well, well, well. what can i say. i love me a main character who is so very clearly autistic coded. shout out emily wilde you and i are kindred spirits (re: autism).

ummm this book was. fine? like i didn’t hate it. but i didn’t love it. i think this book is extremely overhyped for what it is, which is:

fetch quest A, talk to villager B, fuck around with some fae C, fetch quest D, etc. like my girl is really doing the same shit over and over and over again. idk there wasn’t too much interest for me. 

another reason i was bored was because of wendell. oh brother. his presence made it so any dangerous situation emily was in became practically null and void because

he could pull a fae spell out of his ass and save her. like ok maybe we could’ve mentioned the fact he can slightly time travel or fucking shapeshift before he, you know, does it at the umpteenth hour before emily is completely fucked???? i honestly think the “twist reveal” (which anyone could’ve guessed was going to happen by the not to subtle hinting from emily) came way too early and almost made emily AND bambleby invincible. like that showdown with the ice king or whatever the fuck he was called??? yeah i literally was not worried at all. any possible tension in the book evaporated the minute wendell being not only a fae, but a fucking fae KING, was revealed.

also complete side note but what kind of fucking name is wendell bambleby. i don’t care about the in text reasons that is a hideous name oh my god. please lord hear my prayers and make fawcett change his name for the next book 🙏🙏🙏 (i am delusional).

i also found the dynamic between emily and bambleby to not only be predictable, but incredibly stale as well. i’m not too mad at the ending (the book is tagged romance so i can’t dunk on the book for their relationship being predictable), but their back and forth became very formulaic very quickly for me, and honestly, i didn’t buy the chemistry! sue me! regardless of emily’s notes, the tone i perceived was that she can’t fuckjng stand this guy up until like the last two chapters where emily feels like she does a full 180 on her opinion of him. 

also. emily. fucking emily. i beg of you. tell me why the fuck you are so dumb. ok yes i get sometimes characters need to do reckless shit in a story to have things happen. ok. but yet again, the story constantly repeats this formula: dumb thing emily can do related to the fae appears, she tells her journal she knows it’s a dumb thing to do, she knows she’ll completely fuck herself over if she does said thing, and then she does said thing. like cmon you can’t say you’re this world renowned drydologist or whatever the fuck they call it and then pull half of the stunts she does in this book. and mind you she only gets out of said sticky situations all but one time due to hail mary’s. i’ll give her credit for the festival, she did eat there. claps for emily wilde. but the rest? it felt contrived, it felt forced, it felt like it lacked reason, and it felt like she only did said stupid shit because said stupid shit would move the plot along.

wait hold up. what fucking plot. yeah. this entire book is just emily and bambleby puttering around until emily does aforementioned dumb fuck things. there was no tension. i was only reading to see if she’d stop being a dumb fuck. the answer was a resounding no.

why oh why am i being so mean to this book? BECAUSE IT HAD SUCH GOOD POTENTIAL. the lore about the fae world? amazing. emily’s cunning to work with the fae (when the story allows her instead of making her be a damsel in distress)? magnificent. the footnotes that immersed me more into the story? superb. every other character minus the two main dickheads? ate. everything i dunked on had the potential to be perfect!!!!!! but i have no idea what the fuck happened. 

i’m actually a bit mad. because i can smell how this could be amazing. more natural dialogue. more time with bambleby before Things Happen™️. more times where emily saves herself. more stakes. MORE. i can see why people love this. god i am still trying to find ways in which i did love this. because i did. i did have fun. emily is so silly at times i love her because she’s so socially inept it’s fun. bambleby is an agent of chaos and his whimsy was very entertaining. but idk, them together, mixed with The Thing™️, turned two beautiful seperate characters into poopoo sludge for me.

wow was i angry at this. anyways yes i will be continuing this series. i am hoping i am just irrationally angry at a book that probably does not deserve it but hey, how can i declare myself a hater if i do not occasionally spew vitriol in my reviews. 

this review quickly got away from me holy shit am i ok? idk i think this entire review is so mean because i wanted to love this so much more. i liked it a lot actually. but i can’t lie and say these things didn’t piss me tf off. also sometimes getting heated in reviews for no reason is kinda fun.
can’t wait for the sequel 😜