Review
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review! 🙂
Holy smokes! I love anything to do with faeries, and I have since I was a little girl. With all the fae in books recently I felt that this was a refreshing take on them. (Not that there is anything wrong with the others, there isn’t). At first when I saw it was written as diary entries I worried that it would read awkwardly.
It did not. In fact, I really loved how the book read as diary entries. Emily was such an engaging character and getting to know her was lovely! I was impressed with Fawcett who was able to communicate so much through diary entries. Now, don’t think of the diary entries as you would, because they do not read like them. This makes the book flow better.
One side note because I love the way that it was incorporated into the book was how terminology and studies were introduced. I felt like it helped add a lot to the world we were getting to know. The fact that these are not necessarily hidden creatures, but part of the world was well done, it felt like it was more…natural? Really, it felt as if the faeries could actually exist in our world today. Don’t think Maas or Black faeries, think a bit differently than that. It’s very hard to explain without giving too much away.
The romance in this book was humorous. I loved how Emily approached romance and life, because I felt for her. Emily has a great character arc throughout this book, both internally and externally growing as a character. There are spots of humor in this book that worked for me and had me giggling at some points. Wendall is my second favorite character, and honestly he was the funny part of the entire book.
I LOVED the writing in the book, if that wasn’t clear. I was absorbed by it, and just got so engaged throughout the entire book.
The plot was spectacular and I loved how it unraveled, and I’ll say nothing else about the plot as it would lead to too many spoilers.
Another warning, is there are some darker aspects of this book. This is very much a historical fantasy book that has a dose of romance. It is NOT a romance book, so don’t go in expecting that romance will be the focus of the book, it is not.
I do wish the ending was a little bit longer, but it looks as if we’re getting a second book so I can only hope that maybe we get some more!
Some comparisons to this might be Olivia Atwater, Katherine Arden, Naomi Novik are a few that I can think of that have similar vibes.