I think this book was one flaw away from being an utterly perfect (though at times devastating) fantasy romance.

I loved the storytelling. Loved the narration. I loved how genuinely magical the world felt. I loved the Six Swans Brothers Grimm fairytale retelling.

It was enemies to lovers (she was a native Irish girl and he was an invading Briton). She couldn’t speak for magical reasons. There was this whole curse quest thing. Characters were genuinely in danger. It was epic.

But. She was too dang young! She needed to be aged up like… five years, at least 😳 Not just because some truly horrific stuff happens to her in this book, also because it was hard for me to sink into this epic love story when ultimately she was just in her mid-teens.

This was not YA (oh my gosh, reading this as a young person would be so traumatizing 😵‍💫). The trigger warnings in here are no joke (though they were handled really emotionally and not gratuitously, I thought).