Tagged: fae

City of Fae by Pippa DaCosta

City of Fae by Pippa DaCosta

(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

From the moment Alina touches London’s hottest fae superstar, breaking one of the laws founded to protect all of her kind, her fate – and the fae – close in.

Below ground, the fae High Queen plots to claim the city as her own and places her pawns, ready for the battle to come. A battle she cannot lose, but for one small problem – Alina. There are four ancient keepers powerful enough to keep the queen in her prison. Three are dead. One remains … And to fight back, Alina risks sacrificing everything she has come to love.

This New Adult urban fantasy is packed with action and suspense and will have you yearning for more forbidden fae romance.

[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I picked up City of Fae but Pippa DaCosta blew any expectations that existed away.

First we meet Alina, a reporter who has just lost her job.  She’s living in the present day but things are very, very different from what we would expect: the fae have come out to the world.  In fact, they did this a couple of decades ago and they’re basically just a fact of life now.  Everyone knows not to let a fae touch them because they can bespell you but there are always exceptions because some people live to be spelled.  The rule is three touches and you’d better get to therapy to wean yourself off because you’re pretty much guaranteed to be under their control.  So the fae are both dangerous and attractive?  Well, you can guess what many of them do for a living: they go into show business.

And that’s how Alina, a rather ordinary reporter, comes into contact with Sovereign, London’s hottest fae superstar.  Why on earth does she touch him?  Working in the entertainment industry, you’d think she would know better.  She does know better and she does it anyway because Alina is the sort of person that wants to help everyone, no matter how dangerous it might be.  Alina doesn’t have a sort of annoying martyr syndrome but she is a good person and that leads her into an entirely new world of trouble.  That’s in part why her character carries the story so well: she really is an average person in the beginning.  She wants to get a new job, focus on moving on with her life but events don’t seem to let her.  Throughout the story you can really feel her frustration with Sovereign for dragging her into this whole mess but also her undeniable attraction to the man.  He’s handsome and infuriating and can be a jerk but he’s not really that typical YA/NA hot jerk.  The main difference here is that Pippa DaCosta actually does give him depth and we do actually get to see why he’s sort of justified in being such a jerk.  I don’t like many of the romances in NA because they come off as feeling slightly abusive (mentally or physically) but this is one sizzling attraction between two people that evolved into something a little more.

As I’ve hinted at in my opening summary, the world-building here is fantastic.  It’s interesting to see how humans react to the fae since most of them are superstars.  Therefore you have the normal idiotic celebrity worship combined with the really compelling attraction humans have to the fae; it’s not really a good combination for a lot of people.  Pippa DaCosta’s fae are not cuddly, friendly nearly-humans.  They’re vicious and will use humans unashamedly for their own ends.  These are magical creatures hundreds of years old with very little in the way of consciences or morals and DaCosta really does this portrayal well.  You get that odd feeling of awe around the fae but also that sense they’re dangerous throughout the novel.  It’s hard to describe but as a reader you’ll be fairly attracted to them (particularly Sovereign) while at the same time pleading inwardly for Alina to get away from them.  This dual nature of the fae is done incredibly well and my description here really doesn’t do it justice.

The plot was surprising and that’s definitely in a good way.  There was a huge twist about Alina that I definitely did not see coming but does make sense when you consider the whole plot.  Sovereign himself is not everything as he seems but the difference there is that he actively hides his secrets while Alina doesn’t necessarily do that as well.  In addition to the character twists I really did love the antagonist in the story, the High Queen.  She’s fascinating, at the same time gorgeous and hideous and she’s a woman on a mission.  What that mission is, I’ll leave you to find out when you read the book but let’s just say it isn’t to solve world hunger or poverty or anything as nice as that.

Even if you’re not a person who’s really into the New Adult genre, I think if you’re into fairies or fae as they’re called here, you’ll enjoy City of Fae.  It’s got a sizzling romance, some plot twists that will totally blindside you at first and some excellent world-building.  Will there be a sequel?  I’m not sure because DaCosta resolves the main conflict but leaves some other questions like what Alina will do next open.  So there could be a sequel but the book doesn’t really need one to satisfy you.  Go on and pre-order this book, though!  It releases on May 7.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available yet.

Slumber by Tamara Blake

Slumber by Tamara Blake(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…

When Ruby volunteers to take her mother’s housecleaning shift at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it’s going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.

Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.

[Full disclosure: I received a free ARC ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I decided to request Slumber through NetGalley despite my misgivings about it being a typical Cinderella fairytale romance where fairies are only said to be vicious but are actually pretty tame.  Boy, was I wrong.

Tamara Blake’s fairies go back to the roots of their legends and are really, truly vicious bordering on sadistic.  Well, maybe passing into sadistic quite frequently rather than just bordering on it.  They live a spoiled party life and have exactly zero morals or qualms about treating humans like dirt for their own amusement.  It doesn’t take Ruby long to figure this out and although she slips down to their level a couple of times she actually comes out of the story with her human values intact.  Trust me, considering she lived with the fae in Cottingley for a while, that is an enormous accomplishment.

Ruby was an awesome narrator.  She falls in love with Tam slowly but never, ever puts her love for him ahead of her family.  When her family gets in trouble and she learns that living with him at Cottingley is her only choice, she does.  And although she loses sight of her goal through something not entirely her own fault, she remains loyal to her family in the end.  As I said, she still retains her values by the end and I was incredibly impressed with that.  So many narrators in YA books lose sight of their old lives when they’re swept up into a magical world of parties and riches, but not Ruby!  She was truly amazing and carried the story on her shoulders.

At the same time the plot was actually quite fast-paced without leaving out character development.  There is no sort of middle bloat as the middle is actually where Ruby discovers that she’s the cause of her mother’s illness and that there’s only one way to save her life.  And just when you think things have settled down at the end, Tamara Blake threw a huge twist into the happy ending that leaves me with no doubt there’s a sequel coming.  Tam and Ruby’s story isn’t finished and I can’t wait for the sequel, even though Slumber was technically just published three days ago.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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*Only available as an ebook.