But before long, a giant blizzard strikes, trapping them at the lodge. It soon becomes clear that the storm isn’t natural — somebody is controlling the storm, seemingly with the intent of trapping the four of them. At first the guys hope to wait it out, and Jamie and Kelly have a chance to begin pursuing something between them. But as the danger rises, it is clear someone means them harm and they are going to have to take action to save themselves if they have any hope of making it out alive.

Conviction is the third book in Lissa Kasey’s Dominion series and the first to feature Kelly and Jamie as the main characters. The two are strong secondary characters in the first two books and both play a big part in Gabe and Sei’s lives. So while this story definitely focuses on their romance and we get their POVs throughout, Gabe and Sei still have a huge role here and reading the first two books will help readers better understand these characters, as well as plot threads that carry over from the other books.

My favorite parts of this story were the suspense elements and the expansion of the fabulous world building. We didn’t get as much into the larger magical world in Reclamation as we did in Inheritance, so I was really glad to see this story return to that. I liked learning more about Kelly’s abilities with his connection to water, as well as learning more about other elements of the larger magical world. The story also really develops a great suspense plot and I found it all quite dramatic and exciting. Remote wilderness, blinding storm, evil magic, dead bodies. It is really well done and kept me totally engaged.

I have been really looking forward to Jamie and Kelly’s story and, for the most part, I enjoyed them together. Well, I will say that when they were together, I really liked them. But they spend a lot of time at odds and very little really developing their relationship. I think their HEA makes sense, but it is helped along a lot by the relationship these guys had before this book started. Here they sort of come together and split apart a lot. Jamie can’t turn off his over protective instincts and he fluctuates between smothering Kelly and treating him like a child, and being suspicious of Kelly as he worries about Sei and whether Kelly may be doing something to harm him. So I wished for more relationship development here after the build up earlier in the series and I felt like we are kind of short changed here.

On the plus side, I did enjoy learning more about Jamie’s past and his protectiveness and nurturing/smothering nature are much easier to understand now. I appreciated that bit of backstory because the guy is kind of over the top and I think we really needed to see what is driving him in order to not just see him as a big pain sometimes.

So even though I wished for a little more on the relationship end, I really enjoyed this story. I am loving this series and finding the world building creative and the suspense elements exciting. I am really looking forward to the rerelease of the fourth book and the continuation of the series (both of which I believe are coming in 2016).

P.S. This book was originally released by Dreamspinner Press, but was revised and rereleased by Kasey earlier this year.

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