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Love Has Claws #2
The Burial Club
Aggy Stephenson is a funeral bidder, hand-delivering invitations to funerals in the latest fashion among city elite. His work takes him to the house of Laurel St. John, a man as handsome as he is rich, and as frequently bereaved. Despite the circumstances of their meeting, Aggy quickly falls for Laurel's strange thrall. But they stand on either side of a barrier: wealth, status—and death.
Dilettante, socialite, and vampire, little surprises Laurel—until he meets Aggy. But Laurel isn't the only creature with his eye on Aggy, and not everyone is restricted to hunting at night. When Aggy misses a delivery, Laurel wonders if his love has tired of a life of darkness. Then Aggy's name appears on the list of the nearly departed intended for Laurel's plate, and the sun isn't enough to stop Laurel's wrath.
Can Aggy and Laurel keep walking the thin line between the living and the dead? Or will the city force them to choose between existence—and each other?
*
The Burial Club is the second story from Love Has Claws, a speculative romance trilogy linked by the town of Lastings. They are standalone stories, but your experience may be enhanced by reading Nine Years of Silver (Love Has Claws #1).
Content Warnings: bloody violence; on- and off-screen murder; vampire-specific dub con; death, grief, and mourning; past death of a sibling; vomiting; workplace harassment; abduction.
Dilettante, socialite, and vampire, little surprises Laurel—until he meets Aggy. But Laurel isn't the only creature with his eye on Aggy, and not everyone is restricted to hunting at night. When Aggy misses a delivery, Laurel wonders if his love has tired of a life of darkness. Then Aggy's name appears on the list of the nearly departed intended for Laurel's plate, and the sun isn't enough to stop Laurel's wrath.
Can Aggy and Laurel keep walking the thin line between the living and the dead? Or will the city force them to choose between existence—and each other?
*
The Burial Club is the second story from Love Has Claws, a speculative romance trilogy linked by the town of Lastings. They are standalone stories, but your experience may be enhanced by reading Nine Years of Silver (Love Has Claws #1).
Content Warnings: bloody violence; on- and off-screen murder; vampire-specific dub con; death, grief, and mourning; past death of a sibling; vomiting; workplace harassment; abduction.
192 pages, ebook
First published September 10, 2019
About the author
Parker Foye
19 books27 followersParker Foye writes queer speculative romance and believes in happily ever after, although sometimes their characters make achieving this difficult. An education in Classics nurtured a love of heroes, swords, monsters, and beautiful people doing foolish things while wearing only scraps of leather. You’ll find those things in various guises in Parker’s stories, along with kissing (very important) and explosions (very messy). And more shifters than you can shake a stick at.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 23, 2021
This was a really great read. While it is the second in the Love Has Claws series, it works perfectly well as a standalone- although it's good to appreciate why the city folk respond to the idea of Lastings so strongly.
Aggy was a great character, I loved how he found his way through the city, his strength as an individual and his tenacity. Parker Foye's worldbuilding is always good for me, I loved how we slowly uncover parts of how the world works.
Laurel didn't capture me quite as immediately as Aggy, but once he was attempting to care for Aggy in his own idiosyncratic way (the blankets! The pineapple!) then I was totally won over.
A gorgeous read!
Aggy was a great character, I loved how he found his way through the city, his strength as an individual and his tenacity. Parker Foye's worldbuilding is always good for me, I loved how we slowly uncover parts of how the world works.
Laurel didn't capture me quite as immediately as Aggy, but once he was attempting to care for Aggy in his own idiosyncratic way (the blankets! The pineapple!) then I was totally won over.
A gorgeous read!
April 17, 2020
This was so much fun. I loved Aggy's slyness and street smarts, and how Laurel was so discombobulated by him despite being stronger and older and, you know, a vampire. They were two very distinct personalities and I really enjoyed their different degrees of moral greyness. The world Foye has created here is so fascinating and weird, I'd love to read more of it.
April 27, 2020
This is the second in the Love Has Claws series, and while it doesn't overlap with Nine Years of Silver it shares a universe and a vibe: terrible, horrible things are happening, do be afraid. This being said, don't worry too much because there will also be kissing and baking and overwrought, hysterical characters who adore each other. And a happy ending for the kissers.
December 1, 2020
Beautifully atmospheric, nice twists, perfectly goofy ("oh, he'll come save me - again"), intriguing ending. Sweet and funny and sexy, even while macabre.
October 5, 2019
It's been a long time since I read about vampires in romance or read a romance that is truly gothic. In The Burial Club, Foye delivers what I had been missing. We meet Aggy who hand delivers invitations to funerals and Laurel a vampire who seems to be invited to almost every funeral. Soon, through rumours, Aggy realises that not everything in the city is as it appears to the eye.
Foye builds an interesting world that, while in the same universe as the town of Lastings that featured in the first book, seems very far away. This time the story is set in a city where dark creatures live in the shadows of night. The vampires that feature are those in the vein of Dracula. Vampires that require the blood of humans to live, possess superhuman strength, and burn in the sun. The threat that vampires present feels real and in true gothic fashion, this threat makes them desirable.
The story itself is interesting with enough intrigue to keep readers invested in getting answers. The story does lag towards the end as it begins to feel repetitive. It is the weakest part of the book. We see Aggy lose agency as it seems events happen to him, rather than him instigating events and being an active participant. However, the writing of the story is stronger and less choppy than the writing in the first book of the series.
The romance is on the lighter side, but the HEA still feels very much deserved as Aggy and Laurel slowly become used to their new relationship and place in society. Overall, The Burial Club is an enjoyable romance with strong gothic elements throughout.
While it isn't necessary to read the first book in the series, Nine Years of Silver, it provides an insight into the world especially as Aggy is from the town of Lastings.
Foye builds an interesting world that, while in the same universe as the town of Lastings that featured in the first book, seems very far away. This time the story is set in a city where dark creatures live in the shadows of night. The vampires that feature are those in the vein of Dracula. Vampires that require the blood of humans to live, possess superhuman strength, and burn in the sun. The threat that vampires present feels real and in true gothic fashion, this threat makes them desirable.
The story itself is interesting with enough intrigue to keep readers invested in getting answers. The story does lag towards the end as it begins to feel repetitive. It is the weakest part of the book. We see Aggy lose agency as it seems events happen to him, rather than him instigating events and being an active participant. However, the writing of the story is stronger and less choppy than the writing in the first book of the series.
The romance is on the lighter side, but the HEA still feels very much deserved as Aggy and Laurel slowly become used to their new relationship and place in society. Overall, The Burial Club is an enjoyable romance with strong gothic elements throughout.
While it isn't necessary to read the first book in the series, Nine Years of Silver, it provides an insight into the world especially as Aggy is from the town of Lastings.
October 9, 2019
The second in the
Love Has Claws
series, Burial Club is set in the same world as Nine Years of Silver, but slightly earlier in the timeline, in a different place and with different characters. None of this disappointed me, since Nine perfectly encapsulated Briar and Quinn's story; a direct sequel, or any other continuation of their story, wasn't necessary.
Nine
was flawless and couldn't be improved upon.
Like Quinn and Briar, Aggy grew up in Lastings, a sea-side community known for being a place of witches and strange magics. Aggy bears no love for Lastings, though, and left as soon as he could; now he lives in the big city, delivering funeral invitations in the form of biscuits on behalf of the funeral home he works for.
Yes, you heard me. The funeral invites are biscuits. Specifically, sweet biscuits (what Americans call cookies, I think) with the name of the deceased spelled out in cursive icing. It's the kind of weird, delightful worldbuilding tidbit that I simply adore, a bit of gothic whimsy that beautifully sets the expectations for the relationship at the heart of this story.
Read the full review over on my blog!
Like Quinn and Briar, Aggy grew up in Lastings, a sea-side community known for being a place of witches and strange magics. Aggy bears no love for Lastings, though, and left as soon as he could; now he lives in the big city, delivering funeral invitations in the form of biscuits on behalf of the funeral home he works for.
Yes, you heard me. The funeral invites are biscuits. Specifically, sweet biscuits (what Americans call cookies, I think) with the name of the deceased spelled out in cursive icing. It's the kind of weird, delightful worldbuilding tidbit that I simply adore, a bit of gothic whimsy that beautifully sets the expectations for the relationship at the heart of this story.
Read the full review over on my blog!
January 5, 2020
4,5 stars. same high points of the first one (incredible writing, atmosphere, characters) but now with enough pages to develop the plot and answer all questions. only the beginning was a bit instalove-y but that was it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews