📚Book Rec: ACOTAR + 🔥Hot Fan-Rom and Rom Releases

Hi dear High Fae! I’m Diana, the face behind Fae Reviews. First of all, thanks for subscribing. As you know, as part of your membership you have access to my videoletter, Fae Bard, which I release every first Friday of the month, except this one due to the festivities.

You’ll find three main sections:

The first is…

• Book of the Month, where I bring you the best book I read the previous month, already tested, reviewed and highly rated so you might add it to your TBR.

The second part corresponds to…

• Upcoming releases: Here you’ll find the books I’m looking forward to once they are published during the current month.

And finally…

• The Dive Deeper section, where I’ll suggest further reading, if applicable, in case you’re interested to explore more about what we’re talking about.

Plus your downloadable “On the Go Guide,” which I’ll explain more about later on this video.

Book of the Month

A book that should definitely be on your to-be-read list is “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” ACOTAR for short. It’s the first of a long book series by Sarah J. Maas, but I highly recommend the original trilogy, that is the first three books. My favorite actually is the second. I’ll be posting my review on this trilogy next Friday so you can check it out too.

In my opinion, this series is the backbone of the Fantasy-Romance genre. It’s true the first book is sort of a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast. 

You’ll follow beautiful Feyre, a human teenager who becomes a hunter out of necessity. In one of her trips to the woods, she hunts the “wrong” wolf, and then a beast comes barging into her family’s cottage looking for retribution. She then goes with him up the wall that divides the human lands from the Fae lands, and her life won’t ever be the same. She’ll face deadly challenges over and over risking not only her wellbeing, but also her heart. 

Key aspects in this series: the support of friends and family, grief and how we grief differently, the importance of getting up after we fall no matter what, living and appreciating the now, and how healthy relationships look like in contrast with toxic ones.

What I love about it is…

• The protagonist is a fierce fighter. I love empowered and courageous women.
• The series evolves into a fast paced and action-packed story.
• The characters are well built and they intertwine beautifully.
• If you’re a Romantic like myself, well what can I say. You’ll find one of my favorite couples in this book series.
• And also, there’s a good balance between the fantasy and the romance.

If you want to know what Fantasy-Romance entails, this series exemplifies it. And I’ve read other book series by the same author, but I believe she really hit it with ACOTAR, at least with the original trilogy, storytelling-wise.

Upcoming Releases

This month I’m looking forward to one Fantasy-Romance book, The Stolen Heir by Holly Black, and one Romance book, Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood. They have both been already released, back on January the third.

The Stolen Heir is the first book of a duology that takes us back to Elfhame, the fairy world of another of my favorite young adult Fantasy-Romance book series, The Folk of the Air. 

Eight years after the latter series ended, Suren, the changeling child queen, is in the mortal lands living in the woods. She is being chased by the monstrous storm hag, but is saved by Prince Oak, the heir to Elfhame, and once her “supposed” betrothed. He is also Jude’s brother. Jude was the protagonist in the former series The Folk of the Air. 

Now, Oak is on a mission and needs Suren’s help, so together they set out on a journey that and I quote “may destroy them both.”

Moving to Ali Hazelwood, Loathe to Love You is her three-novella collection set in her STEM world. What I like about her STEM-related stories is to watch women fight and thrive for their place in this harsh scientific environment. It adds depth to the usual contemporary romantic novel. Her stories are intellectually stimulating and rom-coms, so fun to read. In this case, we have a trio of engineers with love-hate relationships. Each novella is a bit more than 100 pages, so very short. You can choose to buy the novellas separately or this book with the entire collection.

Dive Deeper

I’ll leave you now with the “On the Go” guide. It’s a pdf for you to download with my top book recommendations so that you can carry it on your mobile everywhere you go. Stopping by a library by chance and don’t know what to look for? That’s what On the Go is for. Every month I’ll update it so you always have the latest version.

Finding what to read next and narrowing your options have never been easier. I’ll leave the link below this video.