I loved this.
Emily Wilde is a Cambridge scholar who studies faeries and is darned good at it, and she's doing research for her title book by traveling into the frozen north to hang out at a village that tends to have faeries around the place.
Emily's not a bad egg, but she's definitely Not Socially Great around humans--hence why she focuses on faeries and studying and seems to do better at figuring faeries out than anyone else. She inadvertently puts off basically the entire village, very inadvertently, and is dealing with a cold, frigid place and deliberately burned dinners.
Emily has one friend at college, Wendell Bambleby, a fellow faerie scholar. He's handsome, charming, spoilt (gets his grad students to basically be his servants), a bit irritating with being Mr. Perfect and Charming...oh yeah, and also Emily suspects (and it's confirmed early on she's right) that he's a faerie prince. Wendell decides to join Emily in her research and team up--which is pretty forward/heavy handed, but also at the same time he's got good reasons for them to team up AND he definitely smooths things out with her and the locals and makes the house they're in livable.
I really enjoyed the heck out of their friendship, anyway. He calls her a "dragon" and isn't bothered by her natural demeanor at all, and she in turn is all at the ready to help him in his quest to get back his kingdom that his stepmother booted him out of. They're loyal and helpful to each other and I found that incredibly sweet. It's also intriguing that Wendell suspects Emily of being more than just mortal herself, although she doesn't think she is. The story of how she got her dog is particularly impressive to him.
The local mystery going on is that a lot more people are being abducted by the local faeries than usual, which is traced back to an obnoxious changeling being placed in their village, and there's been a shakeup in the fae royalty since the king's been deep sixed by his most recent wife, who's all about abducting humans for fun and the old king was against that sort of thing. Even though Emily denies any budding altruism in herself, she's absolutely at the ready to try to figure out the changeling issue or run after two abducted ladies*, and she proves herself as a good friend to the brownie she meets and dubs "Poe." Wendell joins in her various quests, and his own skills obviously help out there well.
- Note: there's two lesbians in the village, which bothers no one at all and their future marriage even gets mentioned.
Toward the end, Emily gets into deep deep deep deep uh...snow (har, I just watched Frozen the musical recently) and after doing another good deed, finds herself in a situation, and I was heartwarmed as Wendell and the village was ready to come to her rescue.
If there's anything that feels a wee bit shortchanged, it's the potential romance in this one. Emily's not the sort to get into romantic entanglements--she had one boyfriend, basically--and mostly it doesn't seem to have occurred to her to have romantic interest in Wendell on a conscious level. Wendell's obviously having various casual fuckbuddies while in the village, which reminded me of something I read years ago and can't find a link to--I think it was Jennifer Crusie saying that if the hero is boffing others once he's met the heroine it doesn't work or buzzkills or something like that? I admit when I heard that Wendell was schtupping other randoms, I was all "I don't think the guy's that in love with Emily if he's doing that," and decided to take the book as not a potential romance. But later in Wendell proposes his love (and other suggestions) to Emily and she's a bit gobsmacked, yet intrigued, and it's all very tentative and left unresolved...for now, but it looks like there's going to be a sequel, so yay there.
Four stars. Loved this. Recommend this.
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