MALICE

An outcast and a spunky princess dream of revolutionizing their world even as one of them approaches her final, cursed days.

Long ago, the War of the Fae annihilated the Vila and their homeland, Malterre, but no one who survived the war—the humans of Briar and the light Fae of Etheria—seems to mind. Everyone knows that the Vila were nothing more than evil beasts, and that includes Alyce, the half-Vila forced to serve as Briar's Dark Grace. The light Fae blessed Briar's Graces with beauty and magical, golden blood, which they use to craft potions for paying customers throughout the land. As the Dark Grace, green-blooded Alyce bleeds life into mild curses that Briar's citizens use against one another. Alyce's hexes are nothing compared to the generational curse that one powerful Vila placed on the Briar Queen: to bear only girls, who must find their true loves before their 21st birthdays or die. The curse has already killed the current Briar Queen's two eldest daughters, locking the crown in a race against time to find a suitor for 20-year-old Princess Aurora. As Alyce soon discovers, after a chance meeting with the princess, Aurora doesn't want to marry a prince. Instead, she plans to break the curse, and who better to help her than the last Vila alive? Alyce and Aurora draw closer to one another, unable to articulate their budding romantic feelings, and that angst fuels much of the novel's drama. The anti-Vila racism Alyce endures grows darker and more deadly as the novel progresses, and her obliviousness to an obvious betrayal plot may frustrate readers expecting a heroine with a better eye for danger. Finally, a sudden series of terrible twists of fate—some unresolved, others resolved all too quickly—forces readers to contend with a shocking and abrupt cliffhanger ending.

The unexpected cliffhanger at the end of this Sapphic "Sleeping Beauty" will leave readers impatient for a sequel.