Synopsis:
From NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Mary E. Pearson comes a thrilling romantic fantasy full of dangerous fae, dark secrets, and addictive romance– the first book in a duology.
After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an “aunt” she’s never heard of who promises she can help, she reluctantly agrees to meet—and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Even her father might still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures to a whole other realm—the one he is from.
Desperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods and fae and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae king, Tyghan. But what she doesn’t know is that he’s the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father—dead or alive.
Review:
I was sent a copy of The Courting of Bristol Keats in exchange for an honest review.
The first thing you should know about this book, get past page 100. Up until that point I really wasn’t sold and almost put it down, but by the end I was glad that I stuck it out. The first 100 pages (of this roughly 550 page book) is almost like a totally different book to the last 400 pages.
By the end I was really enjoying myself. This is romantasy where it’s light on the fantasy plot and heavier on the romance. The Courting of Bristol Keats’ main fantasy plot is ‘there’s a portal open and we need to close it using a rare power’, by all means not a bad fantasy plot, this is really just the intro book to it where Bristol is learning to use her power and learning about faerieland as a whole. The romance I got quite swept up in by the end of the book. Do they need to just communicate more? Yes. Does Bristol sometimes throw tantrums that make her seem like a teenager? Yes. But overall I really enjoyed the dynamic.
It’s worth me talking about why the first 100 pages didn’t work for me. It’s essentially an info dump. My biggest gripe was when Bristol entered faerieland. Everything is told to you, not shown. My intro to this place was a few paragraphs where Bristol is on a horse that can suddenly fly and a brief description of lands flying past. It just didn’t work for me. The whole first 100 pages was a slog of info being told to you through stilted conversations between people who already know said info or plot devices that happen to appear at the right time (flying horses that you don’t really get mentioned again). It just wasn’t my best intro to the book.
Eventually it feels like Mary E. Pearson hit her stride with the book and Bristol suddenly has friends and a place in faerieland that sneaks up on the reader. There’s this whole group of other recruits who have her back and I really enjoyed their time once that dynamic appeared. The whole dynamic of her father and those she comes to trust is interesting and I can see a tough choice appearing in future books.
I really did like Tyghan by the end. At first he’s all dark and moody and mysterious but by the end his romance with Bristol is really quite sweet and the tropes it sits in are always fun to read. As I said before I’d argue this book is more about setting up their romance than advancing the fantasy plot, and they really do come a very long way.
This is a good romantasy, by the end I was really enjoying myself and I could see myself picking up the subsequent books in the series at some point.
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