steel and spellfire – GoodeyReads

Rating: ★★★
Audience: YA Fantasy Romance
Length: 368 pages
Author: Laura E. Weymouth
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: July 22nd, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

A devastatingly gifted mage with clandestine romantic connections to a Royal Guard joins the court social season in an attempt to undo past wrongs, only to fall under suspicion when a creature with powers shockingly like her own begins slaughtering her fellow debutantes.

Pandora Small has two ruling objectives: first, to keep the prodigious extent of her power secret, in a world where mages are feared and governed by suffocating laws. Second, to find her wealthy and noble-born patron, a shadowy figure bound to Pandora by magic, who stole her childhood and grew her power until she became a weapon rather than a girl. To that end, she’s posing as an Ingenue, a privileged and petted young woman of strictly limited abilities, who is allowed access to the royal court’s social season in order to find a husband and patron to control her magic.

But on Pandora’s arrival at court, Kit Beacon, one of the most promising members of the Royal Guard, inadvertently learns the true scope of her power. Privately sympathetic towards mages and the difficulties they face, Beacon decides to keep Pandora’s secret. But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins slaughtering her fellow Ingenues, Beacon’s resolve to keep what he knows about her private is put to the test.

Tasked with protecting all the girls in the palace, not just one, Beacon will have to decide whether Pandora is a suspect or an ally, while to win his trust, Pandora will have to let him know more of her still—the worst of who she is and what she’s done. Because only unity between them during the social whirlwind to come will enable Pan to find her patron and Beacon the killer, and ensure they both see justice meted out.

Thank you Simon Audio for the audiobook and Simon Teen for the ARC (gifted).

WELL.

I think this was trying to do too much in a standalone. Maybe spread out across a duology would have been better? The ideas and framework were interesting and I don’t think there was anything inherently wrong with the writing style. I just kept waiting for everything to truly come together or for me to feel invested, and I never got to that stage.

I liked the characters. It is young adult appropriate which I know can be hard to find, but with kisses only and no excess language I think a younger audience would like this.

And I did enjoy the regency-esque world. I love fantasy books with that dynamic. There’s some good scenes and I don’t think it was a BAD book, just not for me.

Overall audience notes: