Edgewood by Kristen Ciccarelli is a thoughtful, lyrical and enchanting read that will have fairytale lovers swooning with delight.

This read is for you if you’re looking for:

💜 Contemporary fairy tale-esque fantasy

Ciccarelli creates a magical land right in the back yard of a contemporary small town filled with people who actively observe and talk about the strange occurrences that go on in their hometown.

I do really enjoy that the world outside of the story’s magical setting seemed contemporary. Most popular fantasy romances have a historical element to it or are more high/epic fantasy with more extensive world building. Though some might not like it, I appreciate the generality of some story details. Ciccarelli gives just enough detail to lull you in and let your imagination have fun with the rest. It literally felt like a nostalgic fairytale.

I enjoyed the way Edgewood built its world through urban legends and town superstitions. The backstory felt like fun bedtime stories, and were actually some of my favorite parts to read.

I think another one of my favorite elements of the story was The Vile, the witch who cursed the Wood King and his kingdom. Out of all the twist, turns and character development, I felt like this was the heart of the story, the most compelling, powerful and well executed part of the story.

💜Sweet, angsty romance

At first I thought the romance was enemies to lovers, but it’s much more nuanced. While the attraction between Hawthorne and Emeline is immediately obvious, they take turns fighting their feelings for one another and the progression of their relationship.

The chemistry and the tension between the two is high and I think Ciccarelli includes the right level of heat and complexity of an upper YA, coming-of-age story.

The romance has a huge twist at the end that is both absurd and perfect for the fairytale feel of the story. I definitely didn’t see it coming, though looking back there were some minor breadcrumbs hinting at the twist in the romance.

I’d say it’s an optimistic love story bordering on HEA.


💜A satisfying stand-alone

Edgewood is plot rich with a fun, compelling premise and thoughtful execution. Ciccarelli takes common tropes of the genre and adds a unique twist and complex layers. So while some of the elements are predictable, the attention to detail and the subtle shifts in classical fairytale narrative enrich the story.

The story was neatly wrapped up with a simple solution for such an intricately weaved conflict, but taking the story for what it was ( with it’s themes of memory, power, consent, and love of music) the ending is a bit bittersweet but mostly satisfying.

Do Note:

📌There may be some triggering content which includes: parent abandonment, mention of abuse, coercion, and imprisonment, and loved ones dealing with memory loss

📌While the world Ciccarelli weaves is fantastically stunning, its heroine and some of the supporting characters are a little lackluster. It’s not that Emeline doesn’t have personality. It’s just a very familiar one that doesn’t make me love or hate her character. She’s just the typical beauty—gifted, well liked who is also a little selfish and headstrong.

📌 I should probably note I read this as an audiobook. The narrator, Caitlin Kelly did an amazing job bringing all of the characters to life. I highly recommend reading this as an audiobook. The story’s pace was a little slow and redundant at points, but the narration made it fun and entertaining throughout.

I think traditional fairytale lovers will appreciate all the familiar and lovable traits of the genre:
- High stakes
- Fantastical creatures (dragon alert!)
- Flora and fauna with personality
- A mad king and a cursed kingdom
- An impossible quest
- Lyrical, enchanting prose
- And a sweet, slow burn romance


Thank you NetGalley and MacMillan Audio who provided a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and ideas expressed are my own.

If you like books like The Cruel Prince and A Court of Thorns and Roses, this is a good candidate for your next read! It was overall an entertaining read with a quick-paced plot and an interesting cast. I felt like the magic system was a little bit underdeveloped and I wish it was expanded on further, but it still added that element of fantasy I look for when reading.
I was disappointed by the ending unfortunately. I felt like maybe Ciccarelli wrote herself into a corner with the romance and didn't know how to resolve it so she went with... that underwhelming conclusion.
The cover is absolutely gorgeous though!

The narrator did an impeccable job at making me feel transported into the world. Kristen Ciccarelli has written such a captivating and enchanting world that pulls you in the same way Emeline Lark is drawn to the woods and the woods drawn to her. Edgewood starts with the slow creep of a magical world wanting to come alive with every musical note until it is the center point and Emeline has dived into the forest and its world. Not everything is as it seems. She is swept up on an adventure to save her grandfather but she will discover more about herself along the way. A swoon worthy story with a lyrical feel throughout. This is not a book to be missed in 2022. A must read

Okay so I feel like I gave this book a much fairer chance than I thought it deserved. From the start I could not stand Emeline. Also, I felt this book had such a weird concept that would have better fit in middle grade rather than NA where it's clearly supposed to sit. Also, I totally understand that's it's enemies to lovers, but Hawthorne is the literal worst. He's constantly a jerk to Emeline. So no likable characters. Check.

Then what actually had me hate this book was that Hawthorne sketched a sixteen year old child nude. What the actual hell?!?! As if that's not bad enough, the big reveal comes right after that so the fact that Hawthorne has mega pedo vibes is completely overlooked! This book is categorized as YA. I cannot in good conscience recommend a book to teenagers where a girl's bf sketches her naked and underage, and the book just basically ignores it.

So thank you to NetGalley and Macmillian audio for this ALC and although Caitlin Kelly was a fine narrator, this book is a no from me.

I should have known I was in trouble when I didn't realize this was contemporary fantasy and went "Electricity? In the first chapter? The audacity."

Huge thank you to Raincoast Books for the early copy!

Emmeline is this close to making her dream of having a career as a successful singer a reality. A dream she has chased since she left Edgewood behind two years ago with its strange fae legends she refuses to believe. All she has to do is play well as the opening act on her first international tour, and she'll have that fancy record deal. But the news of her grandfather going missing has her racing home ... and into the forest when she's told he's been tithed to Wood King. The fae are real, every story true, and to rescue her grandfather, she must pledge herself to the King to be his new Song Mage. If she can survive singing each song, that is.

This wasn't what I expected, and I don't quite know why. My advance copy's summary describes a nursing home, which really should have tipped me off that this was not a high fantasy like I thought. I don't usually read contemporary fantasy but I'm a sucker for a good forest book, and that cover was too pretty to resist. I've read some really good ones in this genre, and this did not fall in the same category. Honestly, reading about jeans and being reminded regularly that Emmeline wears Blundstones kind of sucked the magic out of it for me.

I did quite like Emmeline. She was forced to grow up too fast as a teenager because of things wholly out of her control. She cares so deeply about her family and her career dreams, and I can relate to her on the same level. Her grandfather is all she has left to her family, even if he is losing his memory, and singing is all she feels good at. Without both, she's nothing, so it made her journey through Edgewood so intriguing. I loved her trying to run away from the forest, only for it to come to her every time she sings. It's exactly the kind of magic I hoped for, but I felt it wasn't utilized to its full potential throughout.

This book's pacing was its downfall. For a standalone, it is quite slow. Not to mention it takes a long time to get itself together. In hindsight, the subplots are crafted so slowly and so far apart that by the time they weave together to take us to the end, it no longer felt like it mattered. So much of it seemed unimportant at the time while other pieces sort of felt like I was taking Emmeline's word for it because I didn't see the evidence. It made the so-called villain at the heart of this story lacklustre and, honestly, hard to pin down. The biggest indicator of the pacing for me was it took a full week to finish reading. Normally I can read 100 pages over a day, and I was lucky if I read 50 because there wasn't much capturing my attention.

I'm very on the fence with the romance in this. On the one hand, I totally ship it. The love interest is precisely one of my favourite types, all secretive and brooding but with a wonderfully warm and soft heart and the best ulterior motives. And I love that Emmeline is so sex positive, with there being a few, very minimal detail - aka YA appropriate - sex scenes. On the other hand, the smaller details of her romance kind of wigged me out. There were some choices the author made that I didn't jive with, so I wasn't fully on board with it in the end.

This book was very much just a "meh" with a shrug type for me. Rounding my rating up to three.

Based off the description, I really wanted to love this book, but it just wasn’t it for me. I thought the writing was good, but I just didn’t connect with the characters.