By It has been a while since I’ve done a series review! The last book in this trilogy was recently released and having finished them all I thought I’d give you all my thoughts.
Synopsis: A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.
Synopsis: When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late, in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby.
Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers.
She also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by his mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby’s realm and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.
But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors and of her own heart.
Synopsis: The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves.
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.
Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.
Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
So I did a review on the first book in this series a couple of years ago when first came out and loved it. But this whole trilogy is a treasure. There are so many books out now that involve the Fairy Folk and I’ve read a number of them. While they are fun reads I feel like the Fair Folk are too close to human. They are too moral, they aren’t disturbing enough.
In this series I feel like the Fairy Folk are appropriately otherworldly, creepy, beautiful, and disturbing. They sometimes look like things in the mortal world, they sometimes don’t look natural, they wear glamours that are too beautiful to look at, sometimes they are forces of nature sculpted to look like physical beings. These Fey Folk like to play with humans as toys: stealing children and replacing them with changelings, luring men as lovers and abandoning them once bored of them, stealing away musicians to play in their courts.
All three books are written in first person point of view in the form of journal entries. The author writes Emily not always loving what she see. Yes, she studies faeries but she is also disturbed by them and what they can do. She protects her mind after seeing some of the dark things they can do by looking at them through an academic lens. Emily also trusts her instincts, she trusts what she knows and sometimes she knows more than the Fey Folk about themselves. I think this last bit is because the Faerie Folk are forces of nature in a sense and don’t really care about study. Even Wendell, the adorable faerie prince, was only pretending to be an academic to find a way back into his Realm.
One of the things that I do appreciate is while Emily does love Wendell she doesn’t shy away from taking note of the moments where he is terrifying. Because while he does care more than most, he is still a Faerie Monarch.
If you want books with scary and beautiful faeries, magical animal companions, closed door romance, and where Dragon is a term of endearment then these are the books for you. Have you read them? Let me know in the comments. Happy reading!
Past Review:
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries
Note: I did pick up my copy at one of my favorite local indie bookstores!
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