you should read “Of Fire and Stars”!!
i’m not usually one to do this sort of thing, but with too much time on my hands thanks to social distancing and my increasing boredom, i wanted to post a book review!! Of Fire and Stars is a slowburn wlw romance set in a beautifully written fantasy world, written by Audrey Coulthurst. I read it in two days because I honestly could not put it down. It follows princess dennaleia, sent to the kingdom of Mynaria to wed the crown prince. But she ends up meeting it’s princess, amaranthine, or mare as she insists to be called, and quickly becomes infatuated by her. i won’t bore you with the details, and i don’t want to spoil anything, but here’s some highlights–
enemies to friends to lovers. princess mare’s bitter attitude towards princess denna in the beginning sets up the perfect framework for development, and it’s done in such a nice way that makes their confession to eachother more sweet.
an INCREDIBLE fantasy setting. audrey coulthurst has an amazing world build, and depicts it in a way that isn’t info-dumpy, and immersed me without overwhelming or boring me.
magical!! princess!! one of the plots follows princess denna as she hides her affinity to fire. also, the fire metaphor is used to illustrate denna’s growing feelings for mare, which is the cutest.
dynamic characters!! coulthurst has believable and real characterall throughout her world, with colorful personalities and real feeling dialogue.
platonic male/female friendship. this stuck out to me because i feel like it isn’t really shown in ya literature. mare’s best friend is a liegeman named nils, and coulthurst includes many soft scenes of the two being best friends, and the best part? It’s Purely Platonic.
WLW ANGST. several times i had to set the book down because it HURT. but it was done SO WELL and i couldn’t stop reading. and my favorite part? it was refreshing to read a wlw romance that didn’t include some kind of homophobic prejudice. the scandal wasn’t the fact that it was two women; it was the fact that mare is the sister to denna’s betrothed. coulthurst had such casual representation, it was like a breath of fresh air.
that’s it, for now, i don’t want to gush too much. but seriously, i highly highly recommend this book to any wlw looking for something new.
