Thanks NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for access to this e-arc.

Well, I've been trying to read this for the last few months and only making it through a page or two at a time before I zone out and get distracted, so I'm going to DNF at 18%. It has good bones, but man oh man does this need editing. It drones on far too much, and as much as I usually love description in books, this one has too much lol. It's too bad, as it really could have been great, but sadly just can't hold my attention.

I had a great time reading this book! As a fan of all things Christmas. I really appreciated a Christmas-themed fantasy romance that could be mistaken for something on the Hallmark Channel. The chemistry between the Nutcracker Prince Jaemis and Clara was on fire and I loved all the spicey scenes. It’s a solid addition to any romance collection

A Curse of Frost and Fate is a Nutcracker retelling which feels more like an imagining than a traditional retelling. I loved the characters and how the world of the nutcracker is linked to our world. This was definitely a spicy-focused book, with insta-attraction and plenty of spicy scenes. If you love fairy tale romances with unexpectedly strong FMCs and over-protective MMCs, then you'll love this story.

This was a NetGalley read.

I wanna romance, nutcracker books, so bad, but this one was really hard for me to read. I feel like the plot moved slowly, and I was not a fan of the writing style. I loved the concept of the book though.

As a Nutcracker lover, I had to read this book. The description was appealling and the magic pulled me in. While I did enjoy reading it, I was not expecting the amount of mature content in this. I normally prefer my books with very little spice, so I was caught off guard with this one. Still, I had a nice time reading it!

A fantasy retelling of the Nutcracker, I am already interested. I love retellings of fairytales and other folktales. These stories give a new spin to an old fable. This story is a creative take on the Nutcracker. Although, this story is a retelling of a fairytale, it is a little steamy and sexy. Cleverly written and the plot will have you wanted to take a cold shower.

Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for this copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you for the net galley.

I love The Nutcracker and couldn't wait to read this but unfortunately I just couldn't get into it and DNF around 25%.

I found the characters were too juvenile and unlikeable and I simply couldn't like them. The romantic chemistry felt like it was forced and made for rather uncomfortable reading.

It wasn't for me, that Nutcracker magic just wasn't there. Sorry!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When I first requested this, I had no idea what it was about. I was completely sucked in by the cover and I was fairly certain I had seen this title pop up on TikTok and Instagram. Color me surprised to find out that it is a Nutcracker retelling!

I actually am not familiar with the Nutcracker at all. I'm probably one of the only people on the planet who doesn't know anything about the original ballet LOL. I think I would have enjoyed this more if I was more familiar with it. Overall, I thought it was a ok read but it was long and had some serious spelling and grammatical errors that were hard for me to over look. Hopefully in the published copy, those were addressed since I know the ARCs we receive normally go through one more round before publication. The spice was decent and I'd be willing to see what else this author puts out in the future.

the cover?: i mean it speaks for itself doesn't it?! it's absolutely beautiful and you know you're getting a fantasy with love and loss
the FMC: Klara- transported from her NYC apartment on Christmas Eve to a magical realm... or did she just have too much to drink and have an extremely vivid dream? Either way- she encounters a fantastical land filled with magick, royalty, and a guy who makes time stand still when she looks at him 😍
the MMC: Jaemis- hottie Prince who is cursed by the Mouse King that will lead to an untimely death. Enter Klara in the middle of the chaos to bring his world crashing down- he wants her more than he should and doesn't want to experience what he can't have when the curse takes him over. Will he be able to resist her? or will his need overcome his fear of his curse?
POV: 3rd person dual perspective
HEA: yes!
spice: spicy/steamy- there are several open door spicy scenes, so many sweet (and passionate) kisses throughout, and so so so much pining
TWs: house fire, kidnapping, overall pretty clean with no gore
standalone?: yes!

this spicy retelling of The Nutcracker was everything I could want!
read this book if you love
📖 fairytale retellings
🌎 fantastical world building
🔮 supernatural characters
🧹 magic
🧑‍🤝‍👩 interesting and lovable side characters

I am a huge fan of The Nutcracker and so I was extremely excited to read this reimagining. That said, it was engaging and fun to read but nothing truly stood out for me to say it was fantastic. There were also many spelling and grammatical errors that made it difficult to stay in the story. Knowing what I read was and ARC, I hope those were fixed.

The Curse Of Frost and Fate is a Christmas story which is why I had started reading this in December originally. It’s a Nutcracker romance—my first nutcracker story—to be precise. Before this I was unaware of the original Nutcracker story and the ballet. Of course, I had some idea from tidbits of what I had heard of it but I never knew the full story.

This book is loosely based reimagination of the original Nutcracker story, giving this book a creatively tied, story inside a story structure.

Curse of Frost and Fate is about a girl called Klara whose Christmas night at her home ends with her getting tipsy and entering a different world; a world where nutcrackers, faeries, snow queens, curses, magick, witches and the mouse king, all of them exist; a world Klara has only read about in books.

I won’t say a lot about the plot of this book because I fear I’ll end up spoiling something.

But if I had to describe this book or rather recommend this book in a simple sentence, I would say that this book is about traveling and travelers, and for people who live their life in the moment and carpe diem the whole way through. Reading this book certainly felt like I was living it, living the whole story.

Speaking of living the story, the prose was impeccable. I felt like I was right there. It was just the right amount of descriptive writing and the writing of the actual story which gave them both a perfect balance.

One thing I do have a complaint about is the exposition. Somewhere in the middle, I kind of felt like the plot wasn’t moving a lot. Like I said, the book is about travelers, so there’s obviously a lot of world building and thus, exposition is valid but there were certain parts where I felt that the worldbuilding was slowing the actual plot.

I really loved the romance as well. There’s a point at the end of the book where the female main character says something referring to the love interest and I couldn’t agree more. She said, “The bar has been set really high,” or something like that and I was nodding my head like a maniac. Like…. Sis, same! There were many steamy toe-curling worthy scenes as well. Wink, wink.

I also loved, and I mean, loved when the antagonists were reintroduced in the climax, ‘cause that shit blew my mind! I wished there were more scenes about the antagonists and how they faced setbacks and planned their moves… the battle scenes especially should have had more to it because it felt really rushed to me. Because it just happened very quickly and I was there like, “That’s all?” I needed more!!!!

I guess, overall, I would like to give this book a 4 out of 5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and would recommend it to everyone who likes reading fantasy, magical, paranormal romance and especially to people who like to seize the day!

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publishers who gave me the opportunity to read this book in return of an honest review. Thanks for reading!

As a true nutcracker obsessed soul, I had to give this book a read for the holiday season. An adult retelling of the original tale, I found this version to be very inventive and captivating. The romance between Klara and Prince Jaemis starts the moment the two lock eyes and evolves into a passionate love between the two over the course of the book. There is romance, sword-fighting, magic, curses, and deception involved, something for everyone. If you like fantasy and retellings this is definitely one to pick up.

This was a fun read- nothing better than an adult version of the Nutcracker!!

I’d recommend this if you’re looking for a fun easy read. I’m a sucker for retellings of classical fairytale stories, so I was already intrigued from the get-go!

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this arc.

I have to begin by admitting that this book was not my cup of tea. So I had a hard time rating this. The stars really are for the writing style, which I enjoyed. But everything else I hated...

I DFN'ed this on at 50% because I just could not read any further.

This book is a retelling of the fairytale The Nutcracker. One of my favorite fairytales growing up. So as soon as I saw this book I wanted to read it. I think that the premise of this book is good, but the execution is just not my thing.

It's just so oversexed... It's all about sex... It's just a no for me.

When the book started it sounded promising. it felt very familiar to the original tale. The twist is that Klara lives in our time. But it felt familiar and I liked the idea of a dual perspective.
However, that was everything I liked.

The characters are very poorly developed. As soon as they see each other they think about sex and lust after one other.
It's not a love romance, but a lust romance. It's all they can think about! And since they are the only charters you follow you only read about their beautiful bodies and everything they want to do to each other.

I expected it to be a romance, which I liked. But their love is just not developed at all. They just lust after each other.

I wanted to see more of the world, better character development, and a better love story.

But if you like this type of book, then I suggest go for it! I liked the way it was written, just the story and what it turned out to be was not my thing.

I didn't really enjoy this book, but I think that it's more on me than the book itself. I'm not the biggest romance reader so maybe that's why I didn't enjoy A Curse of Frost and Fate. I DNFed around 40%. I found the writing a bit juvenile and I wasn't interested enough in the characters or plot to keep reading.

Thank you Netgalley for this free arc in exchange for a honest review.

Firstly I want to say that my opinion is in no way a direct attack on the author, I have a lot of respect for people that put their work out there to be criticized.

Secondly my review will contain spoilers so read at your own will.

I will start by saying that I DNF'd this book at 7%, however I believe that it had some good qualities to it.
Let's list the things I enjoyed in this book.
: the imaginative way the world was presented to the reader.
: the idea of a romance in this setting.

Let's list the things I did not enjoy in this book.
: the way Clara was a one dimension character with her only personality trait being she was obsessed with the Nutcracker story.
: the writing style is just cold and bland way too much for my taste. (this is vary much a personal opinion tho.)
: The blant disregard for consent. This usually isn't a issue I have when reading books put this one was really off putting, whether the type of language used or the fake innocence I just can't get past it.

It honestly feels like a very immature writing for this subject.

This book was engaging and interesting, but it was full of spelling and grammatical errors that were driving me nuts. It took away from the flow of the story for me. I also felt like the story could have been told without being so long-winded. It felt like it was just looking for more pages. Overall, the story's cute and by the end, I was invested in seeing where the characters ended up, but it was extremely frustrating to read.

This wasn’t what I was expecting it to be. A Curse Of Frost and Fate is a darker, more adult retelling of the Nutcracker, wherein a late-twenties Klara (with a K, not a C, as she makes very clear, for some reason) is disenchanted with her modern dating life and finds herself transported into a magical world the day after her breakup. Despite being a retelling, the Nutcracker as a ballet/story does exist within the book’s human world, and Klara is very aware of it’s existence and plot. So, why is it that it takes until 40% of the way into the book for her to have the realisation that the events of the nutcracker were happening to her?

Other than the protagonist being rather dull and lacking in assertiveness, the book was entirely too long. This culminates in strange pacing, a gratuitous amount of poorly written sex scenes, and a narrative so confusing that in a final hour a character only briefly mentioned at the beginning has to return to explain everything that happened. Also, the tone shifted constantly between random instances of very modern language and phrasing and then archaic or complex words in both the dialogue and the prose. The inconsistency is very off-putting. It is a very nit-pick-y type of issue to have, but the repeated use of just ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ as a description was strange and almost redundant? Calling a scream feminine every time a character does it says almost nothing.

Also, it’s a me-issue but the insta-love (or more accurately: insta-lust) just wasn’t what I wanted out of a 400+ page book where there is time to actually develop a relationship. There simply wasn’t enough plot to justify the page count, especially within the scenes set modern day which were almost insufferably dull and amateur.

All in all, there is an audience for this, but I think it will be too fantasy-heavy for contemporary romance fans, but has too much emphasis on romance for fantasy readers.

This was a very middle-of-the-road book for me. But I do know people I can recommend this book to that will love and enjoy it.

As someone who’s loved attending the nutcracker ballet since I was a little girl, when I saw this on NetGalley I knew I’d probably love the fantasy/whimsical retelling of the story.

The story is an adult version of the love story between Clara and the Nutcracker, their journey in triumphing over a curse and obviously, the mouse king.

If you’re looking for a frivolous read at Christmas time and love the Nutcracker, I think you’d enjoy!