Bloomsbury Spark
May 7, 2015
336 pages (ebook)
add to Goodreads/buy from B&N/Amazon UK/or Amazon US
From the moment Alina touches London's hottest fae superstar, breaking one of the laws founded to protect all of her kind, her fate – and the fae – close in.
Below ground, the fae High Queen plots to claim the city as her own and places her pawns, ready for the battle to come. A battle she cannot lose, but for one small problem – Alina. There are four ancient keepers powerful enough to keep the queen in her prison. Three are dead. One remains … And to fight back, Alina risks sacrificing everything she has come to love.
This New Adult urban fantasy is packed with action and suspense and will have you yearning for more forbidden fae romance.
"Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't feel. Feel, but never ever love." So says the Trinity Law, its rules keeping humans safe from the fae also living in London, safe from their bespellment.
The Trinity Law is something Alina, like every other human, is aware of. It's something she's never second guessed . . . until that night on the platform. Sovereign, 'Reign,' the (literal) rock star fae needs help, needs Alina's help, and without really thinking, she offers it.
Soon, this just-fired-reporter is involved in something that may be the story to make her career, or it may put her in mortal danger.
I liked how City of Fae had fae included in society. They weren't just a part of London life, they didn't blend in with everyone. There is still something 'shiny' about them. At the same time people fear them - even with the Trinity Law in place - they also adore them, lust after them and can't get enough. The fae are the rock stars, the TV personalities, those in the public eye.
It's why Alina thinks that finding out what kind of trouble Reign has gotten himself into could be the break she needs.
That the fae of DaCosta's London can also be dangerous adds another layer to the story.
The beginning of this one was really a slow read for me, but things really get going at the halfway point. Things are revealed, characters are known and the real danger - and the real mystery - present themselves.
The urban fantasy aspects of the story worked much better for me than the romance ones did. I knew the attraction was there more because the characters told me (and themselves) so than from feeling it. Even factoring in that Reign is fae and the possibility of the feelings being that fae pull and not real.
Once the mystery, what's really at stake and who the characters really are is revealed, the book really began to pull me in. The action, the suspense, the humor and the characters had me anxious to see how it ended. Even though I didn't get into the romance, I liked the characters and their interactions, maybe especially the side/secondary characters.
As a romance City of Fae was not great for me but I really enjoyed the fae world - and its inclusion in human, mortal London - that the author created; it was different from other fae novels I've read. I'm looking forward to reading the author's other books and discovering what other worlds she's created.
review copy received from publisher, via NetGalley
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