Okay so one of my new years resolutions is to review every book that I read; I fell off at the end of last year with the sheer number of books that I read for the Clear Your Shit Readathon.
So, this was the first read of the year. This had been on my TBR for so long, I’d heard it had The Cruel Prince and A Court of Thorns and Roses vibes and that is my jam.
Fortuna Sworn funnily enough follows Fortuna Sworn a Nightmare, which is a type of supernatural creature that can see people’s fears and then make them believe that is reality, as she searches for her missing brother. After meeting an enigmatic fairy she’s offered a bargain: if she marries the fairy then he will take her to her brother.
So, the premise of this book sounded so good. I love books set in Fairy and Fortuna was certainly an interesting character. I like a good arranged marriage trope and while this wasn’t quite that it gave me similar vibes. I also like a dark, mysterious stranger.
I have to admit though I feel a little let down. There were glaring similarities to A Court of Thorns and Roses. Tiny spoiler for a few things here so skip to the next part if you want to remain unspoiled: Fortuna has to complete three trials to become queen. Other than the second trial, the first and third were very similar to ones Feyre faced.
These similarities can’t be explained by coincidence (as you can with books like Rhapsodic and A Court of Mist and Fury) as this was only published in 2019.
I found the character of Fortuna to be inconsistent. This example will be a slight spoiler: her new husband doesn’t stop her from being whipped, she then says she will never love him, yet we see her acting on her attraction to him, hearing his side, even agreeing with it, but she still maintains she will never love him.
There is also the love interest that may or may not be a product of her imagination that she visits when she sleeps. Obviously, this is the first book and I’m assuming he will become a more important part of the story but his presence made Fortuna’s character more unlikable. Here she is professing love to this potentially imagined guy and yet she is really into her new husband, she lets him touch her and kind of writes it off as she will tell him at some point.
Overall, I gave this book 4* because I did read it quickly and I feel like it could be a promising start. I am going to read the next book and I’ve heard it gets better but if the next book is the same then I’ll likely down my rating to 3.5 and discontinue the series.
The London Faerie 