Let me start by saying… this is a long book. Like really long. Some chapters are two hours long (yes, per chapter), and there were moments I was reading and reading… and realized I hadn't even read 1% 😅 so, If you’re looking for something quick, this isn’t it, but if you want a deep dive into a dark, twisted world, buckle up.

It’s a mix of gothic, fantasy, paranormal fiction, romance, and a whole lot of smut, so truly, it has a bit of everything.

Now let’s talk about Amon because he is the reason I kept reading. He’s the definition of a morally grey character, and I loved every second of it. He’s possessive but also so unexpectedly sweet, which made his character even more addictive. And the things that come out of his mouth?? OMG 😳

I’m not giving it 5 stars because there were parts that dragged a bit for me, moments where I was like, “okay, I get it, let’s move on.” Also… Amon does something to the FMC involving blood that was a hard no for me (if you know, you know 🤣).

The story jumps between three timelines, which isn’t my favorite. And finally I still don’t understand what Amon is exactly?? At one point I imagined him like Pokémon Mew, then upgraded him to Mewtwo… and then in the bonus epilogue, he has wings? A dragon?? I’m confused 😂

Still, it was a wild, steamy, and dark ride and if you love fantasy with spice and a morally grey man who’ll killed thousands for his girl, this might be your next read.

Thank you Atria books for the e-ARC for the re-release of this book.

This book was a beast. What a journey. Surprisingly, I actually think it should’ve been longer. Shocking, I know. I love books with multiple timelines that let us see how different stories intersect, and this one does exactly that and I really enjoyed it.

I especially enjoyed the world-building, the worlds-building. I know some might be surprised that I wanted more, but the ending felt a little rushed. We finally get the big reveal and explanation, and then we speed through the climax and there’s the HEA. I needed more from that climax. The whole book builds up to that moment, and while we technically had it, I felt like I was left hanging despite the happy ending.

In saying that, there were moments where the pacing was way too slow. Since the story spans centuries, it makes sense that there’s a lot to cover. I liked the characters, but they weren’t my favorites. I know they’re soulmates and their love has lasted for millennia, but it didn’t feel as all-consuming as it was meant to. I was told about their love but didn’t feel it.

One thing that really pulled me out of the story was the random use of modern language and slang. It might not seem like a big deal, but when you’re immersed in a different era and then the character sounds like your neighbor, it completely changes the mood. It happened at unexpected moments too.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, the story, and how it was told. There’s a lot of hype around it, and while I’m glad I read it, I think the hype might’ve set my expectations a little too high.

3.5/5

Gothic fantasy with heart wrenching romance. This book won’t be for everyone but the ones who it is for will love it I’m sure!

✨️🌙 BOOK REVIEW 🌙✨️
FAIRYDALE
This book was an amazing whirlwind of emotions and intrigue! I was blown away by the author's ability to tell a storyline across 3 different timelines! You have to stay glued to the pages and read everything to unravel the mystery, but when you think you know....you don't! Complete mindblow!!!!

Let me just talk about the hotness that is AMON! Lord have mercy...I have always been drawn to the Victorian Era, but this man. He is obsessed with Darcy. He would burn the universe for her and I am here for it. 🔥🔥 You can't forget about Caleb and his dark seductive nature and his need for her.

There is so much to unpack with this book but I can't spoil it for you! If you love Dark Gothic vibes, intrigue, time history, seduction, horror elements, and an emotional love story? You have to read this. This book is more than just a story, it's a WHOLE JOURNEY that you will not be the same after. Veronica, thank you for such an amazing book!

📙 My Favorite Quotes 📙
"You make the blood in my veins boil with a need to possess you. To be the only man to ever touch your skin-to sear myself on your flesh."

"I love and am loved in return, yet there is
gaping hole in my heart that seemingly
bleeds invisible blood..."

Thank you to the publisher, Atria Books, and Netgalley for this awesome ARC Opportunity, I greatly enjoyed it!

This is my honest review!

I absolutely loved everything about this book! I can’t wait until it comes out in physical copy. I will definitely be buying a trophy book. The way Amon loved so deeply! 🥰 I had a fun time reading this one and trying g to figure out how things were going to play out. I loved all the different characters and aspects to the book. I really just LOVED THE BOOK. Absolutely deserves 5 stars in my opinion.

Fairydale takes a little while to find its footing, but once it does, it sinks its teeth in and doesn't let go. The male love interests were slightly off-putting for me, but in a way that actually worked to enhance the eerie, gothic tone of the story. They added to the creeping unease that lingers throughout the book.

I'm genuinely thankful for the author's note at the beginning. This is a dense read, packed with atmosphere and details, and that encouragement to focus really helped me stay grounded. That being said, wow. Once I was in, I was *in*. The story had me hooked, spooked, and racing through the pages trying to figure out what was going on. The spine-tingling chills were no joke.

There were moments I literally jumped because I made the terrible decision to read this alone at night. Rookie mistake. If you're picking this one up, make sure you have time to dedicate to it because it's well worth the investment. Creepy, rich, and unforgettable.

4/5. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book! The beginning was a bit slow but it really picked up. The writing quality was not the best but the plot was very intriguing. It was quite easy to get through as well. Mind the trigger warnings!

This one was a long one but worth the time! I have been wanting to read this one for so long and was absolutely ecstatic to get the eARC for the trad publish.

This is a dark romantic storyline with historical and fantasy elements interwoven. The mystery element was chefs kiss as it kept me on my toes through out the whole book.

Could it be a little shorter? Yes, but once you’re in the thick of it you just need to keep reading.

3.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Fairydale is a slow burn that asks for patience and eventually rewards it. The early chapters can feel heavy, almost aimless, but once the story finds its footing, it digs in deep. Veronica Lancet blends gothic atmosphere, psychological suspense, and sensual tension in a way that sneaks up on you. The setting is eerie, the romance unconventional, and the pacing a bit uneven but by the time it clicks, it really clicks. Not a perfect read, but a memorable one. .

This was everything that was promised in the Gothic historical paranormal romance and how that was used to tell the storyline. It was engaging and was everything that I wanted from this type of book. I enjoyed the forbidden love element and thought the overall feel worked in this setting. Veronica Lancet has a strong writing style and glad I got to read this, as the story and characters were so well written.

FAIRYDALE
By: Veronica Lancet
4/5 Star Review
5/5 Spiciness Level

Most important note: Fairydale is a standalone, dark fantasy romance. Y’all, don’t start reading this unless you are in the mood for a very complex, very long, slow-moving book. You will not give this book the respect it needs if you try and rush through and you will dislike it if you try and skim or skip ahead. Please and thank you!

Thank you to Veronica Lancet and Publisher Atria Books via NetGalley for allowing me access to this amazing book as an eARC in exchange for my honest review. Fairydale is being re-released after being picked up by a publisher! So excited for this author!

Recommendation:
I definitely recommend reading this book! Yes, it is very long, but it keeps you immersed and interested throughout most of the book! There are some parts that move slower than others, but overall this is truly a beautifully written book! I recommend going into this book completely blind as I did! Not to mention this newly released version has new beautiful cover and a bonus second epilogue at the end that is not in the indie version of the book that gives you more of the much deserved HEA of this beautiful couple.

Brief Rundown:
This is quite a challenge, writing a brief rundown of a book that’s almost 1,000 pages & 32 audio hours long. Here goes… This is a story about a town called Fairydale, Massachusetts, its strange happenings, and the strange people there. It’s a story of endless love that traverses through worlds, millennia, and even death. The timeline changes from 1955 to the 1790s, to “eons ago” and in occurs in different parts of the world.
At the beginning, orphaned, virginal, 24 year old Darcy O’Sullivan learns she must travel to Fairydale when she learns of a sizeable inheritance coming to her after her late father’s recent death. She never knew her father or anything about him. After arriving there for the reading of the will, very creepy and strange things begin to happen. Coming to this town having never gone on one date, had one kiss, or wanted to have anything to do with any boys, she then meets dark, brooding Caleb Hale. He works his way into her mind and heart, but at the same time she begins to question whether he is a very dangerous man and even begins to question her own sanity. With the things that happen to and around her, I was thinking she should just be committed to the looney bin. That or Caleb needed to be gone! Caleb is very sensual and begins awakening feelings and desires within her she has never let herself feel before with anyone. During the nights, she begins dreaming of yet another man named Amon D’Artan, a nobleman who lived centuries ago. She also begins to desire him and is confused and conflicted how she can have serious true feelings for someone she’s just dreamed up. Amon feels very real to her and the things he is also making her feel are powerful. She learns he was a real person and the town’s history with him is not a good one, they call him a “demon.” A story begins to come together, slowly, piece by piece until we finally learn the tragic history behind it all. Such a deep, complex story finally works its way through hell to millennia overdue & a much deserved happily-ever-after. Ok, twice as long as my normal brief rundowns, but that’s not too bad considering the length of this book!

Genre, POV & Tropes:
Fairydale is a dark fantasy romance that is rather unique, mysterious and suspenseful. It is separated into three parts, Part I, II, and III, and includes a playlist, preface, prologue and 2 epilogues. The POV is first-person and changes between the three FMC’s and their time in history in which they lived. Tropes include morally grey/black MMC, innocent FMC…kind-of, forced proximity, slooooow burn, historical romance, gothic, paranormal, and haunting story. This is a very in-depth storyline with multiple timelines and very complex characters and world-building.

FMC:
Darcy O’Sullivan is 24, lives in Boston, and is a teacher of young children at Saint Russell Boarding School. Her mother passed away when Darcy was 10. She doesn’t have many memories of her mother unfortunately. She was placed into foster care and ultimately raised by nuns in the orphanage and boarding school. She then stayed there to train to be a teacher and live there while she teaches. She has a best friend, Allison, who lives more of a wild life compared to Darcy. It is from her Darcy learns about men and relationships. Allison is always giving her a push in the direction of dating or literally having any interaction with men other than completely avoid them. She just has no desire to do any of it.
All her life she has felt like there is something missing, something big and integral to her being. This isn’t something she has shared with anyone, because of the type of person she is she does not want to seem ungrateful for the love of Sister Anne or Sister Mary who have been there and done so much for her in her life. Though, this feeling is making her restless. So, when she receives a letter from a Mr. Vaughn writing on behalf of her biological father, his recent death, her inheritance, with $1,000 cash, an expensive brooch & a key in it, requesting her presence for the funeral and reading of the will, AND that she has two siblings who’s ages make it seem she was illegitimate… It all seems too much. With this information, she now knows her father always knew about her, where she was being raised by strangers in an orphanage and did nothing for her, never reached out to her at all. She has to go to Fairydale. She must get answers about her father, meet her siblings, and about this inheritance she feels must be substantial. The what-ifs, the curiosity, and meeting her only living relatives make her decide to go.

MMC:
Caleb Hale & Amon D’Artan… and I think I will leave it at that. Mysterious…..unhinged…..sensual. No it is not a RH, just read the book! And the audiobook gives these guys an amazing voice!

Final Thought:
The author says this about it, “Fairydale is a mix of gothic, horror, fantasy and paranormal fiction with a dash of history, but at its core, it’s simply a love story.” I can’t sum it up any better than this.

Happy Reading! ♥☻

♾️⭐️ let me start out by saying that this story is definitely not for everyone and if it had been a typical romance I wouldn’t have read it in its entirety. However, I wish I could put into words how much I loved this book but that’s simply impossible. This fundamentally changed me. It gave me whiplash and took me for a ride that I never wanted to get off of. To me this is THE love story. If I say more I will give away the story that I grew to love so much but this was everything to me. I felt angry, sad, in love, on the edge of my seat and overall I am forever changed. That’s all.

DNF at 10%

I can do weird. I can do long. But at only 10% the amount of punctuation errors, contradictory sentences on the same page, and anachronisms did me in.

I was very interested in the story so I might pick it up when it's published to see if any of those issues have been fixed.

This....was...awful. Now, bear with me, because I have a lot of thoughts.

I was trying to go into this with an open mind, but after seeing such bad reviews and that the book itself is 800 pages, I had low expectations...and even so, it was worse than I thought.

It started pretty well, and I was interested in where the plot was going, but so much of the plot relied on the "mystery," but not sure if I'm just a genius, but that "mystery" was glaring me in the face. The plot twists were so glaringly obvious, even the cat, that the 800 pages were so worthless to me. This book truly just went on and on and on! The last 200 pages were especially painful and seemed to drag even more than the previous. And yet, somehow, the ending was STILL rushed. All of that, for all of their problems to be solved in 10 pages, just felt cheap.

The time periods and switches were just annoying. They should have been used sparingly, to enhance the story, but instead took 100 pages at a time and completely took me out of where we were in the storyline. Also, it felt unnecessary because, other than to add some context occasionally, we already knew the outcome from the current timeline. So, why would I want to spend so many chapters two lifetimes ago? That, and I don't care about the relationship enough to even want that context and background.

For having so much time together, the relationship between the two MCs felt so flat. There was no real love between them. There was so much possession and jealousy, and just plain lust that made it unbearable and unbelievable. Speaking of lust, there was so much smut. To each their own, but it was simply way way way too much for me. Some of those scenes I could have lived my whole life without reading. Also, "lass" is not sexy, and can we please leave "mate" in the past? It is so overused now.

Beyond the main characters, we didn't really have much of a supporting cast. The FMC's best friend and parent-like figures were completely forgotten about a third of the way through the book and then NEVER mentioned again, even though they were supposedly super important to her. And the other characters had no sort of duality since they were only there to be the "bad guys". It was either all evil or all good, and it made the storyline completely uninteresting. We couldn't sympathize with the bad guys at all, which to me, makes it interesting in the first place. But they all just had one quality: bad. BORING.

Finally, even though they were forewarned about the amount of sexual assault and r*pe in this book is completely unnecessary and gratuitous. If they had to be there, they could have been done in a completely different way.

A generous 2/5 stars.

Fairydale has been on my radar for a while and I was always on the fence about it cos a) it's long AF and b) people seems to either love it or hate it.

Now that I've ready it, I can firmly say that I loved it. It took me a while to get through it and I think that's partly cos I have no chill (and like to read multiple books at once) and partly because it took a while to get into Fairydale. All I can say is--trust the process.

This was me until about 40% into the book:
<img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/h5SZHQnIFkQAAAAd/haha-lol.gif"/>

And then once I hit about 60% to the end:
<img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/Td9UyoCdhCwAAAAC/patrick-star-mind-blown.gif"/>

Was Fairydale perfect? No - it was too long, there were some errors that took me out for a hot sec which I was able to overlook, and I wish the climax of the book was higher stakes. However, any book that makes me give multiple oral book reports to my husband deserves that 5 stars.

Again, this book isn't gonna be for everyone so I would recommend giving it a chance.

Thanks to Atria Books via NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review although I did read thru KU so I could keep my highlights connected to my Goodreads.

I gave this book a shot but I don’t believe that I am the right reader for this genre. I wasn’t aware that it is a dark romance primarily and after reading part of the way, I unfortunately had to DNF. From what I read, I do believe that dark romance readers would enjoy this. I am just not a dark romance type of girl. I will give this 3 stars because I may not be the intended audience but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.

Fairydale is a mixture of gothic horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance with a historical twist, but at its core it’s a slow, aching love story filled with heartbreak and emotional chaos. The narrative weaves through three timelines and will have you in a constant state of “what the hell is happening?” while still being oddly unable to look away, even if out of cringe. I found myself lingering on every overly poetic sentence, and while I was captivated at times, I was thoroughly confused trying to make sense of things and a bit off put at times.

In the eerie town of Fairydale, nothing is straightforward. Our heroine Darcy is stuck between a brooding stranger from the 1950s and a ghostly aristocrat from two centuries earlier, tangled in secrets and timelines that make even the most patient reader feel like their brain might implode. It’s giving haunted Pride and Prejudice meets paranormal dark academia…with some unhinged fantasy thrown in for good measure.

The vibes? Immaculate. The logic? absolutely MIA lol. Darcy is frustratingly naive, the love interests are walking red flags, and one may actually be dead and the other may be her cousin?? The book is full of dramatic monologues, cryptic dreams, and strange choices. And I was still waiting for the plot to show up 300 pages in. The writing was really nice at times but felt more like fever dream of info just regurgitated at you.

Did I hate it? No? Maybe? Parts of it were oddly nice. But mostly it felt really off and fell short, and I won’t even begin to get into some of the choices in the love scenes... If you’re into ghost romances, cursed love stories, and chaotic nonsense, this might just be your next obsession, but for me it was just way too long and packed with strangeness.

This gothic tale is absolutely epic with its mysterious, varied demonic and witchy ways. Get ready to settle in for a fabulously long beast of a story! I’m all for the length of this book—I feel it helps you really get to know the characters—love ‘em or hate ‘em. The dual timelines were perfection. Darcy was charming but I personally liked Lizzie’s adventurous spirit a bit more. And then Amon was absolutely all that. Weather wise, there were a couple, dark and stormy nights that transpired while I was reading, which 100% took this story to the next level complete with a scene of candles, lightening, cozy blanket and book ⚡️🖤⛈️ Fairydale is a sinister and loving creation that I was thrilled to dive into!

Absolutely obsessed 🩶 I am living for the gothic fantasy romance vibes🪞🖤 The writing was beautiful and I loved how the truth slowly became revealed as the story progressed. I can’t say much without giving away major plot points but OMG this is the kind of epic story that fuels my soul ⚔️ 🦋

Well, this was quite the book. I have to admit that in the beginning it left me somewhat confused. And because it is a very long book, I did take some breaks while reading. With that said & despite the length, I still very much enjoyed this book.
It's quite beautiful & has this almost forbidden love vibe to it.
This story has a dual time line perspective. We are in the present with Darcy while she learns of events that have taken place in the past. These events are connected to her & Amon.
The man she meets in the town of Fairydale & who she falls in love with. Let's not forget about Caleb, another man she meets & falls for. But it doesn't stop there, Caleb is not who he seems to be & this love triangle takes an interesting twist. As the story continues to unfold we discovery these events or time periods are the previous lives Darcy has lived & that Amon is her mate from their past. Torn apart over the years, they finally unite as their true selves & have a HEA.

Cry much!! Veronica Lancet gave us such a beautiful story. Yes, I was confused at first as there is so much information to take in. But once you move along, it all just ties perfectly together in the end.