Series: Book 1 of Secrets of the Fae
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 293
TIme To Read: 4 hours, 48 minutes
My Rating: 3 stars
Why I Picked It Up
I had seen a lot of previews for it on Booktok as well as having it recommended to me on the Kindle Unlimited app.
Synopsis
This story follows Talia, a young woman whose family is on the brink of escaping poverty when everything suddenly falls apart. Their chance at a better life is stolen out from under them by their cruel landlord, leaving Talia facing a future she desperately wants to avoid: marrying him.
Then a mysterious stranger offers her another option.
He’ll save her family from ruin and free her from the landlord’s grasp under one condition: Talia has to marry him instead.
Desperate and running out of choices, Talia agrees and finds herself married to Rafael, a mysterious fae who immediately whisks her away from everything she’s ever known and into a world with magic, secrets, and danger.
Unfortunately, her new husband doesn’t seem particularly interested in actually being her husband.
Despite Rafael’s determination to keep his distance, Talia is equally determined to understand the man she married. But the closer she gets to him, the more she realizes Rafael is hiding something, and that his reasons for marrying her may be far more dangerous than she ever imagined.
My Thoughts
This book was…fine.
And honestly, that’s about the strongest feeling I have about it.
I read The Starlit Prince about six months ago, and sitting down to write this review, I realized I remember very little about it. There wasn’t anything I particularly haded, but there also wasn’t much that stuck with me after I finished.
The story was enjoyable enough while I was reading it. The romance was fine-ish, the fantasy elements were fine, and I don’t remember ever reaching a point where I actively disliked the book or struggled to finish it. It just never did anything that made me particularly excited about it either.
The biggest thing I do remember is that the “twist” was fairly predictable. I figured out where the story was going well before the reveal, so when everything finally came together, it didn’t have much impact.
Ultimately, The Starlit Prince lands pretty firmly in the middle for me. I didn’t dislike it. I don’t regret reading it. I also apparently forgot almost the entire thing within six months. But that’s not anything new for me LOL!
Who Would Enjoy This?
Honestly? Probably most fantasy romance readers.
There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with this book. I think I’m just picky.
If you enjoy fairytale-inspired fantasy romance, arranged marriages, mysterious fae men, and Beauty and the Beast-esque stories, there’s a good chance you’ll have a better time with this than I did.
It’s also a clean romance, which is surprisingly difficult to find in the fantasy romance genre these days. So if you’re looking for romantic fantasy without explicit sexual content, this is definitely one to consider.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to someone looking for an incredibly complex fantasy world or a story that’s going to completely catch them off guard. The plot was fairly predictable, and it just didn’t leave much of an impression on me personally.
But if you’re looking for a relatively easy, clean fantasy with familiar tropes and fairytale vibes? This might be exactly your thing.
Ragan Franzone the Scrappy Author