By Scarlet St. Clair. Pub Date: 3/7/23
5 (very smutty)*s. Best enjoyed when…you have some ‘me’ time.
This is not your average fairy tale retelling. This is super new-adult. Lots of anatomy, lots of heat, and lots of seggsual content. Reader discretion advised.
Publisher’s Synopsis:
“I wanted to answer, to whisper yes into the space between us, but I was afraid.
All Gesela’s life, her home village of Elk has been cursed. And it isn’t a single curse—it is one after another, each to be broken by a villager, each with devastating consequences. When Elk’s well goes dry, it is Gesela’s turn to save her town by killing the toad that lives at the bottom. Except…the toad is not a toad at all. He is an Elven prince under a curse of his own, and upon his death, his brothers come for Gesela, seeking retribution.
As punishment, the princes banish Gesela to live with their seventh brother, the one they call the beast. Gesela expects to be the prisoner of a hideous monster, but the beast turns out to be exquisitely beautiful, and rather than lock her in a cell, he offers Gesela a deal. If she can guess his true name in seven days, she can go free. Gesela agrees, but there is a hidden catch—she must speak his name with love in order to free him, too.
But can either of them learn to love in time?“
Review:
This is definitely an NSFW book. I have no problem with heavily erotic novels—I’ve ready Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty amongst others—but I wanted to preface this with that little caveat. That said, this is some hot hot heat.
Basic Plot ,Beauty and the Beast retelling: Elven king is cursed, the only way to break the curse is for someone to guess his name and say it out of love. Woman is trapped in a situation she doesn’t want to be in, accidentally kills another elven king (oops) while trying to break a curse, gets taken by the brothers of the dead and cursed elven kings, and they make her the prisoner of the cursed one. Presumably so she can break the curse, but also because they are assholes and want to torture their brother, possibly.
That’s the basic plot. Obviously our heroine wants to make her way home. She has trauma. She is part fae, which isn’t great when you live amongst humans, but may be worse if you hate fae because that means you kind of hate yourself. At the same time, there’s an undeniable sexual attraction between the Thorn King and our Geselda, the heroine. Like, major heat. A million Scoville. And it doesn’t help that everyone seems super horny all the time around the palace, and those who aren’t are either tiny pixie jerks or are spreading around magic lust dust to make everyone else feel hot and heavy in all the right places.
Now, given the above, this could go incredibly wrong and super corny/gratuitous, or it could go very well. Luckily for us, we’re talking about St. Clair, here. Author of Adrian x Isolde (King of Battle & Blood). She knows how to handle a hot scene, and she writes the shit out of it in this book. Like, woah. I honestly dug the whole thing. Had to drop my kindle a few times to keep from getting my fingerprints burned off. Honestly, can’t wait for the next one. Really hope theirs a next one. This was well worth the super sleepless night, and my spouse would agree.
Thanks to Netgalley, the author, and Sourcebooks for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest (too honest?) review. I had already purchased it, but I was still grateful for the chance to review it more formally for NG 😉
Always Lost in Words 