One of my favourite books this year

I am a romantasy and dark romance reader, and stumbled across this book on my algorithm and surprised it isn’t hyped up on booktok like many similar books in this genre, because it really is a brilliant story. I struggled to find many reviews at all about this book but decided to give it a try, and Oh my goodness.. this has been one of my favourites this year.

This is the first book of Curse of the Fae series which I believe will be at least 4 books.

The book starts out with Nell, a princes who is living in the old world, which comes across as a very medieval male dominated, traditional, religious and superstitious place to live.
Nells father the old world king has made a deal with the Shadow King in the faerie world, selling out his daughter Nell into a cryptic deal where she has to go between the 2 worlds every 2 weeks for a year.
She has been brought up to fear the fae, expect them to be monsters and to trust no one and all she knows about the deal is that she cannot allow the Shadow King to seduce her.

Upon Nells arrival at the faerie world she meets the alluringly powerful Shadow King and his 3 enticing Lords of Nightmare, Dreams and Fantasies….. who are masked, tall, muscular, gorgeous, and dark, and imaginatively called One, Two and Three.

The shadow court has many secrets and Nell is determined to discover them and find out why she feels so drawn to the fae.
The faerie world has a really brilliant magical system and although this story is set in the shadow court, I cant wait for future books to learn even more about the other courts that are briefly mentioned and exploring more about this fascinating world and its magic.

I loved the characters and their growth including many of the side characters we get to know during the story, which have parts in the plot that will be relevant to future books in the series. The main female characters growth was particularly enjoyable as she navigates the difficulties she faces living between both worlds.

This book has a morally grey/ shadow daddy, slow burn romance, a bit of steamy spice (2-3 spice level), fantastic twists, curses, magic and of course a villain or two. I would recommend this to any romantasy readers who enjoyed series’s like ACOTAR by Sarah J Mass , Blood and Ash by Jennifer Armentrout, Married to Magic by Elise Kova, and The Folk of the Air by Holly Black.

Both the narrator’s did a fantastic job of bringing this story to life (Anthony Palmini always charms me with his voice) and deserve the 5 stars I gave this audiobook.

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