Book Recommendation For The Fans AND Enemies of ACOTAR
Title: A Deal with the Shadow King, Curse of the Fae Book 1
Author: Anya J. Cosgrove
It’s not very often that I feel compelled to write a review about a book because let’s face it- the books are becoming repetitive and lack in substance. But this one excited me enough to write about it. This is a critique as well as a gush rave. (Who am I kidding it’s mostly gush) In my title, I recommend it to both of the fans and the enemies of ACOTAR. And I say enemies, because eesh that book had some issues. If you loved the book ACOTAR, then that means you are easy to please, here for a fun time and, you’re just down for the ride- and with that I say buckle up because this is a fun one. If you did not like ACOTAR for reasons that include, but are not limited to: the female lead being insufferable, the incessant dumb decisions, a cheesy love story that reads like a high schooler wrote it and, last but not least, extremely predictable plot. Then I would say this book has only half those problems! Jk but yea I won’t say it’s perfect, she literally gets the pet name “kitten” (discord relationship much). But it grew on me so now I’m cheesy too. It’s not the same story by any means, but there are enough similarities that you can’t read it without thinking of the other, and where ACOTAR flopped, I would say this book soared.
GENRE
It is fantasy based, but I would say this book is more romance than anything. Critique moment!There’s no adventure storyline and little world building beyond the kingdom and its subjects so if that’s not your thing, then I will say it is ok to pass on this book. There’s not much action/fighting in this book. It’s sort of all builds up for the end I haven’t read the second book yet so I’m not sure if that changes in the series but I wanted to write the review for the first book before I put a new information in my brain. But I would say for the Romance category it hits those requirements beautifully.
STORYLINE
It’s set in a Multiverse, where there is a Faerie World and the human world is split between the New World that we know and an Old World. The female main lead is a princess in the Old World, so she’s born into all the misogyny, and strict rules of the past. Her dad the King makes a deal with the Shadow king of the Fae world to save his wife’s life and in exchange, his unborn child has to spend half of the year in Faerie starting their 18th Birthday. The exact terms of the deal on how you win or lose are unclear to Penelope but she wants to win the deal so that she can return back home save her kingdom from being taken over by the Shadow King and marry her childhood sweetheart. The Shadow King wants to win the deal so that he can take over the Old World and defeat an enemy who plans to take over and destroy his kingdom.
FEMALE LEAD
I would say that she is a refreshing female lead because she doesn’t start off strong by any means, but she has an inner drive, and a curiosity that has been originally stifled in the environment she grew up in but now, in a land where those rules don’t apply she’s able to come into herself and explore her magic and being allowed to train with weapons. Critique moment! There’s not much training that actually happens and that’s a fault of this mainly being a romance. Penelope is also a bit of a prude but that’s because she grew up in a hyper religious cult society. There’s another woman from the modern day and she wears leggings and sports bras etc and Penelope starts to shed her limiting world view and start to question where her own morals lie. The author doesn’t rely on cheap tactics to make the female lead strong like having to rebuke her feminine side to be respected. I will say she’s modest but as she comes into her confidence she starts to explore in more ways than one.
PLOT TWIST
I love a story with a good unexpected twist, and this book has two. One of them starts getting hinted that pretty early in the book. And if you’re good at foreshadowing, then you’ll be able to solve at least a piece of the mystery in the beginning to midway through. I found that to be extremely fun to try to figure it out before the story tells you and even after I figured out a piece of it, I still didn’t get the whole situation until it was finally dropped. And I had to place the book down because I was like. Oh! my! gosh! and my brain spiders out to connect all the missing pieces to make a clear picture. And when I tell you, the second plot twist, I had no idea it wasn’t even on my radar, because I was trying so hard to figure out the first one, and when that came to light, I had chills. I won’t give any more hints or clues. The fact that I said that there were two plot twists is more of a spoiler than I would like to give, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
SPICE LEVEL
I will say, if you thought ACOTAR was spicy then you might need to mentally prepare before you get here because this book has actual detailed scenes. I could be wrong but I remembered reading ACOTAR and being like y’all thought that was spicy?? I feel like reading this I was like OH! so we’re doin that! alright! If you’re against spice, I will say there’s only two instances of something happening with the main character, and then her eavesdropping on a situation that happens with a different character. But the two of the scenes that happen are not vanilla so be prepared to test your limits. (no BDSM or abuse in this book though) so you won’t have to worry about that. Please try to push through I thought it was a great time.
MALE LEAD
I know you’re all wondering about the male lead because I didn’t describe him yet but that’s because there’s multiple. But no one is a cliche shadow daddy because we’re all exhausted from that trope. If you hate love triangles, and normally avoid books like that I would say read this anyway it’s imperative that you do and if you do enjoy the uncertainty of who wins in the end then this book is perfect for you.
FINAL NOTES
I really didn’t want to give too much because I don’t like when the entire story gets told in a review and then it feels pointless to read it so if you’re still left questioning, to that I say READ IT!!