Rating: ★★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy Romance
Length: 400 pages
Author: Emily J. Taylor
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s
Release Date: February 25th, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel Magnifique returns with another glittering dark fantasy about a deadly mystery that spans worlds and a teenage girl who must risk everything to uncover the truth.

Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.

Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words Your father was innocent.

To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.

Her secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation—or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.

COLOR ME SURPRISED.

This was not on my radar until I had multiple friends reach out and say that I needed to go check it out. THEY DID NOT LET ME DOWN. I enjoyed this one a lot. It had some Divine Rivals vibes that I could get behind but felt like its own story.

I thought the magic system was interesting (if not, slightly confusing, I’m not sure I still 100% understand). All of the script writing and enchantments were intriguing to see and watch at how that progressed the story.

I liked Maeve as the FMC though she also drove me up a wall with the amount of times she spent running away or saying she was going to run away. There was a repetitive nature to her monologue that took me out of the story.

The romance was sweet though. I enjoyed Maeve and Tristan. They had my favorite kind of banter filled scenes but also a lot of moments where they could be closer and let each other in. It’s not the main focus of the story but I thought genuinely enhanced it. The mystery mostly kept my attention too which was nice.

Overall audience notes:

• YA Fantasy + Romance
• Language: very low
• Romance: kisses
• Violence: low

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