CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: Saving the Selkie’s Heart (The Selkie Seas, #2) by Ella Rose Guest Book Review and Guest Post!

Publisher: Lightning Platypus Press, (January 10, 2022)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Tour dates: February 20-March 31, 2023
ISBN: 979-8985603859
Available in Print and ebook, 263 pages

A selkie warrior, a newly transfigured selkie princess...what happens to love when loyalties clash? 

Ceannas, a selkie warrior, must protect his clan during the Migration, a rite of passage that occurs every 50 years. When he discovers a runaway selkie, the daughter of his Prince, he must figure out a way to divide his duties, especially when keeping her alive demands all his attention.

Lyall wants desperately to find out where she belongs. When the opportunity comes to visit the Great Elder and save her father’s damaged sealskin, she sneaks away to join the clan in their migration. The only problem? Being born a human, she hasn’t the first clue how to survive on her own as a selkie!

The last thing Ceannas needs is babysitting duties, and Lyall only has eyes on her mission. But as Ceannas teaches Lyall how to exist in her new element, the attraction growing between them grows stronger. Can their love withstand their honor-bound duties? And what will it cost each of them to do so?

Saving the Selkie’s Heart is a sexy guardian/ward paranormal romance and the second book in The Selkie Seas series by Ella Rose. Get lost in love today!

Guest Review by Laura Lee

The much anticipated and highly enjoyable sequel to the first book in 'The Selkie Seas,' series by Ella Rose, 'Saving the Selkie's Heart,' is even more thrilling than the first.

Right away, you can tell this is going to be a very different story from the way that the heroine, Lyall, is introduced.

Lyall is in a cave with her parents, trying on a seal skin for the very first time. Having just found out that her parents are selkies, Lyall is attempting to figure out if she is one, herself. After unsuccessfully attempting to change, Lyall returns home, dejected. But this heartache is made even worse when, the next day, she receives the news that her father, Lord Prion is dying.

Having been in ill health for a while, Lord Prion cannot heal without using his selkie skin, but that very same skin was damaged beyond repair decades earlier. Lyall realizes that she must find a way to repair the skin, and that she must do it alone, because her parents would never approve of her undertaking such a perilous journey. Or, at least she thinks that she will be alone, very soon she meets one of her father's most trusted protectors, Ceannas, who has no intentions of letting her out of his sight for as long as she intends to carry on with this foolhardy plan.

I don't want to spoil too much with this review, so I won't say anymore about the plot, but you have to read this one!

Rose has such an elegant and expressive way with words, I found myself completely wrapped up in this story and it's world. I wanted Lyall and Ceannas to get together from the moment they were on the page together because I found their dynamic so sexy and interesting. I am definitely looking forward to book 3 in this series!

Guest Post by Ella Rose
Kathleen,

Thank you for graciously hosting me today. As you know, my latest Paranormal Romance (PNR) novel, Saving the Selkie’s Heart (The Selkie Seas, Book 2), revolves around selkies (seal shapeshifters) and other water creatures. One topic I see often in reader questions for Paranormal Romance writers is how the author developed believable characters for their PNR world.
And I always immediately see the authors sit back in their chairs and go, “Oof!” Because the answer is far from simple.
A challenge for PNR writers, on the whole, is how to tackle the expectations for the genre itself: how to adequately address both the “Paranormal” part as well as the “Romance” part of a story. You have to have believable romance while building and upholding the rules of the fictional world you’ve created. It’s a tough balancing act, and some do it better than others.
To me, I think the key is to understand the paranormal part of your world from the get-go. Obviously you won’t have everything laid out in advance of writing the first story. But you have the seedlings of an idea which grow and blossom as the stories in that world continue. As a reader and a writer, I fully expect the worldbuilding in a series’ Book 3 novel to be more richly flourished than in Book 1 of the series. It’s to be expected that your paranormal world will change (for the better) as the series progresses.
But for me, when writing believable PNR characters, I start with the humans. Where will they live—if it’s a fictional town, what’s the closest real-life town I can use as a starting point? What do their daily lives look like? What is the hardship they’re trying to overcome?
Once I have those answers down, I move over to do the same with my fantasy characters. What kind of real-life mythology or folklore exists for the region? And from there, what specific mythological creatures do I want to address in my story?
I knew from the start of my Selkie Seas stories that I wanted to write about an under-represented mythological creature. And I was lucky that there is very little real-life lore to mine—it meant I could use my imagination to build the selkie world in my stories. So the next step was to get a baseline understanding of what rules I wanted my fantasy creatures to live by—do they breathe air, can they speak, do they live in groups or are they loners?
By knowing the rules of your world, you can then begin to merge the human with the fantasy creatures into relatable situations that form the basis of your story’s plot. In my book, Stealing the Selkie’s Heart (The Selkie Seas, Book 1), the main heroine, Una, is lonely and doesn’t know it until the male hero, Ronan, comes into her life. That’s a scenario reader can understand and relate to. And when she initiates the enemies-to-lovers relationship with Ronan, readers can celebrate Una’s development as she falls in love and discovers love is possible for her after all.
In Saving the Selkie’s Heart (Book 2), I got to dive deeper into the selkie worldbuilding, as both main characters are selkies. The relatable content consists of the main character, Lyall, wanting to be something more than she Is; she wants to be extraordinary in an ordinary world. And that’s something that resonates with readers—everyone has experienced a desire to feel special at some point in their lives. And Ceannas, the male hero, is striving to heal from an abusive childhood by being the most solid, dependable warrior in his selkie clan. This is another facet that readers can empathize with, despite the fact that Ceannas isn’t human.
As you can see, as the paranormal worldbuilding grows, even non-human characters can be brought to life on the page in a way that readers can relate with. In this manner, the paranormal aspects are almost secondary to the relatable content brought on by believable characters. They have real-life desires and dreams, too, regardless of their biology. And the desire for love is at the base of all of it.
As always, if you have selkie questions or curiosities about the Selkie Seas world, email me! You can always catch me at ellarose@ellarosebooks.com.
Best,
Ella Rose

© Ella Rose

Ella Rose is a paranormal romance author who loves kink, ink, and cake, and hopes you do too. She is a bi-sexual author writing through a Bi-Polar Disorder lens and thinks representation and mental health matter. She is the author of The Selkie Seas series, which includes Losing the Selkie’s Skin and Stealing the Selkie’s Heart. Her latest selkie short stories will appear in Dark Rose Press’s Worlds Apart and Dragon Soul Press’s Beyond Atlantis anthologies.

She is a member of Romance Writers of America and the Paranormal Romance Guild.

Website: https://www.ellarosebooks.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EllaRoseBooks
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Giveaway Saving the Selkie’s Heart by Ella Rose

This giveaway is for 2 print or ebook copies. Print is open to Canada and the U.S. only and ebook is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on March 18 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only. a Rafflecopter giveaway