Crown of Roses by Hillary Raymer – Review

Published: October 18, 2022

Publisher: Self-Published

Series: The Faeven Saga #1

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 430 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3 Stars

Synopsis:
Cursed with the blood of her enemy, Maeve will stop at nothing to prove she’s worthy of her mother’s crown. Her opportunity finally arrives when the Scathing, a dark fae magic, afflicts her kingdom and leaves a trail of death and decay in its wake. The only way to stop the Scathing is to retrieve the soul of the goddess Danua from within the fae realm. Maeve’s mother sends her off with one condition…return with the soul, or don’t return at all. But Faeven is nothing like the fairytales she’s read; it’s full of ancient secrets and wild magic.

Determined to save her kingdom, Maeve has no choice but to rely upon Rowan, the one faerie she shouldn’t trust. But as her feelings for Rowan transcend from hardened resentment to blind passion, a more sinister threat lies in wait, one ready to destroy the fae and human worlds. Maeve must find a way to defeat it, or lose both realms to the rising darkness forever.

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I picked this up based on a recommendation and, well, I had equal amounts of fun and frustration with it. The main character, Maeve, is a cursed princess and rather than endure her mother’s ire and punishment (hanging in an iron cage over a cliff) she stays far from sight. Her future seems bleak and only gets bleaker when a magical wound called the Scathing opens up in the kingdom and begins to spread. The Queen sends Maeve, a bound fae called Rowan, Casamir, and Maeve’s warrior BFF to the fae land to find the soul of the goddess Danua because whoever embodies this soul will be able to save the human kingdom.

So, basically they travel across the sea and end up hanging out in the Summer court with the ruler, Tiernan and his twin sister making some attempts at research into the location of Danua’s soul. Maeve suddenly has the mad hots for Rowan and everytime they hook up, he flakes on her and disappears. Rowan is also a total rip off of Rhys from ACOTAR – he’s Great Value Rhys. The author did capture some serious *atmosphere* at the various fae courts the characters visit and I loved that. There’s a party in the Autumn court that set quite the scene and further cemented my dislike of Rowan, though unfortunately we keep being told the fae are terrible and deadly rather than shown they are. Most of them just look vaguely ominous and hot.

I also have a major problem with Maeve being stupid and whiny SO OFTEN. She’s awesome sometimes, but I guess if she was written with any sense the book would have been much shorter. She keeps going back to Rowan and whines about Tiernan being an arrogant asshole when Rowan is just as bad AND a totally suspicious flake. The end of the book had a great hook that made me want to pick up the sequel, but I am trying to talk myself out of this because I know it will just annoy me.

Overall, I maintain my stance of being both frustrated and entertained by this book. It’s interesting enough to make me want to keep reading, but it felt derivative of ACOTAR without improving upon what it was deriving from. This book seriously needed an editor not just to clean up the pacing and plot a bit, but there were at least two instances where the wrong word was used – wrecked instead of wracked and dapple instead of dabble. I’ve been struggling with what to rate this, but I’ll be generous and go with 3 stars.