Kristen Ciccarelli's Edgewood is an epic love story of a girl forced to return to the home she's left behind in order to break a terrible curse. Two years ago, Emeline Lark left her small town of Edgewood to move to Montreal to pursue a career in music. Emeline wants to become a famous singer, joining tours, living a different life she’s left in the Edgewood. She's risen to the point where she is about ready to tour with a group called The Perennials soon. Of course, that's when things start to sideways. No matter how far she runs, the forest of Edgewood always comes for Emeline Lark.

The scent of damp earth curls into her nose when she sings and moss creeps across the stage. No one notices the strange things that happen when she sings. It’s as if the woods of her childhood, shrouded in folklore and tall tales, are trying to reclaim her. But Emeline has no patience for silly superstitions. Someone at one of her stops steals her bottle of water. Then she learns that her grandfather, the person who raised her when her mother disappeared when she was child, goes missing from his nursing home.

The only thing left behind is a milky orb in his wake. It seems as though the stories Emeline has always scoffed at suddenly seem less foolish. Her grandfather suffers from dementia, and she’s worried that he’s wandered into the woods. Nobody else seems to be trying to find him. After searching for him almost everywhere, Emeline finally succumbs to the call of Edgewood, entering the forest she has spent years trying to escape. Emeline finds herself in the court of the fabled Wood King himself where she learns that her grandfather was tithed.

Little does she know, she’s stumbled into the middle of a curse much bigger than herself, one that threatens the existence of a life she has worked so hard to forget. With the help of a handsome and brooding tithe collector (Hawthorne Fell), a surly blacksmith (Sable Thorne), and a lost childhood friend (Grace Aber), Emeline sets out to not only save her grandfather’s life, but to right past wrongs, and in the process, discover her true voice. Emeline goes through a complicated and emotional journey, and she learns more than she ever bargained for.

The one thing I really liked about Emeline was her relationship with her grandfather. She struggles with the thought of leaving him behind and putting him in a home where he can be watched. Emmeline's struggle for identity and belonging in terms of both her career and her personal life drew me in. One could say that the ending was predictable, but there's a few surprises and twists along the way.

This was a pretty decent YA book with the typical tropes, but I really wanted more from the story. The cover is wonderful, and the atmosphere was really nice too, but the story was a little off for me and the characters were somewhat lacking as well.

I enjoyed this blending of contemporary and fae worlds. I found that I could not stop reading this book and wanted to see what would happen. Some aspects of the romance were not my favorite but that is personal taste (I don’t like seeing so much involvement with another person for so long - thankfully the dud of a boyfriend finally went away). But I had to remember that Emeline was working at a distinct disadvantage. Edgewood was a fascinating place, and I really liked Hawthorne and watching his relationship with Emeline grow through the story. But I’ve got to say that the end surprised me. I did not see that coming!

My Review: Not Worth It
Rep: dementia, LGBTQIA+ (side character)

As much as I wanted to love this book, I just couldn’t forgive its flaws.

The Pros: What Worked For Me

The relationship between Emeline and her grandfather is so sweet, and her conflicting feelings over his dementia (and her guilt) was something the author depicted very well.

The Cons: What I Didn’t Like

The worldbuilding is non-existent and frustrating to try and figure out.
The magic system doesn’t make any sense to me and I had more questions than answers with every page.
The writing style is more juvenile than what I expected and it didn’t work for me.
All of the characters are bland and I just didn’t care for them. There was no real connection that I could feel.
There really isn’t anything interesting about this story. It has a generic plot and pretty terrible romance that I’ve seen too many times already.

The forest has always found a way to creep into Emeline's life. She has made a point to run from the forest and it's superstitions. When her grandfather disappears, the stories that she had spent her whole life ignoring suddenly don't seem as foolish. Entering the forest, she searches for her grandfather, letting nothing deter her. As she becomes more involved with the forest, secrets start to unfold and she realizes there is something much bigger going on.

A spooky forest with a mystery and a curse? How could I not be curious about a book like that. It is the perfect fantasy setting. There are so many possibilities and ways to explore a forest, I couldn't wait to see how the forest would be portrayed here. When it started and I found how just how important the forest was to the story, I was even more eager and excited to fall in love with this story and the mysterious forest. Unfortunately, that excitement quickly faded.

Emeline was a character who, unfortunately, didn't really stand out for me. Throughout the book, she was focused on getting her grandfather back, understandably, but it was had to get why she cared so much about him. Yes, he was her grandfather, yes he was an important part of her life, but with the way she brushed off his disappearance early on, it made it seem like she didn't really care. Then, we get no connection between her and her grandfather to build that connection and make me care.

Even while reading the book, I struggled to remember her name. Unfortunately, Emeline is a main character who did not feel like the main character in her own life. She simply didn't stand out to me.

When this first started, I was sucked in. I was so enchanted with the idea of the forest that called to Emeline. It was fascinating to me and I couldn't wait to read more. The writing was atmospheric and beautiful. The woods had this haunt aura to them that was captivating, but once the plot started to pick up, all of that seemed to fade away and the world that seemed like it was going to be so promising started to fade away.

Part of why I struggled so much with the world is how the modern world and the fantasy world tried to blend. This simply didn't work for me and I was often confused on if this was a fantasy or fiction. I constantly had to remind myself that this was supposed to be a fantasy book and not fiction.

There are so many things about this book that I love which really made me think that I should love this book, but the execution left me disappointed. I have a friend who enjoyed this author's other series, so I'm hoping that I'll enjoy that one too and even future releases from this author, but this one simply didn't work for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a copy to review.

Two stars

This book was not even on my radar until I saw that beautiful cover. Ever see a book cover that hooks you? Edgewood did just that for me. But I was let down badly.

The romance is what turned me off. Immediately when it became inappropriate. It was not for me... I am going to try my hardest to forget Hawthorne ever existed.

The only saving grace was Emeline's relationship with her grandfather. I love seeing how protective Emeline was of him. It was obvious she cared a great deal about him.

This is one series, I will not be continuing. Unless I know Hawthorne will be a tree forever.

I was really hoping to love this, as I am a complete sucker for magic forests - but I think the things I want out of a magic forest story were just not what the author wanted to write about, and that's fine.

The beginning of the story is intriguing enough, but the main pull was this idea that Emeline would be entering this magic forest and interacting with the creatures therein. They're called shifters but I believe calling them faeries would be accurate, and I love stories where a human becomes surrounded by fae.

There just wasn't a lot of actual fae in this story. For a world built on the magic tithes and fire horses, I felt like I didn't see much of it. There were a couple scenes with characters that weren't Hawthorn or Emeline's grandfather, but they were always quick and over before they began. She's in the forest but she's mainly in her room or at Hawthorn's house, not interacting much with people daily. I wanted more of the magical environment, but this clung to the musical aspect of the story much more. My favorite scene was when they had to sneak past a certain creature, and I was really hoping more of the book would be like that.

When the plot gets into full force there is more of a magical presence, but it comes with some trigger warnings. There are multiple instances where consent is denied for people (one being more vague than another but still counting for me) and I felt a little taken aback by it. Emeline's backstory coming into full view brought with it some complications that made things uncomfortable, and I couldn't really get past it.

I wanted to like this a lot, but it just left me feeling underwhelmed, and then a little confused. I'm hoping if the author writes more that I'll be able to connect with it.

I was so bloody excited for this book. I adored the cover, I adored the premise, I adored the spunky elven fire horses.

But this book missed on one very important, very key idea:

You don’t mix music industry talent agents and Wood Kings.
You don’t mix Birkenstocks and blood magic tithes.
And you really don’t mix Hydroflasks and faeries.

It just isn’t done.

To be perfectly honest, I believe that was the problem with 99% of this book’s plot. It was just too odd. Trying to connect with the character’s modern music career in one sentence, and then learning that trees talk in this random magical forest in the other was just whiplash. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it, and thus could not bring myself to give a bloody care.

Next, the characters.

The characters didn’t do anything to redeem the plot. Everyone was relatively forgettable, but Emeline Lark, our main girl, was the worst of the lot. In fact, she was so horrifically forgettable, I actually had to go look up her name in order to write this review *sighs dramatically*

Her entire personality was getting her old grandfather who suffers from dementia back from the Wood King, and she literally dropped her life, everyone in her life, all of her auditions, her shows, and her music to get this man back. She basically sacrifices several big opportunities in auditions for this guy.

And did I care?

Nope.

Like, intellectually, I know he is our main girl’s grandpa and he’s really truly very important to her, but it was bloody difficult to care about the guy because there was no actual description or memories of him for me to connect with.

You give me nothing, I give you nothing 🥰

In addition, for solidly the first fifty pages, Emeline refuses to believe her grandfather has been taken by the Wood King. It’s very frustrating, and I dropped the book maybe three times because I couldn’t get past her stupid stubbornness. AND THEN we finally get into the forest, a couple fire horses show up, our leading lady is nearly burned to a crisp, and then SHE BELIEVES IT’S REAL.

NO WONDER SHERLOCK.

the number of times the stubbornness of this girl would’ve killed her if not for plot armor 💀

There was a heck ton more I could talk about, but it’s finals season and I very unfortunately lack the time to go over everything :( My overall thoughts, summed up in one succinct sentence: the worldbuilding was #whiplash, the characters were confusing, the heroine was stupid, and Hydroflasks should never, never, NEVER be used in the same sentence as a faerie.

thank you and goodbye.

There is not a lot that I love more than a good ole spooky, sentient forest in a fantasy setting. There’s just something magnetic about the forest and its many shadows, no matter the role it ends up playing in the story it exists in. Edgewood relies on the forest, centers itself around it, and so then you’d fully expect I’d love it, right? Well, so did I.

There are honestly a lot of interesting ideas at the core of this book, and so much I’ve loved in other stories, and yet the execution of them in this book just didn’t work for me at all. I honestly feel like this is the most boring way this story could have been written, and it honestly breaks my heart to say that! I adored The Last Namsara, and it’s sequels, and had such high hopes going into this one because of it. But Edgewood just doesn’t contain the magic that The Last Namsara did, and while it’s just as reliant on a large amount of stories and lore that build up the story world, it just didn’t relish in it.

I was hooked fast in this book, but yet it stagnated at around 20% in, where the events and revelations seemed to slow down, even as Emeline was exploring a literal magic forest with a diversity of mythical creatures around her. In the end, this is where the book began to lose me, and it never really got me back after it. I continued because I had to, because I had an ARC to review and friends to discuss it with, and even then I needed to borrow an audiobook to get me through the last 50%, because it was just impossible to make myself pick it up again.

In the end, there were so so many things that this story used that I’d seen in other books and loved before, but any enjoyment I got out of these events and tropes came from the remembrances of those other books (namely The Starless Sea and Echo North), not from the actual book itself. In another timeline, I can see myself adoring this book, as it does everything I love from a book, but it just lost me too early on in the story, and the execution of certain events just put me off and kept me from being reabsorbed into the story.

While my love of The Last Namsara will definitely have me coming back for more from this author still, I will be a bit warier going in, due to the letdown that this book unfortunately was

This was so good! I am loving all the standalone YA Fantasy reads because I get closure and don't have to wait so long for the next one.

I thought this concept was really interesting although the setting did get a bit confusing for me at times. It was hard to differentiate between the traditional YA Fantasy feel when she was in the woods and the contemporary setting outside of them. I liked the music as magic and thought that was a really unique part of the story.

The romance was such a slow burn but worth the wait. The last few hours of the audio were a rollercoaster of secrets revealed and I couldn't stop listening at that point. I definitely recommend the audiobook if you enjoy that format. It was well developed and the narrator did a great job!

Overall I really enjoyed this book and definitely need to check out more of Kristen Ciccarelli's books!

So this book was unexpected.
This is a story about forgetting and remembering more than anything else.
At the beginning of the book I struggled to get into the story but once i did, i couldn't put it down.
First and foremost, lets talk about my favorite character in the whole book: Hawthorne. I really really loved him as a character and a love interest. I could feel his yearning for Emeline since the beginning of the story.
I wasn't that big of a fan of Emeline until midway through, she was very impulsive and constantly ignored sound advice, but i learned to like her.

And THAT ending, it was a bit bittersweet but i though it was great and that it went amazing with the theme of the book.

Overall, i would recommend this book if you're looking for a standalone fantasy reminiscent of The Hazel Wood and Holly Black's faerie books.

This story is utter perfection IMO. It has such a creepy yet lovely atmospheric vibe to it and is just beautifully written.

This will make you explore the lines between forgetting and remembering. Even when things are forgotten, do those moments live on in our subconscious, just waiting for the right sound, word or gesture to bring it all flooding back?

Emeline was raised by her grandfather, who is now living with forgetfulness (maybe Alzheimer’s) and doesn’t remember Emeline. She is off chasing her dream of becoming a famous singer when she gets the call that her grandfather is missing. She returns home to her tiny town of Edgewood and all of its superstitions and lore that she has rejected. But maybe her grandfather isn’t the only one living with forgetfulness. What awaits Emeline on her search for her grandfather in the Wood King’s Fae court? Read it to find out…

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the e-arc of this amazing gem.

An amazing, whimsical, and wonderful story. The characters were lovable and very enjoyable. I really enjoyed it.

Highly recommend! Beautiful story about love, sacrifice, memory, and magic. The main character was relatable, and her dilemmas encountered while trying to pursue her dream yet care for her grandfather felt genuine and heartbreaking.
The story twisted A LOT more than I thought it would, though the hints were definitely present in the text. It was all very well done, and led to a satisfying ending.

I didn't really like this one, mainly because it felt piecemeal and sloppy.

There were just so many gaps and contradictions in the worldbuilding, none of the side characters felt fleshed out at all and I therefore cared about almost none of them (apart from Emeline's grandfather), I was 0% invested in the romance, the plot was executed poorly and riddled with holes and leaps of logic no one questioned because it would have meant the author couldn't take the plot where she needed it to go, and honestly I didn't much like Emeline even though she's the only one who had any sort of depth.

Re: the very end, I was incredibly dissatisfied because I really hate the "significant character loses memories of everything that happened during the plot" twist because it undoes all the development that character and their relationships have gone through over the course of the book that we experienced and were supposed to be invested in. I kind of understand what the author was going for with this because memories and the importance (or lack thereof) of remembering is significant with several characters throughout, but I'm still not happy about the ending (even though i literally don't care about hawthorn or his and Emeline's romance).

I did see and appreciate the way the author touched on (bodily) autonomy and choice, which is a big thing in the Namsara series as well and I'm guessing is one of the things the author tends to come back to in her writing, which is always neat to spot. I also could have liked the trees talking to Emeline because I love magic forests and weird magic connections between main characters and nature (or anything, for that matter), but the reasoning behind this magic/connection was so sketchy and so convenient that I was also dissatisfied with it even though (or perhaps because) this is a trope I usually enjoy.

Overall, I was disappointed. I had hopeful expectations coming in because the Namsara series is so well-written, but even had I not had those expectations, the book would have been a disappointment due to its overall poor execution.

Not what I expected but I liked that. I think it'll be a good book for the tiktok customer and the YA customer at my store in general.

A delicious story! Loved it!

Description
"Edgewood has everything I love in a Kristen Ciccarelli book: lyrical prose, a romance that will hurt, and themes rooted in raw and intimate questions, making for a timeless tale." - Joan He, New York Times bestselling author of The Ones We're Meant to Find

Can love survive the dark?

No matter how far she runs, the forest of Edgewood always comes for Emeline Lark. The scent of damp earth curls into her nose when she sings and moss creeps across the stage. It’s as if the woods of her childhood, shrouded in folklore and tall tales, are trying to reclaim her. But Emeline has no patience for silly superstitions.

When her grandfather disappears, leaving only a mysterious orb in his wake, the stories Emeline has always scoffed at suddenly seem less foolish. She enters the forest she has spent years trying to escape, only to have Hawthorne Fell, a handsome and brooding tithe collector, try to dissuade her from searching.

Edgewood is a fantasy book with romance and magic and has a beautiful cover! 😍😍. I gave this book 3 stars. I wasn't as impressed with the book as much as I thought I would. I liked the idea of the book.

I was a little underwhelmed at first - but ultimately this book was really good. and honestly, everything I wish The Folk of the Air series could have been. I throughly enjoyed myself and would 100% read another book set in this world - I'm kind of bummed that it's a standalone.
10/10 would recommend reading Edgewood - you won't be bored.

I confess that I started Edgewood, got about 3 chapters in and wasn't feeling it and set it aside. After reading about 6 other books I picked it back up and started in again. And this time, I was enchanted. My initial 3 chapter impression of singer Emeline Lark was that she was a LOT like Jilly Coppercorn from Charles DeLint's Newford books, and she really is.

What finally drew me in was Ms. Ciccarellii's wealth of detail and the descriptions of the fantastic denizens of Edgewood. The ember mares, shiftlings, shadow skins, a stone dragon and the wood itself were what captured my attention and kept me reading. Emeline for me was just an introduction to the Edgewood. I was more drawn to the wood itself and the world in its sheltered depths..

The story blossoms into a poignant study of desires. A frankly enchanting story of love, loss, friendship and the price one pays for the things that are most precious to each individual. The tithe to the King of the Wood. To receive a great boon, one must make an equally great sacrifice.

I look forward to re-reading Edgewood and delving deeper into the twists and turns of the story.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.