This debut novel is a cozy, magical breath of fresh air.
A magic-wielding florist must track down mysterious blooms, leading her to uncover secrets about the world and her own past.
Felicity “Fliss” Farrow is known around the citadel for three things: She’s able to magically enhance the properties of flowers; she’s best friends with Cardamine, who’s about to marry Crown Prince Bastion; and she’s cursed to speak only the truth, making her generally unpopular. In the run-up to the royal wedding, she begins receiving anonymous requests for flowers she’s never heard of, and her quests to find these blooms bring her into the acquaintance of the sorcerer Willoh Vane. Once a dear friend of Bastion’s, Will now lives as an outcast; he’s rumored to have blighted the country with dark magic five years earlier. He’s also annoyingly charming. As Fliss and Willoh track down the curious flowers, years’ worth of half-truths and hidden agendas begin to unravel in ways that threaten both the upcoming wedding and the kingdom as a whole. Despite an abundance of characters and all kinds of magical things happening, Jenkinson’s novel never gets bogged down or confusing; the story dances along at a swift pace, the reader swept along in the mystery. Fliss is a lovable heroine and it’s easy to relate to her frustration with her curse and her longing to be truly understood by both society at large and her closest friends. While there’s danger in this world, the book itself is full of comfort. There’s conflict between people but the world as a whole is incredibly tolerant, with characters of different skin colors, sexualities, and gender identities all playing equally important roles. Love in all forms—familial, platonic, and romantic—is a driving force of the action, even if at times it’s misguided or destructive. This is a tale with heart.
This debut novel is a cozy, magical breath of fresh air.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9798217095216
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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