Bash: Volume I

Bash Volume I is one of Candace Blevins’s paranormal romance novels, possibly the first volume in a connected series featuring the male lead Bash, working in the wider paranormal romance and BDSM romance corner she has built her career around. Blevins is one of the more established writers in the contemporary paranormal romance and dark romance corners of the independent romance market, with a catalogue spanning multiple subgenres and multiple connected series.

The Bash Volume I premise hints at the kind of dark or alpha hero paranormal romance that Blevins has used in some of her work. A male lead named Bash whose nature, situation, or particular character traits drive the central premise of the novel and the wider series, with the heroine’s encounter with him setting up the romance that the volume will work through. Blevins is good at this kind of premise because she takes both the supernatural and the relationship dynamics seriously. Her readers come to her for the kind of dark and high heat romance that the wider subgenre has been producing in significant volume across the past decade.

What distinguishes Blevins from a lot of her peers in the independent paranormal romance corner is the consistency of her output and the willingness to push the romance toward darker and more morally complicated territory. Her novels often involve the kind of dominant male leads, the BDSM dynamics, and the supernatural complications that the wider dark paranormal romance market has developed across the past decade. Her readers know what they are coming for and the consistency of her output keeps them returning.

Blevins writes with discipline. Her plots move at the pace her audience expects. Her chapters end with hooks. Her heat scenes are explicit and frequent. And her endings often function as setups for the next book in whatever connected series the novel belongs to. This serial structure gives her room to develop her characters and her wider world across the long arcs that her readers follow her through.

Readers who enjoy authors who write in the dark paranormal romance, BDSM romance, and dark contemporary romance corners of the independent market, including writers like Anna Zaires, J.R. Ward’s darker work, or Cherise Sinclair’s BDSM material, will find Blevins operating in adjacent territory. Her catalogue is large enough that picking a starting point can feel daunting, but Bash Volume I as the first entry in a connected series is a natural starting point for readers who want to follow a connected world from the beginning. For new readers, the price point and volume of her work make her a low risk experiment for readers curious about contemporary dark paranormal romance.