(by Charlie N. Holmberg)
This book is the fourth one in the Whimbrel House series and I started reading it because I was on a train and wanted something plot-heavy and engrossing, and I already had it on the Kindle app on my phone. It was definitely the right book at the right moment for me and I delightedly read for hours. That said, I really disliked the resolution of the love triangle subplot: the guy (Owein) is choosing between an arranged marriage with a very rich girl whose family is a big deal in the English magical nobility (Cora) and a not-arranged marriage with a Druid he clearly loves and also clearly has physical chemistry with (Fallon). I think a future book about Owein and Fallon would be much more fun than a future book about Owein and Cora, and also the whole thing about how Owein needs to marry Cora so they can have babies with strong magic is way too eugenics-coded and definitely gives me the ick. But I’ll probably still read the next book in the series, which is expected to come out in 2026: these books are reliably fun reads for me, whatever quibbles I may have. And while I didn’t like the resolution of the love triangle, I really liked the buildup of it, especially the scene where Owein and Fallon kiss (“She smelled like the island, like the ocean and iris and green, like the woods at dawn and clouds just after a storm.”) Aside from the love triangle, the other main part of this book is the return of a villain who previously seemed to have been defeated: while one might argue that there’s something a bit phoning-it-in about having the same bad guy pop up again, that part worked for me: I liked the final battle and the snippets we get of the villain’s experiences in the years between when the last book ended and when this one starts.
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