Oh. My. Goodness. YES. Just ... YES. This book was absolutely exactly what I needed and I didn't even know it!

✨ 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 ✨ B̷O̷R̷R̷O̷W̷ B̷Y̷P̷A̷S̷S̷

I know that when people think of me, they don't necessarily associate me with fantasy as a genre - which is fair, because I don't read a lot of it anymore. The thing that is so interesting about this is that when I first started reading as a kid, and well into my teens and early 20s, fantasy was the genre I gravitated to more than any other. And sometimes I find myself missing that genre and those stories so much ... enter A River Enchanted.

This book has that absolutely classic fantasy feel to me - think Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia Wrede, TA Barron, Madeleine L'Engle, CS Lewis, Mary Stewart. It doesn't necessarily have a lick in common with any of those author's books, but it FEELS like them. The magic and fantasy and whimsy and unfamiliarity suck you in and you think you've been reading for maybe 20 minutes when in reality it's been almost an hour. You know those books? The ones you just SINK into? That was this book.

I loved how rich with magic and lore this book was but how it managed to stay incredibly familiar; I loved how we got a peek into so many character's first person POVs because it made everything more nuanced; I l LOVED THESE CHARACTERS; I loved the subtlety of the romance and how absolutely inevitable it felt in all the best ways. I absolutely cannot get over how special this book was to me.

I picked this up on a whim from a recommendation from a trusted friend while it was on a $2.99 Kindle sale, read it in just a couple of days, and immediately went out and purchased the hardcover and pre-ordered the sequel (&conclusion, it's a duology!) that comes out in December. Which is basically me saying READ THE BOOK, if that wasn't clear enough already.