winecellarlibrary's Reviews (657)

3.5* rounded up

Everyone has a past, and everyone has a secret in this twisty domestic thriller. The prose is well-written, but I was left with questions at the end as to why certain people behaved in certain ways. Their motivations just didn't feel concrete.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

My full review is available on my blog Wine Cellar Library and Reedsy Discovery

Tropes:
fairy tale retelling, contemporary romance, second-chance romance, billionaire romance

Beautifully damaging, a romantic fairy tale retelling of the beauty within, second chances, and healing

When I started reading Swan Song, I never expected to find such a beautiful and emotional story in a retelling of The Ugly Duckling. Sasha can see beyond Vaughn’s coarse exterior to the beauty within long before he becomes conventionally attractive. However, his inner beauty diminishes the higher his star power grows, and he begins to push her away. Unable to reconcile “Ivan” with the man she loves, Sasha cuts contact. Their chance reunion many years later is heartbreaking. So much broken trust and mutual feelings of abandonment prove to be almost insurmountable. In my opinion, the best love stories are those that threaten to break the reader’s heart, and Swan Song held me on the precipice.

Anyone who loves emotional romance novels and creative reimaginings of fairy tales will love Katy Regnery’s writing. As the standalone ninth installment in her A Modern Fairytale series, I am eager to start at the beginning to discover what magic she has woven into the other retellings.

With some explicit scenes and triggering topics, Swan Song is best-suited for new adult and adult audiences. Through excellent storytelling and a wealth of feeling in her prose, I cannot recommend Katy Regnery’s Swan Song highly enough.

This was a sweet, small-town romantic suspense that digs into some dark themes. The FMC has a very traumatic past, so consulting the trigger warnings is advised.

I received a review copy of this audiobook, and it was listed as “contemporary adult romance” with no indication that it was Christian romance. It had lots of scripture, which is simply something I don’t want in the books I read. The story was sweet, but predictable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect with the characters or their problems—they felt superficial despite the hardships they face. Lastly, the audio was terrible. It’s very tinny and echoes. The narrator added odd laughing inflections to narrative sentences. This one was a complete miss for me.

I've been vibing with gothic fiction lately, and this book was great. I think the one thing I would have liked better is to see the FMC become more assertive by the end of the book (which may come along in later books in the series). Aside from that, I really enjoyed it, and I am very curious as to how the series will continue, since everything was pretty well resolved by the end.

I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.