Antonia Bernardin

My 28th read of the year was What Lies Beyond the Veil by Harper L Woods, the first book in the Of Flesh and Bone series.

This book appears on a lot of book trope rec lists, so does it live up to the hype?

A vague summary

Estrella feels stifled by the life she is forced live as a women in Mistfell, full of obedience and designed to make the ideal wife for a husband. The Duke also has his own plans for Estrella and most of her more brutal ‘lessons’ were learned at his hand. When the yearly sacrifice to thank the God’s for the veil, a shroud of mist that separates humans from the Elf kingdom, is upon them, it seems Estrella is faced with two choices: Marry the Duke or be this year’s sacrifice. Resigned to her death, everything changes when the veil collapses, the magic revealing her as ‘fey marked’, a human destined to be the mate of an Elf somewhere else in the world. The fey marked are killed on sight, so she is forced to flee but what she hopes is the beginning of a life of freedom that she has never known quickly becomes more and more complicated, particularly after she meets Caelum.

My review

So I listened to this as an audio but even then, there were points where I nearly stopped listening to this book. It is slow as hell. The immediacy of the way the characters fall for each other and how alpha male protective he is over her, particularly given the context of her past, feels icky. The main character didn’t feel super likeable, I didn’t really feel anything about the romance, the spicy scenes are frequently used as pointless plot delays while the characters are journeying somewhere but not in a well done way. It could have been about half as short and still gotten its point across. The world setting is kind of cool and the ending did make me curious about the rest of the books but after checking out some reviews that said book 2 was much of the same stuff I didn’t enjoy in book 1, it’s a no from me for continuing this series.

I think ten years ago, I would have swooned for this book, so we maybe we can blame my opinion on getting older, or reading more critically now, but this book appeared on a shit tonne of my favourite trope rec lists and I know I like a lot of the elements in this book, when they are done well, even now, so I have to conclude that part of it really is just bad writing.