Name: Lore of the Wilds
ISBN: 9780063380592

Analeigh Sbrana

A Novel

Lore of the Wilds

Nothing too important about this quote. It just made me laugh and thinking about dumplings made my stomach growl really loudly to the extent that my cat thought that I was growling at her lol 

Lauren Lipford

“You seem to enjoy them even more than I do, which I hadn’t known was possible.”

For those brief moments, Lore hadn't been painfully aware that as a human, she didn't belong here. She walked away from them with a tightness in her throat and the urge to cry at the normalcy of it all.

“There is something I can't quite wrap my head around, Asher. You willingly put on those vile blue stripes of your uniform every morning, and yet, you buy me damned delicious dumplings. And you encourage me to try a certain set of creams for my hair, ones that you think would make me 'happier'. I can't seem to grasp how all these things can be true of one person."

As a reader, I know that every single one of us can relate to this quote from Lore. Being able to escape into a book is my favorite part of reading because it allows you to forget the realities of life and the sometimes awful circumstances that we’re in. 

“My favorite stories are the ones I can escape into. The ones where I can leave behind this bleak existence and be somebody else, even if just for a little while. Someone braver than me. Someone with the power to change their circumstances.”

Not that this comes to me as any sort of surprise, but this reminds me of the years of fighting that people have to go through just to be able to be with or marry someone that they love. Interracial marriage wasn’t legal (and still isn’t explicitly protected by the Constitution but is widely accepted as being a protected right by the 14th amendment) until 1967, and the same kind be said about same sex marriages. Being able to marry who you love shouldn’t be something that people have to fight for. 

She hadn't been aware that it was a death sentence for the sentries who were with humans. She just knew that when the fae forced themselves on humans, it was never the human's choice, and the humans didn't live to tell the tale.

I liked it! The origin concept is cool (and I hope we get answers!), and I thought the world building was unique. The character interactions were well-written too, I thought. It was a fun adventure that showed both aspects of fae duality (good fairies and the manipulative tricksters sort of split)! 

This was a little bit all over the place. I’d agree with other reviews that somehow nothing happens in the first 30% and not even cozy vibes. Then some of the romance was sped up then slowed way down that by the end I wasn’t really emotionally connected to it. That being said, I felt invested enough in the FMC’s individual backstory and motivations to give this 3 stars. Would not recommend this for the romance (I will be reading book 2 I appreciate this is a duology! To see if that improves). 

For like 75% I thought this was YA, they look SO young in the art on the cover so I was starting to get confused with all the whisky drinking and a detailed intimate moment until I realized this is adult. There’s something REALLY dark that gets revealed at the end that the FMC witnesses (but does not experience) that threw me off, like totally fine to me to have an adult book give YA vibes but then you can’t just throw around (SPOILER ALERT) majorly SA/grape implication scenes of women chained to beds on such a large scale out of nowhere. It turned this book really traumatic and dark. 

The narrator is amazing!! Highly recommend this via audio. 

Abigail

This was a little bit all over the place. I’d agree with other reviews that somehow nothing happens in the first 30% and not even cozy vibes. Then some of the romance was sped up then slowed way down that by the end I wasn’t really emotionally connected to it. That being said, I felt invested enough in the FMC’s individual backstory and motivations to give this 3 stars. Would not recommend this for the romance (I will be reading book 2 I appreciate this is a duology! To see if that improves). 

For like 75% I thought this was YA, they look SO young in the art on the cover so I was starting to get confused with all the whisky drinking and a detailed intimate moment until I realized this is adult. There’s something REALLY dark that gets revealed at the end that the FMC witnesses (but does not experience) that threw me off, like totally fine to me to have an adult book give YA vibes but then you can’t just throw around (SPOILER ALERT) majorly SA/grape implication scenes of women chained to beds on such a large scale out of nowhere. It turned this book really traumatic and dark. 

The narrator is amazing!! Highly recommend this via audio. 

Overall, I think this was a really good book. I thought it was going to be a romance book where the lovers were the center of the story, but it turns out that our heroine, Lore, is very much so the Main Character. When you reach the end, it will leave you wanting more, needing to fill in the gaps of the things you’ve learned thus far. I think that the end of the book feels really rushed or not the same pace as the rest of the book, so maybe it would have been better if some information was cut down for the first book and left readers with more questions that would be answered in the 2nd book. I’m by no means an author, but idk the pace just felt weird for me at the end compared to how I had felt throughout the rest of the book. The far characters have a lot of interesting features where they don’t have characteristics of only one type of animal, very unique imo. Definitely recommend if you like faebound novels :)

big ab

this pains me to rate so low. i really wanted to like this book.. but what the hell? the pacing was wayyy off. i felt like it should have stayed YA… but what do i know. it felt like it was pages and pages of boring internal monologue with the same cliche thoughts over and over again. and then when the action happened, it would be like “we did this” .. like girl give me more info on that!! it was rough.

This book gave me Faebound vibes and that book was one of my favorite reads of 2023. The world building was interesting, the characters were fleshed out and intriguing, the magic system has me wanting to know more, and the plot has me invested. The romance is a sub-plot but a veryyyy well-done one. There are love triangle vibes but it’s not overt. I only knocked it down half a star because the plot dragged just a teensy bit in the middle and there were some glaringly obvious questions that the FMC apparently never considered asking out loud, which seems very weird. But this was incredibly well-done in my opinion - the ending had a great plot twist - and I can’t wait until the second book comes out!

Lore of the Wilds A Novel

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