Lore of the Wilds is book one in this new and exciting series by Analeigh Sbrana is a charming Romantasy debut!
I was totally captivated from start to finish.
Analeigh immediately captured my attention with this book. From the first page, I could not put it down. The characters were my favourite and definitely a highlight of this book.
All of the action and magic throughout made this a fast-paced read that kept me interested throughout.
And the word-building is stellar and flows effortlessly throughout.
The ending left me wanting more and I can’t wait for it.

Thank You NetGalley and Harper Voyager for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I loved the set up and premise for this book. I am obviously a reader, so having the library be a grounding point in the story was super cool and I really loved that aspect of the story. I liked Lore and Asher, my only real issue with the book is I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be YA or adult. The tone felt very YA but some of the content made me think adult.

This book feels like the epitome of what’s wrong with current trends in books: A promising romantasy, set in a world and starring characters that don’t look like medieval Europe, from a young author of color. What publisher wouldn’t want to snap it up? It’s got all the ingredients for the next booktok obsession.

I so badly wanted this book to work. Instead, it feels like a great first draft that nonetheless needs a lot of work. Lore of the Wilds is a heap of unrealized potential. Character, pacing, plot and style — the raw materials are good, but the result is a book that doesn’t know what it’s really trying to say.

Publishers, I am begging you to rediscover editing.

If I’m Ms. Sbrana’s editors, for the sequel, I’d pay close attention to ensuring Lore’s behavior is believable (and if she does something stupid, it has consequences), that her growth feels earned, and that her relationships feel organic (but not in a ‘he tastes like blackberries and honey’ kinda way). The gaps need to get filled in on the so-far very sketchy world building. Not every side plot needs to make it into the book.

This also feels like a Young Adult book with some spice thrown in to appeal to adult readers of YA (I mean, hi, but I didn’t ask for this) in that the characters are firmly YA but the handful of sex scene(s) feel firmly adult. Ick. Once again (I feel like I’m saying this a lot lately!) pick an audience and stick with it. Please.

No one wins when the latest hype is a disappointment.

I’m giving this 3 stars even though I really thought it was a 2.5, maybe lower, because I genuinely think the blame lays with a book industry so eager to pump out books that will go viral that it’s hurting books and authors that deserve better.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this read! It was a solid 4/5 stars overall for me. The reasons it wasn't a 5/5 was because it was little bit slow in the beginning and I just felt like it was missing something in a few places but maybe that will make more sense once the duology is completed.

Lore is our fmc and she is a human that is trapped in this forrest prison, called Duskmere. She ends up being taken from her village and taken to the dark fae kingdom. She is then forced to work for them in this magical library. Lore is to clean, organize, and find magical text for the fae. She is the only one thats able to enter due to the door being warded. Did I mention that the library is over 1,000 years old?

-fae lord
-magical library
-medium paced
-moon/star magic
-magic book
-bipoc rep
-found family
-plot twists/cliffhanger
-adventurous fantasy romance

thanks to netgalley for sending me this beautiful arc!!!!

5/5 stars, absolutely wonderful! Where's the next book?? What a cliffhanger!! Just a couple of things that I found a little hard to digest. Asher and the girl twin had no chemistry or ex vibes? At the end, in Syrelle's big reveal, he made it sound like a fling, so why was the dad of the twins so intent on helping? It gave more of a long time family friends vibe than anything. Also, did none of the patrons notice Lore and her small stature? The girl twin (I'm sorry to forget her name, I'm not sure what purpose she truly served) clocked Lore as someone different almost right off the bat. If Grey could have been a girl too, I would have liked that a lot more. Lots and lots of male characters, would have appreciated some more well rounded female ones. I also kept picturing for myself Lore putting the tome in a backpack of some kind because it would seem a little obvious and maybe a red flag if she's walking around with a huge book all the time? Also, wouldn't she want to protect it a little more; sometimes the book doesn't mention where she stashes it, and I feel like with how key it is to her accessing magic, that she'd want to keep it close? But there's little to no mention of how she carries it beyond holding it in her hands. I can't wait to see where book 2 will lead!!

I really liked this one! Lore is taken by the Fae to get into and catalog their library. She discovers something she never thought possible, and ends up on the run with her guard, Asher. As they grow close, they arrive to stay with friends of Asher's, Isla and Finn. Lore becomes closer to everyone there during her stay, concealing the fact that she's human from those around them. Things turn deadly when some information they had wasn't quite complete, and Lore must reach within herself to try and save them all.
It would be a 5 star for me if not for the spicy scene between Lore, who is only 15 if I understood correctly, and an older fae male. And the super abrupt ending. Ahhhh.

3.75/5 stars

I heard soo much hype on the romantasy that I was pumped when I got it on Net Galley. Overall the book was cute, enjoyable read and largely felt like a warm hug, the twist at the end though didn’t feel like it made a whole ton of sense and instead of leaving my anxiously waiting for part two has me going huh okay.

Pros: I think the writer does a great job of world building without spending the first 100 page just dumping context on you. I liked the main character and felt like the relationships largely made sense and built in a very real way.

Cons: the twist just doesn’t logically work and I feel like there were a lot of unnecessary weird sub tangents that really distracted instead of added to the story.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. I think it could’ve gone through some more edits to tighten up the prose.

However, the worldbuilding was very interesting, and I think the romance will grip most readers!

Thank you for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

I hate to say this... but this book just wasn’t for me. I don’t know if it just wasn’t the right time and place for reading Lore of the Wilds, but I felt bored and uninterested in the characters and romance. The insta-love element drove me crazy. All around, it felt unremarkable. My favorite part genuinely was the ending, thanks to the final twist.

This book may be a YES for you though if:
you love a good-hearted healer FMC
insta-love doesn’t bother you
you’re in the mood for YA style story
you enjoy the human-swept-into-fae-world trope

I really wish I loved this. I really do. Unfortunately, I did not. We have a case of writing not matching narrative not matching tone. The tone and writing are lower YA, the plot is upper YA with spice that is out of context and doesn’t make sense given this reads as a YA story. If this had been marketed as a YA novel and not as an adult novel, I would have set my expectations and they would have been met, but since it was marketed as Adult, they were not. While this does have elements of epic fantasy, this is 100% just a cozy fantasy and reads similarly to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries in terms of stakes and kind of plot as well. I was bored for the majority of this novel to be honest, because while I like descriptions of food and what’s at the market, there’s only so much I can read about that before I question why I’m reading it.

I loved the representation, I loved the whole premise, but the execution unfortunately just didn’t do the characters justice.

lovers of easy-to-read cozy romantasy — add lore of the wilds to your TBR right now.

this was truly so much fun, but in that bundle-up-with-a-soft-blanket, grab-a-hot-chocolate, and read-all-night kind of way. this book almost feels YA in its quaintness, in its plot simplicity, and its lovable characters, but starts to veer down an adult path (at least re: romantically and spice-wise) by the end of the book. it’s an interesting blend of a more YA feel with adult elements, making it a fun, unpredictable read.

lore of the wilds tackles lore’s story, our FMC, a human born into a human settlement in a fae-ruled world, marking her life as one of oppression and subjugation by the cruel, merciless-in-their-lack-of-compassion fae. until the day they realize that only a human can enter their secret, locked-for-years-and-years royal library, and lore is one of only two that happen to be literate in the fae language. making her, suddenly, of immense value to the fae.

lore is promised financial and material resources for her community if she helps, and starts making a home for herself in the castle and kingdom of alytheria — to the best of her ability. her experience is fraught with hostility and unkindness, with her singular lifeline being a soldier assigned to guard her: asher, a handsome, flirty, adventurous fae.

lore’s exploration of the library brings forth many, many mysteries of the true fae history of the kingdom, the mysteries of magic, and the mysteries of what lore herself, as a mere human, may be able to accomplish in a world ruled by that magic.

this has so many fun tropes and plot devices — a bit of a love triangle, fae-human politics, magical libraries and moonlit magic, and a found family cast of side characters that make the adventure feel like home.

i struggled through some of this, as the pacing and plot slow down considerably for most of the middle, but the way the story unfolds and eventually wraps up is an easy-to-read delight, with fun, quirky characters that are both intriguing and mysterious.

pick this up when it releases on february 27 if you’re looking for a fantasy romance that’s interesting, cozy, and quick — and then DM me as soon as you finish so we can talk about the ending. 3.5/5 stars.

thank you so much to avon, harper voyager, and netgalley for the opportunity to ARC read this!

2.75 stars.

Lore of the Wilds, on paper, is my perfect book. It has dark cottagecore elements, a diverse cast of characters, a cursed library, and the fae. But despite all of those things, this novel still fell horribly flat for me. I think my biggest issue with Lore is that its pacing does it a massive disservice. There were so many scenes that I wish could have been expanded, but we moved almost too rapidly from place to place and that caused a general disconnect from me and the characters/plot. And with a blurb promising time in a cursed library, I had hoped that we would spend a good portion of the book there exploring its secrets. Instead, the library portion of this novel wrapped up before the 50% mark.

On top of that, this book is marketed as an adult novel but reads as incredibly YA. The one spicy scene in this book was unexpected and almost nonconsensual, given the twist. And while we're on the topic, the romance felt rushed and unbelievable. One moment they were simply acquaintances and the next, they were madly in love. It didn't make sense to me at all. I also could not, in good conscience, get behind them making out after discovering that the women from Lore's village had been forcibly impregnated and assaulted either. That scene was truly what lowered the rating of this book the most, as it was completely unexpected and totally at odds with the rest of the novel.

That said, I did enjoy some parts of this novel. Isla and Lore's friendship was wonderful to me, as was Grey and Lore's friendship. The latter was especially refreshing because I always find myself wanting more positive, nonromantic relationships portrayed in books like theirs was. The ambiance and general aesthetic of this novel and its world was also wonderful.

Overall, Lore of the Wilds had a lot of potential but unfortunately did not live up to the expectations I had for it. I think that another round of editing and some purging of repetitive phrases (and there were so many) would do this book a lot of good. I do think lovers of romantasy and fae will eat this one up though!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a romantasy debut from Sbrana! This was such a fun read. I loved the enchanted library and that she got to be engrossed with so many books… um, hello, this is my dream!! Lore slowly finds herself having feelings for 2 fae males, and a love triangle of sorts begins to form. I typically don’t enjoy love triangles, because they stress me out too much, but this one was written so well that I didn’t mind it at all!

There is a plot twist at the end that I was proud of myself for guessing part of it, but the other part I did not expect!! It ends on such a great cliffhanger. I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book in the series!

The found family aspect in this book is truly a slow burn. However, the connections and friendships that Lore makes, both old and new, create a bond that is loyal and fierce for one another! I am interested to see what happens to the crew with all of the new information we’ve been given.

CW: blood, violence, sexual content, kidnapping, death

DNF @ 30%. I was super excited this book because of the enchanted library aspect and diverse representation in fantasy but I found this story underwhelming. I didn’t feel any chemistry between the MC and love interest and I didn’t click with the writing style. I also also very confused if this is YA or adult because I’ve seen it marketed as both?

Imagine stumbling into an ancient, enchanted library where the books whisper secrets of old and the air is thick with magic. This is the world that Analeigh Sbrana conjures in her debut novel, Lore of the Wilds. It's a tale combining the allure of star-crossed romance with the mystique of fae lore, proving as tricky as it is treacherous.

Our audacious human heroine, Lore, finds herself in the nearly impossible situation of trying to save her village while trapped within a fortress ruled by capricious fae. During her time in Wyndlin Castle, she is tasked with searching through a library of magical books, a place from which her fae captors are exiled. When she finds a book promising to be her ally, Lore embarks on a journey of clandestine self-discovery and a chance at love with two very different fairy men, the stoic Asher, a dark fae who becomes her reluctant guardian, and the initially combative Finn, who is a total Tsundere.

Lore of the Wilds presents a passionate heroine in a romantasy world where classism and imperialist discriminations pose greater dangers than magic. The love triangle trope is familiar, but there’s a reason it still captivates. As romantics, we love a choice between two lovers that leaves us wondering who to trust. Sbrana's narrative is deliberately paced, sometimes moving too slowly, but the magic system of Duskmere is intriguing.

Along with occasional inconsistencies in pacing and the longing to know the characters better, Lore of the Wilds starts as cozier but takes an action-adventure turn with some darker, spicier sections. Some readers will revel in this twist while others will want to maintain the comfort, but the multicultural cast and queer representation are welcomed.

This is a story about power struggles, the quest for equality, and the extent we’ll go through to protect “home.” Sbrana's knack for storytelling is evident, even if the story could have benefited from more thrills and emotional ebb and flow.

As we reach the cliffhanger ending, which will make many readers grabby for the next installment, it's clear that Sbrana has crafted a world that is worth exploring.

This was good. Gave all the cozy fantasy vibes and I loved it!! Highly recommend!! Will definitely pick up a physical copy!

Solid Romantasy debut with an absolutely gorgeous cover!

Filled with adventure, fae, an interesting magic system, and a cozy and quaint world- this series is off to a great start. The love triangle romance was interesting. I actually don't mind a love triangle when done well and I'm interested to see where this one goes. I liked the main characters and side characters, there was a good twist at the end and we close the book on a cliffhanger.

I would definitely continue this series and pre-ordered a hard copy for my shelf.

Tysm for the ARC!

4 ⭐️

I loved this book! I thought the plot was fun, whimsical and unique. Reading this book was like a breath of fresh air after reading my other fantasy books. I liked the love triangle trope in this as well but just wish there was more development of both relationships in the book. I didn’t feel a strong connection to either of the main male characters until more towards the end of the book. I also wish more context was given throughout the book rather than the end. It felt like everything came together in the last 2-3 chapters. The cliffhanger though and the plot twist at the end was very well done!

First off thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

10 points for the cover sucking me in with the magic book and two strong males watching the main characters back.

This book is advertised as being an adult romantasy with a magical library and town stuck in the center of a cursed forest. It gave me Beauty and the Beast vibes, which might have created high expectations that backfired in the end.

I was loving the plot and atmosphere of our main character being an orphan (21 year old) in a little town helping the people who helped her all trapped in the center of a magical forest that drives you mad or to your death by Fae solider. One day events lead to Lore getting taken from her town to a Fae palace to catalogue the library that no Fae can enter. A human in a magical Fae library, what could go wrong? Well except for one of the books making Lore realize this deal is too good to be true. Which then leads to an escape, a chase, meeting of new friend as well as another point to make one whole love triangle (yuck why is this still a thing). You are probably thinking "It cant be that bad" but let me tell you one thing a love triangle an pass as being okay if one male is out of the picture or not available, but this is straight up making out with one while thinking of the other and or wanting to be with one while wanting to not loose what they have with the other. Lore wants to have her cake and eat it too. quite a few cringe moments but after reading the end i guess i get it.

I am trying to not review this too harshly due to the fast this is the authors debut novel and there are bound to be some issues in the first book due to not having a defined writing voice yet or official writing style of their own. I will say though that there were some jumps in events that made no sense (character going from one location at the end of a chapter to another location farther then they started with no explanation of how they got there only for it to be explained halfway though the chapter).

Own opinion here but the whole romantasy genre idea is a hit or miss for me because too much romance in fantasy really kills it for me. If a character has a "quest" to save their people or solve a curse they should mainly be focusing on getting to that goal not on the color of the love interests eyes or how much they want to kiss them. It just makes me hope the main person learns from their one-track mind and gets betrayed.

Overall fine read and plot. Could have used some editing to make it longer to make the picture cleaner and touch on some details that got brushed over. I would have loved to see the map but this arc didnt have one so I will just have to wait for the finished version.

This is one of those fantasy worlds that I'd like to live in (but maybe not as a human), complete with quaint villages, enchanted libraries, and dingy taverns. It is familiar and sometimes cozy, if not particularly groundbreaking.

Lore, a human caught up in the schemes of the fae, is just trying to survive and protect those she loves. To do that, she makes a deal with a fae lord and soon finds herself in over her head.

While there is a lot I enjoyed about this book, I wasn't the biggest fan of the love triangle (but am I ever?) and the ending was frustrating for reasons I won't spoil. Not sure I will read the next book, but I'm not mad at the time I spent reading this one. There's definitely a lot of potential!