★★★★★ 4
A lush, lyrical, and sensual read!
Format: Kindle
FABLES ETERNAL!!! What a viciously lush, mischievous, and sensual read!
Just like that, and Natalia Jaster has ensnared me in warm windy knots, enchanting my heart all over again.
Since I'm already a fan of her writing, as well as the chimerical way she weaves her fantasy romances in delicious paradox and wordplay, I couldn't wait to soar into this fable. I was looking forward to being entwined in elegant tricks, to being swept up in colorful prose and world-building as well as in verbal sparring that would leave my head spinning with seductive pink hearts. And I have to say, I wasn't at all disappointed.
If anything, this story left me floating on air. It tantalized me like the sharp, ticklish, sonorous whips of a summer breeze against my skin. It enveloped me in stunning lyricism and nature's mossy, woefully under-appreciated, arms. I couldn't devour it sooner. Couldn't breathe it in fast enough.
I have a partiality for sparkling tales already, for magical worlds and characters that are woven through with arresting detail, passion, wonder--so imagine my delight to be able to settle into this wicked whimsical fairytale with Lark and Cerulean. They are everything wild, everything dazzling - oh, so succulent and fresh in repartee - that you want them to be!
I promise you their enemies-to-lovers-to-mates journey is full of all the juicy "loss and longing" stuff that'll jolt you straight into the sky. It'll tack you up there like a star where you can shine down with bewitched admiration and greed.
As mortal and faerie respectively, Lark and Cerulean are poised as enemies from the moment she crosses the threshold into Faerie. She's a bawdy mouthy human with a flair for stubbornness, for whips, who just so happens to have a fierce protectiveness of animals in addition to her loved ones. He's a wicked Fae ruler with blue-tinted skin and pointy ears whose words lance, not just drip, with elegant machinations.
While Lark's desperate to win this dangerous game she's fallen into with him and reach the mountaintop, bringing her one step closer to rescuing her sisters, whom she loves dearly, Ceruleans's determined to thwart her with riddles and fatal bargains at every turn, with him on his own quest to restore the fauna that were lost during the Trapping (aka a war-of-sorts). What transpires between them is tons of wrangling "one up me, if you dare" fun.
Seriously, it's impossible not to get swept up in the thrilling "lark" of it all.
And their romance? Well, it's nothing short of feathered serendipity. It's an elaborate dance circling around the edge of chosen circumstance plus desire on top of fate.
Whenever Lark and Cerulean are together, sparks fly. They just do. The lustful volleying back-and-forth is what keeps you on the hook. The even teeter between them, though, that's the element which kicks up the intrigue another notch. Heightens the passion between them, the intensity.
After all, who doesn't it love it when two diametrically opposed beings (one magical, the other not) end up being well-matched in love AND war? I mean, hubba hubba! Can somebody procure me a leafy fan, please? I'm swoooooning!
Their dynamic interplay also explodes into fireworks over and over throughout the story, piercing you with feeling so pointed yet so potent that it lands with the precision of a javelin's tip. Half the time it sneaks up on you. Unraveling expectation. Digging in deeper to reveal hidden meaning or themes.
Then, before you know it, before you realize what's happening, you're spirited away with the characters. You're caught up in the majestic audacity of who Lark and Cerulean are, where they're from, and how they've come to fall in love with one another despite it being strictly forbidden.
Point blank: it's an incredibly sexy, lyrical, action-packed ride from start to finish!
Never has nature felt more provocative, either. I don't know how Jaster accomplished such a feat, but somehow she made wind into the most toe-curlingly erotic element on the planet?? (Like, who needs/wants fingers when there's wind around to compete? 🤣 ) I'm unabashed to say she's likely created a new kink for fantasy romance readers everywhere.
So listen to me now, y'all. Hear me when I say "follow the wind." Chase it. Trail after where it blows against your computer keys...or out the door toward the bookstore, the library, or wherever it is you prefer to procure material for reading...because you need to pick up a copy of this immediately. I mean it. Consider it a mandate.
*screams in every color of the wind until you heed me*
I'm telling you now: there ain't nothing better than this glowing debut into a universe of Vicious Faeries!
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Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2021
