I was sadly less impressed by this than I'd hoped given that my friends raved about it.

I saw on someone else's library books list that this was 'Harry Potter for Grown-Ups'. Sure, if you want reminders that everything is a hard slog, and magic goes away in the real world, and Arts degrees are stupid, and women are inferior, then great. Maybe I'm just interrogating the text from the wrong perspective, but I want fantasy that takes me away from those notions rather than reinforcing them. ( )

I am always skeptical about books that send modern day women into MagicLand.

(I am maybe the only soul on Earth not smitten with the Outlander series. The TV show is fascinating, but the books? No. And don't even get me started on "A Discovery of Witches." I found it overblown and the characters rather wooden. It was generally tedious and tiresome to the point that I groaned in despair that it would not mercifully end, but leave us dangling for the sequel. Which I have heard are not any better. Pass.)

So Witchy romance novels are sketchy for me at best. But I decided to check this out from the library, and I am glad I did. It is almost never clichéd, with interesting twists and turns of the plot that are not telegraphed miles away, the relationships are less obvious than other romantic fare, and I genuinely liked all the characters.

It's a fun story, well-told, and not predictable. It has plenty of detail to take you into a very believable Otherworld, yet, unlike "Discovery," they don't take over the narrative.

Even though it was well over 550 pages, I was surprised to find myself in that rare and delectable place of not wanting it to end.

Thankfully, THIS sequel is one I can hardly wait for! ( )

I didn't finish this. I was waiting for the woman to finally start thinking, and after a while, I got impatient and bored, and I gave up. ( )

SO CONFLICTED ABOUT THIS BOOK.

I shy from reading fantasy novels marketed as women's fiction because I assume, rightly or wrongly, that their fantasy elements will be derivative. But after a slow opening and some deliciously dark rising action, I was absolutely charmed by the cozy, engrossing middle of this book.

Part domestic fantasy, part mannerpunk, we follow Nora, a hapless grad student who's fallen into a fantasy world, and her benefactor/teacher/crush, the sardonic wizard Aruendiel. The narrative is slow-paced and a bit episodic, but guaranteed to appeal to fans of Victorian literature and its bastard child, the cozy historical romance. Nora learns to run a medieval household, explores life in the village and at court, learns magic, and has a lot of really interesting conversations.

Barker's worldbuilding is top-notch and explores small details from language to fashion without ever indulging in an unnecessary infodump. And at the book's heart is the growing emotional closeness between the insecure Nora and reserved Aruendiel, which is understated and very human.

Yet I found the last act of the novel pretty unsatisfying. Barker seems to have a sequel in mind (RIGHT??) and doesn't try to address most the novel's major conflicts in her climax. The last several chapters seem to come out of left field rather than arise organically from the story. There are several last minute plot twists that feel forced and don't have the proper emotional weight. And the final resolution feels shallow compared to everything that's come before. I feel strongly that even books in series have to stand alone as good novels, but this novel feels like it lacks a complete plot arc.

This novel was marred by another element that I really didn't care for. It's time for Miss Becky to have a Frank and Serious Discussion about partner violence in fiction! Spoilers ahead.


Early on in this book, Aruendiel is rumored to have murdered his unfaithful wife. I thought I recognized that favorite trope of romance writers, the misunderstanding that keeps our lovers apart. I was okay with reading about an unlikable antihero but nevertheless assumed that Aruendiel's past conduct would be explained away somehow.

I actually still suspect that there's going to be an explanation in future volumes, but as it stands, Aruendiel really did kill his wife because he was feeling shocked and betrayed. Yet by the end of the novel, Nora has somehow forgotten that she finds this part of his history super creepy and has decided to return to him, possibly so that they can be in a relationship.

There are two problems here. First, Nora's character is simply not consistent. Nora has a deep emotional attachment to Aruendiel, but in she's extremely critical of his bad behavior and previously has held him to contemporary standards of behavior. By the end, she's totally alienated me by her change in behavior, but I don't get the sense that I'm supposed to be alienated.

Second, the Aruendiel in this novel is similarly a romantic fantasy, not a realistic character. He's been through a lot since that whole wife-murdering episode, but a tendency toward partner violence does not generally mellow into a slight case of curmudgeonry.

I enjoy fiction that's dark, but Nora and Aruendiel's relationship is not portrayed as dark. Instead it's depicted as enticingly forbidden. Reading it we don't feel the ambivalence we might feel toward a Brontëan antihero*—instead, we're invited to fall in love with Aruendiel ourselves, with explicit comparisons to Mr. Darcy.

It doesn't matter if in the second book we find out that flying unicorns killed Aruendiel's wife—we're still being asked to romanticize an alleged perpetrator of domestic violence. And that's NEVER okay. In doing so we conjure the same fairy tale explanations of human behavior that domestic abusers use to perpetuate their abuses and victims use to justify staying in those relationships.

Which is really unfortunate in what was shaping up to be a nuanced and emotionally honest romance.

*If you think Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester are uncomplicatedly romantic and sexy, you are misreading those novels.


( )

Started out well and dragged out forever and the ending could have been better ... ( )