In a town that coexists with Faerie, two siblings wake a horned prince from his glass coffin — and the old bargains come due.
- Score
- 77.0
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- third
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers consistently praise Holly Black's lush, atmospheric prose and her confident world-building, which blends mundane small-town life with genuinely unsettling fae mythology. The casual, non-performative LGBTQ+ representation — Ben's romance with the horned prince is treated as simply as any other — is widely celebrated. The primary criticism is that both romantic relationships feel underdeveloped and emotionally rushed: the slow-build of Hazel and Jack's long friendship never quite ignites on the page, and Ben and the prince's connection accelerates too fast to feel earned. Some reviewers also note that Hazel's years of secret violence as a child knight leave surprisingly little psychological mark on her character.
Read it if
- · Readers who love lush, folklore-rooted fae worlds with a dark edge
- · Fans of Holly Black's Folk of the Air trilogy wanting a standalone in the same universe
- · Readers who want a YA fantasy with a sword-swinging heroine and casual queer representation
Skip it if
- · You want a romance-driven plot — the love stories are secondary and underbaked
- · You need emotionally deep character introspection; Hazel's trauma is largely glossed over
- · You dislike plot-heavy YA with multiple storylines juggled in a short page count
If you liked this
- · For fans of The Cruel Prince — same author's fae world, darker and more political
- · Like Tithe by Holly Black but with a more action-forward heroine
- · For readers who want Labyrinth-style fae enchantment in a contemporary YA wrapper
- · Like An Enchantment of Ravens but warmer in tone and more plot-driven
Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
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