Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is the 3rd-installment in Heather Fawcett’s Adult Cozy Fantasy series titled after the main character, Emily Wilde.
This low stakes, light romance, enchantingly-atmospheric series, follows Emily Wilde, a Cambridge University Professor, who specializes in the study of faeries. Over the course of the three books, we’ve been traveling along with her to various locations as she does research for her work.
It’s not quite as simple as all of that, but that is the basic gist, and maybe it’s enough to get you intrigued if you haven’t started this series yet.
Truth be told, Cozy Fantasy isn’t a subgenre of Fantasy I tend gravitate toward, and when I do, I haven’t had a ton of success with it. However, there’s something about this world that Fawcett has created that keeps me coming back.
Yeah, most likely it’s Emily’s dog, Shadow…
In this installment, Emily and her fiance, Wendall, are diving deep into the realm of faerie in a powerful new way. Even though the realm is full of scholarly treasures for Emily, it’s also full of dangers for them both.
Soon they find themselves battling a terrible curse on the land, and the entire realm is at risk. It’s going to take all of Emily’s knowledge to save them, but is she up to the task?
I thought this was fun, though I didn’t find it quite as engaging as the earlier installments. I think for me, I preferred the travels and dramas in real world locations versus the faerie realm.
I also feel like I may have enjoyed Emily and Wendall’s relationship earlier on, when there was more of a ‘will they, won’t they’ vibe to it, but it does only make sense for that relationship to grow and evolve. I get it, I get it.
It’s just not quite as enticing to me, personally.
Nevertheless, this is still a great read. It’s entertaining, it’s well-developed and cute, cute, cute. I would definitely recommend fans of the earlier books continue on.
Further if there is another book, which I feel like there will be, I’ll definitely be picking it up. It did make me a little sad to see Shadow getting older, as I have my own elderly large breed dog at home, but I know Fawcett is going to continue to handle his aging with care.
I love Emily, Wendall and Shadow. This series has my heart.