Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett – Review

Published: February 11, 2025

Publisher: Del Rey Books

Series: Emily Wilde #3

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 368 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves

Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

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Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is the third and likely final installment in the Emily Wilde series and it ended on a very satisfying note indeed. I absolutely adored the Encyclopaedia of Faeries and Map of the Otherlands, so I was naturally awaiting the final installment with much anticipation. This picks up very shortly after Map of the Otherlands and though it seems to dump the reader right in, it actually took me a while to get fully engaged in this latest tale of fae trickery and scholarly exploits.

Our favorite and foremost scholar of dryadology, Emily Wilde, has followed her new fiance into the realm of the Silva Lupi so that he may reclaim his throne from his wicked stepmother. Emily, though now somewhat familiar with the realm, is still unsettled by the numerous strange things – oak trees with eyes on every leaf, the multitude of deadly fae, and her new role as Queen. Plus, all those dresses are far too fancy for a scholar and they simply don’t have proper pockets for a journal and notebook. All this aside, Emily and Wendell must turn to saving this strange and deadly realm because Queen Arna placed a curse upon it and now the groves are dying and the fae within are being transformed into lifeless husks. It seems the most obvious course of action (for our scholar at least) is to begin researching similar tales of monarchical treachery and vengeance. 

Despite a somewhat slow start journeying through the forests of the Silva Lupi, this story managed to really capture my attention and once it had that, I finished the story quite quickly. I continue to love Emily and Wendell’s relationship, as the two are quite different but foil one another so well. Besides, how can you not love a guy who builds you an entire library, gifts you enchanted doors to other worlds, and then proceeds to not only treat you like a queen but make you one too? Emily of course remains practical and scholarly, seeing old patterns woven into new stories and trying to stop them to save her dearest Wendell from his own fae nature. The setting itself is a major factor in the feel of this installment and Heather Fawcett did a wonderful job of making it feel like a truly otherworldly place not meant for mortal kind. 

Overall, I thought this was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy and didn’t stray too far from its roots, which I personally loved. The beginning’s perceived slowness did leave me feeling a bit frustrated, and it took me nearly a week to make myself sit down and just read through that part. Once I did I sped right along and loved the remaining 75-80% of it, particularly the ending which was sweet and left me feeling quite happy. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the entire trilogy to anyone looking for a somewhat cozy academic leaning, slow burn romance with the more traditional fae elements. The Emily Wilde series has cemented Heather Fawcett as a talented storyteller who I would love to read more from!