Type of read: Commuter Read.

What made me pick it up: I stumbled across the Black Dagger Brotherhood in early 2024 with Darius (Book 0) and I got sucked into this crazy, cracked-out, sexy, throwback-feeling, world of vampires fighting something more evil than themselves.

Overall rating: 'Lover Enshrined' takes a bit of a left turn from Ward's typical storylines focusing on just one of the brothers. I feel like while this was definitely Phury's story, we got so much more. It was almost a connector in the series to help tie all of the pieces together from the first five books. If you're expecting this to focus solely on Phury, you're going to be completely overwhelmed with the amount of info and characters we're following through 'Lover Enshrined.' Phury, Zhadist & Bella

and their baby girl

, Cormia and The Chosen, John, Lash, Blalock, Quinn, Rehv, Xhex, and let's also throw in the entire Glymera for good measure. There's honestly so much happening in 'Lover Enshrined' that it's hard to do a review without giving anything away. 'Lover Enshrined' follows in Ward's traditional writing style; we've got fighting and blood and guts, but there's also love and sex and fantasy. We've got world-building and character development. Overall, not mad. It's not my favorite of the series so far, but I'm not mad. (I'm also just not a huge Phury fan so that could be why I was a little less interested.)

I know I've said it before in previous reviews for this series, but I feel like I just have to say it with each book, this is just a good escape read. You don't have to think too much about it, you don't have to try and keep things straight (Ward does a great job dropping little reminders at the beginning of each book and throughout so you keep the characters and their traits straight), and you can just dive into a (slightly dated) world of sexy vampire warriors. I'm here for it.

Reader's Note: 'Lover Enshrined' includes themes of death; dying; consensual sexual activity; drug use; drug abuse and addition; violence; kidnapping; torture; murder; sexual assault; and character recollections of physical and sexual abuse.