[Book Review] The Bleeding Heart By Lizzy Gayle

Title: The Bleeding Heart
Series: The Djinn Book 2
Author: Lizzy Gayle
Publication date: January 25th 2022
Page Count: 242 pages
Age Rating: Adult (explicit sexual scenes, assault, allusion to assault (past & present), violence, blood, language)
How I got my hot little hands on it: Received a copy to review
Publisher’s page: The Bleeding Heart

Taj knows his revolving door of lovers won’t erase the past, but it helps pass the time. That is until his sister Leela’s boyfriend shows up in a panic. With Leela missing and a Djinn killer on the loose, Taj dives into trying to find both his vanished sister…and the murderer.

His quest introduces him to another Djinni named Brolach, new to his human form. Attraction blooms and Taj wonders if it might be worth the risk to try dating his own kind. His last relationship with a Djinni didn’t end well, but it has been almost two hundred years since he lost Cal.

When danger traps him and his loved ones, and everyone looks to him for guidance, Taj finds he’s thrust into a position he doesn’t want. Can he overcome the demons of his past to save the future and find his happily ever after?

My Review

The Bleeding Heart is the story of Djinn Taj and his search for his missing sister, Leela – a search which leads him to a Djinn serial killer, magicians who will stop at nothing to enslave all Djinn kind, and a lesson in the power of love.

Taj isn’t as jaded as his sarcasm and attitude want you to believe – he has soft spots for his Djinn sister, her magician boyfriend, her boyfriend’s powerful magician little sister, cute boys with tender hearts, his fellow Djinn, and even some of his captors.

As laissez-faire as Taj tries to act, he’s a bleeding heart through and through.

The storytelling and flow of this book is fantastic, like “I stayed up until 5:30 in the morning finishing it because I couldn’t stop turning pages” fantastic. The worldbuilding is well-paced and organic and the action picks up and never lets you down. There’s action, there’s twists, there’s romance, and there’s love – real, true, love – both familial and romantic.

And Love is the real hero in this story.

The Bleeding Heart is the second book in The Djinn series, but reads perfectly fine on its own. The first book in the series (The Binding Stone, currently on sale for $0.99, fyi) is actually Leela’s story and introduces some of the characters seen in this book, as well as a little bit of missing backstory, but nothing that can’t be inferred with context clues. But even though you don’t need to read the first book to understand this one, I absolutely plan to. I also plan to look for the next book in the series. I’m hooked.

Over the course of The Bleeding Heart, readers are introduced through flashbacks to one of Taj previous enslavers, a Southern belle named Charlotte. To say that Charlotte’s heart does not match her pretty face is an understatement, and to really get you into the truth of her character as it unfolds, I’m recommending Charlotte’s Dark Heart by Independence Coffee Co, a bold, intense, deep coffee with a finish as dark as Charlotte’s intentions.