i read the predecessor to this series a while ago and was absolutely floored by it. this i also feel like was very strong as a sequel, and it delivered on all the fronts i've come to expect of emily's journey. i laughed, i gushed and awed. wendall bambleby owns all the beats of my heart.

WOW! I was interested in this series because of the Far aspect and had me under its spell from the start! This second book in the series did the same. This may very well be the best book of 2024, and I say this knowing this is being released halfway through the first month of the year!

Get yourself the first book and you’ll be ready to binge on both and find yourself waiting for the next book with bated breath, just like me.

I am so excited to get to read this book so early!!! I am crazy about the first Emily Wilde and have been eagerly awaiting the sequel!

I’m happy to report that Map of the Otherlands is magical, hilarious, and exciting. Wendell & Emily are back and their dynamic is fantastic - they are adorable together, practically a comedy duo.

I love that Wendell’s true identity isn’t in question anymore. We get to see him for who he is right from the start, with his fae-ness greatly expanded upon. (His status as a massive clean freak is hilariously unchanged.) I thought the way his magic manifests was really interesting; it’s powerful, fascinating and inventive. I’m impressed with Heather Fawcett’s creativity in these scenes.

‘Map’ does a great job of setting up the plot and diving right in. Events immediately begin to unfold that put Emily and Wendell’s careers in danger. From there, they embark on an Alpine adventure; snowcapped mountains and meadows are swapped in for the cozy Scandinavian forests of the previous book but the cottage-core ambiance remains. It will make a perfect winter read with its January release!

The story was captivating and I really enjoyed getting to see the relationship between Emily and Wendell evolve. Their connection is my favorite thing about the book. (Even little Poe makes a reappearance! I adore him!) This can probably be read as a standalone but I wouldn’t recommend it. You’re going to be out of the loop on several things that aren’t explained as this picks up where EW1 left off and keeps on trucking.

My only nitpicks are 1) that it was a bit slow going at times. And I’m not sure if it was the book or if it was me. I think this would be much more fun to indulge in this read in the winter and it’s currently 90° out so it may have been a mismatch for my reading mood. 2) The small twist that comes at around 90% (something Emily admits to) didn’t really work for me. I had a hard time buying it. But it’s a small thing.

The last 10% was especially enjoyable and I loved the ending. All in all, I thought this was a very solid and extremely enjoyable installment in the Emily Wilde universe. I could read 10 more.

(Will post more about this on my platforms closer to the release date.)

The first book quickly became one of my all time favorites so I was highly anticipating the second one. Thankfully this didn't fall into the second book as a holding pattern that most series books do, but it wasn't quite as magical as the first one. I liked the introduction of new characters, and a new landscape, but really missed the Emily we got at the end of book one (the one who embraced the villagers as her friends/family) who just always seems annoyed at everyone and everything around her (minus Shadow, bc all dogs are good boys). However, there is progression with her here, more self reflection, quick wits and a nice twist to a tale I hadn't seen coming.

The book went by quickly, we get new strange allies and welcome former ones and to navigate the politics of the high fae once again...and probably more to come.

3.5 stars rounded up bc the last quarter was excellent and speaks to how much more we can explore and research in the land of Faery

I loved the first book in this series, and this was a great follow-up, with much of the same charm and adventure, plus some new faces and a bit of progress in Emily and Wendell's romance. I loved seeing Poe find his way into this book and especially enjoyed the terrible little fox fairy. I can't wait for Book 3!

Thank you to Random house for giving me an ARC.

Wow. This book definitely exceeded my expectations. Fawcett blew it out of the water with this one. To be honest, I LOVED the first book. I truly adored it. There were things I wanted to see fleshed out more in the second book and Fawcett delivered twice over! I am so in love with Fawcett’s storytelling with this series. I just cannot get over the characters.

This was an action-packed sequel that I believe is even better than the first book if I’m being honest. This world that Fawcett has created is so lush and rich! I just find myself so invested in Emily and Wendell’s adventures and I know this won’t go on forever but I could read 10 more books about them if I’m being honest.

Fawcett is a true wordsmith.

i really enjoyed the contrast in character roles in this book. i love me a good fae prince saves the female protagonist romance but emily deserved to be able to show just how smart and skilled she is. i hated that she was under such an insane amount of stress but it was a great environment to show her own sort of ‘power’ that she utilized in order to save wendell. i honestly just loved this demonstration of equality between the main two. obviously wendell’s like fucking powerful but emily proved she can also hold her own using her strengths!

with that being said—some of emily’s actions were definitely frustrating but i’m glad they got resolved eventually, especially that animosity thing with her niece.

i was surprised with the dark turn of events about half way through the book having to with shadow but i do think it was needed in order to progress the story and emily’s own character development. she was under an immense amount of stress with wendell’s quickly deteriorating condition and it proved she was imperfect as well capable of BIG mistakes.

i found the the story structure to be really similar to the first book, but it wasn’t repetitive like i originally expected. the new characters and the development they had made for a few nice couple of side stories to enjoy besides the main romance and plot which was a nice surprise! also the writing was just beautiful which made this book such a comfortable read!

overall, i really enjoyed this sequel. it was honestly everything i expected and much more after finishing and loving the first book. i’ll definitely be looking out for the final book in the series:)

Heather Fawcett has done it again. This was DELIGHTFUL!

Emily and Wendell are on a quest to find a door into Wendell’s kingdom. There are more wonderful characters Alaina the way including Emily’s niece and Dr. Farris Rose, a Department Head, from their university. We get to travel to the Alps. Meet more fae and have a marvelous adventure.

This will be one of my favorite books from this year. It doesn’t release until January 2024. Definitely add this one to your preorder list. Heather Fawcett is one of my auto buy/auto read authors now.

Thank you to @netgalley and @randomhouse for this ARC. These are my honest opinions


#EmilyWildesMapoftheOtherlands #NetGalley

I was SO excited to receive an ARC of this book, as the first book of the series was one of my top 10 books that I read last year!

This felt pretty different than Book 1, which focused much more on emily’s scientific interest in folk. the romance in book 1 felt much more like a subplot, as compared to book 2 where it felt more like the main plot line. I’m personally not a huge romance fan, so I would have preferred this book to focus more on emily’s research as opposed to her romance with Wendell.

With that being said, I still really enjoyed reading it and think it was a good follow-up to book one! Emily’s first adventure in this book (searching for a missing researcher) felt a little lackluster to me, but it really picked up once this mission was completed. The ending really set the scene for a 3rd book, and have high hopes that it could end up being more comparable to book 1 than this one was for me!

This was a weird one for me. I absolutely adored the first Emily Wilde novel and gave it a 5 star. In the first book I found Emily a difficult to love person, but her growth and change in character led me to really love her by the end of the first book.

Unfortunately, this book opened up as if she hadn't learned a single thing from her previous experiences. It was as if all character growth was rewound and this book basically was book 1 all over again. Emily felt significantly less likable in this book, the side characters were also less compelling and rather annoying at some points, and the plot was a rewrite of the first book. I also felt as though Wendell was immensely underutilized in this book. He definitely brought an aspect of humanity to Emily in the first book and Emily brought him down to earth. Without his presence and input in a lot of the book, Emily just felt cruel at parts when I never felt she was actively cruel before.

I also just didn't believe in the relationship between Wendell and Emily in this book. It was one of my favorite parts of book 1, but because Wendell felt so separate from the plot and Emily was back to being detached, when they reached an important moment in their relationship, it felt abrupt and random.

I also didn't love how much Emily seemed to lose her memories in this book. It felt a bit like lazy writing where something seemed too difficult to explain and that was an easy way to get out of writing about it. I think a couple of instances of forgetting things is more than fine, especially for a story about being in the Faeland, but it was just too much of a common occurrence.

All that said, I still did enjoy a great deal about the book, but it was overall a big disappointment for how much I absolutely loved the first one. I don't know if this will be continuing the series after this book, but I hope there will be a third one. In the future, I hope we get a totally different type of plot and see more character growth rather than regression.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced e-copy of the book in exchange for my honest review!

This took awhile to get going, and the new secondary characters it introduced were not interesting. But I liked revisiting Emily and Wendell.

🍄 It’s such a joy when a sequel lives up to all the things that you loved from the first book. Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherworlds was such a wonderful continuation of the first story. Heather Fawcett captures all of the charm of the first book while also developing the plot and romance.

🏛️ The story starts in Cambridge, which was so interesting! I loved getting to see Emily and Wendell in their natural habitat, how they interact with each other and their students and colleagues. They have a somewhat chaotic start to their adventure and head off to the Alps to investigate the folk there and try to discover the secrets to faerie doors.

🐌 This time, the supporting (human) cast was a bit more focused on Emily learning to work with and trust her colleagues, rather than befriending villagers. And I love how this second book didn’t just repeat the formula from the first book. Instead, it really feels like the characters are growing and their relationships actually propel them in that growth. Even more exciting for me was the new character who joined their team and who I want to see lots of in the third book! Also Po is back and I love him!

🫶🏼 I loved watching the romance develop between Emily and Wendell. They have such great chemistry and things between them really moved forward! I’m dying to read the third book now!

All in all, this was wonderful! And omg the ending! The third book is going to be amazing 😍 this sequel was on par with the first in terms of writing style and quality while also feeling unique and fresh. I really feel like this series is shaping up to be a modern classic 🩵

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, & Del Rey for gifting this ARC in exchange for an honest review. This review will be published on Bookstagram two weeks before book publication and on Amazon on the day of publication.

This was such an exciting ARC to receive, as Emily Wilde was one of my most highly anticipated upcoming reads, and it absolutely did not disappoint! Thank you so much to Penguin Random House for granting this wish, and allowing me to read and review Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands early. I loved the first book in this series, but book two went above and beyond my expectations. I was totally captured throughout the entire storyline. The plot, the whimsy, the fantasticality of it all- I loved every second of it. Seeing Emily and Wendell's story unfold this way was such a joy, and I am so hopeful that there will be more Emily Wilde books in the future. This is such a pleasant combination of cozy fantasy and fantastical academia that was enhanced by introducing some truly lovely characters. This was an absolute five star read for me, and I look forward to its release in January 2024 so I can pick up a physical copy for my bookshelves. Heather Fawcett, you are incredible, and I can't wait to see what you do next!

I loved seeing Emily and Wendell again. Especially going on more shenanigans. The addition of a couple other characters was also pretty cool seeing. The dynamic between Emily and another character is cool, this other character is Emily's niece. The events of this one was fun but also a whirlwind. I really hope there's a third book at some point.

First of all, thank you to the publisher for granting me the eARC of this book! This is my honest review.

Wow! Heather Fawcett has become an auto-buy author for me. I loved The Encyclopedia of Faeries and Map of the Otherlands is no exception. I adored picking back up with Emily and Wendell, the story felt new and I love the new aspects of this world that we get to explore. The characters felt true to what we as readers learned in the first book and I didn't feel like anything was recycled (which often happens in a series). This felt fresh but familiar in that the reader gets to join along in a new adventure with familiar faces (and some new). I loved the continued representation in Emily, which is what made me fall in love with her character in the first place. This will definitely be one of my all-time favorite series and I cannot wait to see what Fawcett does next.

At this point I think I would read endless books in this series. Emily and Wendell are delightful, the creatures are charming and terrifying in equal measure, and the stories are masterfully paced. Not only would I read about this world forever, but I think I must be a little bit faery mad because I want to live in it as well, people-eating foxes and all!

I really enjoyed this book. I love Emily and Wendell as characters. Emily is stoic, standoffish, hardworking and incredibly Intelligent. While she doesn’t ever go out of her way to find friends or build relationships she somehow always finds people who value her and all her oddness. Wendell on the other hand is exceptionally attractive, intelligent, powerful, charming and yet naturally lazy. He can make friends anywhere he goes and have a relationship with any number of people and yet he adores Emily for exactly who she is. He doesn’t expect her to change or be something she’s not so in this book we see how Emily and Wendell handle his marriage proposal. It is entertaining, fun and heartwarming to watch these characters grow as people. I also really enjoy the world and world building. Every character is unique and so is their lives, their homes, their worlds. I also enjoyed the progression of the story and that each book ties up certain things but leads into a whole other story to tell which fits perfectly with Emily and her incessant writing. I absolutely plan to keep reading this series and just really enjoyed everything it has had to offer so far. I enjoy that while the book is written so Emily is the primary perspective we also get bits and pieces from Wendell’s point of view and it flows and is easy to follow. I can wait to see what antics everyone comes up with next!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book!

Returning to the world of Emily Wilde & Wendell was so much fun. In this installment, Wendell is under attack by his stepmother, and he & Emily must find the door to his kingdom in order to thwart her plans. However, the key to finding the door may lie in the mystery of another dryadologist’s disappearance: Danielle De Grey.

I absolutely LOVED this book—especially since there was a splash of mystery within the fantastical adventure. I think that fans of the first novel will thoroughly enjoy this one! There are also references to past characters (Poe returns!), so there is a fun balance between what happened previously and the next adventure. There is still plenty of witty banter between Emily and Wendell, as well as a lot of growth for Emily as she realizes the power and importance of family/friendship.

I absolutely adore Emily and Wendell. I was worried going into a sequel that the magic and brilliance that accompanied book one would be lacking in this one. There was absolutely no reason to worry. It had the same wit, charm, banter, adventure and stubbornness that I loved. Our slow burn picks up a little bit of heat. We make new friends and meet new creatures. Save some lives, and fight off madness in Faerie. Emily is one of my favorite characters ever written. Her stubbornness, tenacity, awkwardness, researching and wisdom seeking remind me a bit of myself and I need more of her and Wendell’s story. I will be talking this series up to everyone I know.

Enjoyable, great pacing, exciting settings kept me hooked. Fun novel that will be the perfect to lose yourself in I absolutely love Emily wilde! Heather is an autobuy author for me. Thank you Net Galley for ARC in exchange for my honest opinion