Posted by This is another really quick YA/coming of age book that’s under 300 pages coming in around 250 pages. So, if you’re in the market for that kind of thing I had a few in my batch this year!
So, the MC of this is an elf named Zaria and I really enjoyed her character. She’s a super shy but inwardly snarky character. She reminds me a lot of Agnes Nitt from Discworld where outwardly she’s super polite but inwardly sometimes she says rude words. This is a character struggling to advocate for herself and falling in love perhaps with a jerky nobleman. She’s super books mart, but her common sense can sometimes be lacking. She has a deep need to know things even if they’re unpleasant, which is a touch mature for her age which I enjoyed. I think my favorite part of the book is how modern and relatable she was, but from a non-human perspective in an old school epic fantasy world. Zaria has a little bit of a secret though, and it’s that she can see magic. No one else can see it, and when she was younger she tried to tell her parents about it but they weren’t supportive at all, telling her she was making things up. She doesn’t have a great relationship with her parents but it’s not toxic and abusive. I enjoy this nuanced look at family that’s not cinnamon roll sweet but not shockingly awful either, a very relatable and realistic middle ground many people experience. A mild tension but not enough to be like “wtf is wrong with that mother?”
So the romance between Zaria and Jovan is a little much for me. I’m not usually someone who likes enemies to lovers trope, and this time isn’t really all that different. Jovan was an ass to her from the start and just because he’s a little pretty she’s apparently smitten. I typically bounce hard off these sorts of storylines probably because of personal bias. I don’t care how traditionally attractive someone is, if they’re an asshole it’s repulsive and I don’t see someone attractive, I see an ugly asshole who I have no attraction to at all. So, stories that revolve around having butterflies around handsome pricks doesn’t vibe with me well. I don’t want to oversell it, it’s not like Jovan is evil or super toxic, he’s just a wee bit of a prick.
I enjoyed the easy-breezy writing style here that really sped the story along, however, I have one bone to pick and it’s a fairly large one since this happened all the time…the use of the world “elf” was a bit much. What I mean by that, is that the MC would label things using the world “elf” like a “female elf match” or a “male elf match” or “the elf that spends all their time in the library.” To me, this would be like if I thought about a “male human match” “female human match” “the human that spends all their time at the library.” I wouldn’t ever think that way unless there are a bunch of other races and I’m trying to be specific with my meaning. Instead of “all the male elves and all the female elves do X” it would just read easier and more natural to be like “all the men and women.” From the perspective of the elves, the indicator of elf is unnecessary and overburdening. It happened so much I kept waiting for other races to show up to make it make sense, but I was almost halfway through and there was only one fly-by mentioned of wood nymphs. This may seem like a stupid nitpick but the more I thought about it the more it bothered me.
That said, there were all different kinds of elves and I did enjoy learning about them and all their politics. I thought the world building was deftly done without much awkward info-dumping or characters telling each other shit they should already know for the sake of the reader.
I really recommend this to people who like YA angsty teen romances with a strong focus on learning and academics for the MC. However, I know this won’t be a semifinalist and so this is a cut! I do want to emphasize though that I finished the book and that’s not common for me at this stage in the game when I know something won’t be a semifinalist, and it’s also outside my wheelhouse. So, if this IS your wheelhouse I’d pick it up!!