A Sleeping Beauty retelling from the dark fairy's view: the outcast who's meant to be the villain falls for the princess she could doom.
- Score
- 78.0
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- first
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Walter's moral complexity and the way the story subverts the binary of good vs. evil—Alyce is a genuinely compelling anti-heroine whose rage feels earned. The slow-burn sapphic romance between Alyce and Aurora is warmly received for its emotional depth. The main criticism is heavy world-building info-dumps in the first half that stall the pace, and some find the romantic connection relies too much on telling rather than showing. The cliffhanger ending divides readers sharply. Overall rating sits around 3.9/5 on Goodreads, with admirers loving the dark atmosphere and detractors wishing the emotional stakes hit harder earlier.
Read it if
- · Readers who love sapphic fantasy romance with a villain-POV twist
- · Fans of dark fairy tale retellings with moral ambiguity (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella)
- · Those who enjoy slow, atmospheric reads where the romance is earned over time
Skip it if
- · Readers who need fast pacing and minimal world-building exposition
- · Anyone who dislikes open endings or duology cliffhangers
- · Readers seeking high spice or explicit romantic content
If you liked this
- · For fans of The Cruel Prince but with a sapphic lens and darker fairy-tale roots
- · Like Sorcery of Thorns but slower-burn and morally murkier
- · For readers who wanted a villain-POV version of A Court of Thorns and Roses
In this series
Part of Malice Duology — read in order:
Full series profile & spice/trope breakdown →Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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