Book Review: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all doing well today.

Today, I am sharing with you my book review for the first novel in the Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Enter the world of the hidden folk – and discover the most whimsical, enchanting and heart-warming tale you’ll read this year, featuring the intrepid Emily Wilde. . .

Emily Wilde is good at many things: she is the foremost expert on the study of faeries; she is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encylopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby

But as Emily gets closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones – the most elusive of all faeries – she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all – her own heart.

My Review:

I was unsure what I would think of this book going into it. I bought it because I love everything fairies and whimsical, I just love it. However, I then read some other cosy fantasy books and I think I have decided that cosy fantasy is not something I will usually enjoy. This book is an exception, perhaps because I read it in the car on the way to Scotland for a funeral and the light heartedness of this book was exactly what I needed at the time.

I loved the rival academics thread that underly this story, it gave their relationship an enjoyable tension which I am looking forward to seeing where it goes from here with Emily and Wendell – as you can probably guess I will definitely be continuing this series, I actually got the second book for christmas.
The isolated, wintry feeling landscape gave me the same feelings I had while reading the Bear and the Nightingale and I loved that book too.
It is hard to talk about this book without giving any spoilers but I loved its whimsical writing style and the way the plot is presented as ‘cosy’ but actually surrounds darker, higher stakes.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?