this book was SO magical, but i’m conflicted on whether that was a good thing or bad thing in this case. we’re drawn into this fairytale-esque world with a heavy romance plot but was it deeply romantic…? hard to say. while it was atmospheric and detailed to the max, i struggled a bit with the characterization of some of these people

cute premise but it didn't hold my attention enough to be finished. I felt like the pacing was off - both too fast and too slow at parts and the plot as a whole was lacking. on top of all of that - the romance wasn't getting a hold on me.

I really wanted to like this one, I typically love Alexis Hall books, but this was a miss for me. The sprite narrator was a cute idea in theory, but in reality it just took me right out of the story to the point where I couldn’t get invested in the plot or the love story.

what a magical ride this book took me on!! if you know me, you know i adore alexis hall, so i was PUMPED to hear he was dipping into fantasy romance, and paired with the regency era AND shakespearean inspiration, i was like “say LESS”

a meet-CURSE rather than a meet-cute was an excellent way to subvert expectations and give our lovers immediate tension. the characters all had alexis hall’s signature humor and british-isms, which i adore. it also has a lot of really cool worldbuilding, weaving different types of folklore together into a vast tapestry.

my favorite part, of course, was our chaotic neutral narrator, puck, who has been plucked straight off the stage of my favorite shakespeare play. the delight this perspective of storytelling brought to me? unmatched.

my main qualm here lied with the romance falling a bit flat for me, but overall it was still a huge hit!

4.5 stars

This was an interesting read! The writing is extremely well done and captivating, but I fear I didn’t love the narrator.

The romance is great, the setting is rich, but the narrator felt distracting and the POV was not my favorite. Overall, this is still a really great book, and I hope to one day write as well as Alexis.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

The cover for this is beautiful. The colors and imagery are so magical and captivating. Im a sucker for historical romances so I was super on board for this one.

Unfortunately, this book doesn’t seem to be for me. This was my first Alexis Hall book & I’m going to have to try other works by them in order to get a better feel for their writing. The storyline was slow & boring at times and I felt out of place with the narrator who wasn’t actually involved with any of the story. I also had a hard time keeping up with the plot as it was progressing. The characters felt somewhat flat and I didn’t want anything to do with them and felt as if the story went on for too long. Like I said, I’m excited to read more from Alexis. This one just wasn’t my thing!

I love sapphic romance. I love the regency period. I love all things supernatural. But I just could not stay invested in this book. The utilization of a magical sprite as a narrator was novel and fun at the beginning; but by 60% in, it started to feel tired and created so much distance between me and the two main characters that I longed for a first person POV. The first half of the book with the mystery of the curse was engaging and exciting; however, once the mystery was resolved it felt like the book morphed into something different and I was less engaged with the outcome. I think Alexis Hall is an incredible author and so many reader will connect with and adore this book, but it just wasn’t the content for me! I appreciate the opportunity to read the e-ARC and will absolutely still recommend this read to my audience.

Mortal Follies was a mix of magic, bridgerton vibes, and unrequited love. Through a rollercoaster of obstacles, Maelys Mitchelmore has to remove a curse from herself with the help of the towns outcast & witch the Duke of Annadale. Alexis Hall provided such a funny journey following along these characters as they solve the mystery of who laid this curse and how to remove it. A very quick fun and read!

I don’t normally read anything involving magic and curses but this is written by Alexis Hall and if he ever decided to write a phone book, I’d probably read it. Having said that, I don’t think this is his best work. I realise that some of the things that didn’t really work for me are due to the fact that I’m not particularly keen on reading about witches and goddesses and spells, and those kind of things feature heavily of course. But I also think there are two other major flaws that stopped me from enjoying the books as much as I could have.

First, there’s the narrator. While I thought that Robin was a fun and entertaining narrator, I getting the main characters’ POVs prevented me from getting invested in the main characters. I felt very much at a distance from them, and to be honest, I’m not sure what I thought of them.

My second issue is that the main plot point seemed to be resolved halfway through the book. Of course, the romance needed some more time, and we did have magical complications, but to me those felt tacked on rather than an integral part of the plot.

Despite these considerable flaws, I don’t think it’s a bad book. It’s an Alexis Hall book, after all ;)

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall
Mortal Follies is definitely the most unique Alexis Hall book that I have read so far. In 1814 the young Miss Mitchelmore caught the eye of our narrator, Oberon's jestor/Puck/Robin Goodfellow (whatever you remember from HS English) at a ball. Puck, being a storyteller, decides to follow her around to see if an interesting story will unfold. Unfortunately for Miss Mitchemore, the story becomes very interesting. Miss Mitchelmore and her friends must deal with first one curse and then another. All while Miss Mitchelmore attempts to convince the Duke of Annadale to take a chance on a committed relationship with her. 
All in all, I enjoyed this book. Puck as a narrator was a fun choice and the level of snarkiness directed at humankind was appreciated. Unfortunately, the choice to make Puck the narrator meant that the reader stood a bit further away from the main characters than one anticipates. I wasn't as invested in the romance as I typically am in an Alexis Hall book, however, I want to read more about Puck's story, which was sprinkled throughout.This was a fun, unique read that will definitely help anyone working on a June Pride bingo board.

3.5 Stars rounded up

I really like Alexis Hall's books and I did like this one too. But I definitely think there were a few things I didn't prefer. First, the narrator - Having a narrator tell the story means that you're understanding it secondhand. The narrator included so many details that at times, you lose the entire point of that scene/paragraph. Details are good but shouldn't be overdone. I wish we had got the pov of one of the main characters instead.
Georgiana and Maelys were both really nice and well written characters to read about and there are no major concerns. It's a love story with elements of fantasy such as Gods and curses and AH weaves these elements well in the regency era.

The details are so overdone though - They want to make sure the reader understands what's going on exactly but you don't need all the words for this. This made the book which was about 415 pages long much much longer and a bit tedious at parts. Overall, A fun sapphic romance.

As an lover of Alexis Hall I was very excited to read his new book and see this outing into the fantasy genre. I will say this book still reads very romance and if that is a structure and genre you are not a fan of this might not be for you. I will say however that it does spend a good deal of time on the mystery, the magic and the old gods. I think the most unique aspect of this book by far is the narration.

This book does a sort of fascinating take on their person limited with having a supernatural fae whose purpose is to tell and collect stories of interesting mortals be the window and commentator upon this love story. The narration really serves for the reader as a guide through this just off to the left fantasy world of regency England with old gods, Nyad's, and witches. The fantasy elements were fun and engaging and worked in to the setting familiar to historical romance readers well. I found this pretty fun overall and enjoyed myself but I could see that if you are looking for a more conventional romance or find the opinions of this judgy hobgoblin unpleasant that they are sort of the main thing and hard to ignore.

Personally, I quite enjoyed them at times and liked the book. I will say that this one will not be on my list of top Alexis Hall's any time soon as the outsider perspective really cut down on some of my favorite elements of Halls books, the spice and deep inner emotional lives of the characters that are much harder to capture when you are so far removed from the characters themselves.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Alexis Hall does not write anything worth less than three stars. That said, this may be the one that defined that lower threshold for me. There is all the witty hilarity of genre subverting banter and a large cast of queer and personable characters. But right in the heels of Something Spectacular, which has become the gold standard of queer Regency romance for me, this one flailed and floundered, and I along with it. The choice of Puck as a narrator got really irritatingly distracting, really fast. The dynamics of the main pair, Maelys and Georgiana, was downright...toxic, which was not improved by the fact that the book is distinctly divided into the fantasy mystery part and the romance part, where all sorts of toxic patriarchal patterns seemed to have been imposed on a "sapphic" romance. I would be more upset about it if I didn't know that Alexis Hall can and has written excellent sapphic stories balanced well with larger plot and cast. This one ultimately just baffled me on its disjointed and manic lack of heart.

This book had so much promise, but I think something about it just wasn't for me. There's nothing outright wrong with it, and I think others will find it downright delightful, but it and I just did not get along.

In a world where humans exist side-by-side with fairies, spirits, deities, and other magical beings, Miss Maelys Mitchelmore has a problem. She's found herself the victim of an increasingly aggressive curse that starts by unraveling her dress mid-ball and progresses to attempting to kill her, for reasons entirely unknown to her. Desperate to free herself of the curse, she seeks out the help of the Duke of Annadale (so named because rumor has it she killed her brothers and father to become the last one standing in her family), Lady Georgianna Landrake. Together, they begin to search out the one who put the curse on Miss Mitchelmore and delve into the complicated world of deep feelings in a time of mortal peril.

The premise of Mortal Follies is a delightful one, from the initial setting that is so similar to the world we'd expect, but just a slight twist. Having Puck as a narrator is such a fun, whimsical choice that helps to explain this change in the world and gives such a unique perspective on all of the goings-on in the story.
The side characters are without a doubt the main highlight of this story, though. I would happily read a whole story about Miss Bickle and her weird little adventures.

On the other hand, something about the romance felt clunky to met. It all seemed very surface level and I never quite bought into the feelings between Miss Mitchelmore and Lady Georgianna like I wanted to. In fact, it seemed like a lot of the time when the story focused on them, I found myself more interested in whatever the side characters were up to instead.
The other issue (and I know this is a common struggle with Alexis Hall's story), is that the major plot explained in the summary was solved by about 50% of the way through the book? It felt like everything after that was filler or a second story of sorts, when the original plotline could have easily been drawn out and given more detail.

Overall, this was fine. It's a fun read that I think will appeal to a lot of people, but it just wasn't one for me, sadly.

This is a magical tale of curse breaking and finding love, all while set in the Regency era.

I did not love this. But that doesn't mean I think the book is bad. The story is great, the characters are interesting, and I adored the Sapphic love story. But, something about how the story was related made everything feel less real. I honestly got a bit bored with the narrator's, a fairy onlooker, constant thoughts about everything and everyone, and I feel like that took me out of the story.

I love this author. This is another incredible work. However, this one just wasn't for me.

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

This book does a great job at balancing the fantasy plot with the romance plot. It is primarily a romance book, but the fantasy elements are perfectly interwoven and don’t come off as an afterthought. The magic system makes sense, although there are a few things that my classics degree takes offense at. The characters are interesting and well-written. The relationships, both platonic and romantic, are well-developed and full of chemistry. The narration mechanic is really interesting. It seems a little hesitant at the beginning of the book, but by the end is a really interesting part of the story.

Genre: historical romance, whimsical fantasy
London, 1814

Miss Maelys Mitchelmore doesn’t quite think balls are her thing. She also doesn’t quite think men are her thing. Then she meets the stunning woman society calls the Duke of Annadale, Lady Georigiana Landrake. The Duke of Annadale carries a family curse, her father died and in short succession so did all her brothers, so people call her a witch. Good thing for Miss Mitchelmore that she’s befriended the Duke of Annadale just as she herself is cursed! A wild adventure to break the curses ensues, with the push and pull of a sapphic romance.

Well this one was weird. Like, not bad weird. Kinda fun. Very whimsical. And weird weird in a way that I think only Alexis Hall can deliver. When Hall goes with a tone, he COMMITS to it, which makes the journey of reading this book all the more fun.

Told from the perspective of Robin “Puck” Goodfellow, mischievous sprite of Midsummer Night’s Dream (who may still be holding a grudge against Shakespeare), Mortal Follies is a comedic farce packed with societal commentary. Hall pits proper society against the general queer normativity of his writing, and because Puck is providing commentary throughout, it works really well.

That said, as much fun as the style was to read, it draws the reader away from the potential emotional connection between Miss Mitchelmore and the Duke of Annadale. Our readalong group concurred that this easily could have been two novellas rather than a novel, with two distinct arcs and plots. Again, stylistically, this wasn’t bad, but it was a bit jarring, and again, takes out some of the emotional impact.

Pick this up if you want to read some delightful nonsense with curses and fairies and regency society!

Thank you to Random House/Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an eARC for review. Mortal Follies is out 6/6/23, and the perfect companion for your Pride Month reads!

3.5⭐️

Alexis Hall is an auto-buy author for me. A sapphic regency romance with mythology and magic? SIGN ME UP!

Mortal Follies is a GOOD book. A wonderful story filled with many laugh out loud moments! I might be in the minority here, but reading this story from the perspective of an unreliable narrator made it all the more enjoyable. Puck, our witty hobgoblin, really made the story come alive with all their idiosyncrasies.

I love Alexis Hall’s ability to write in different styles and genres. A Lady for a Duke is my favorite book by them. I was expecting Mortal Follies to surpass it, but sadly, it didn’t. This story started out really interesting. It definitely peaked too soon and I found myself wondering was else could possibly happen during the last half of the book. Up until the very last five percent, new information was being revealed to us and it felt like it was too late in the story for new plot devices to be thrown into the mix.

One thing I can say for certain is how much I LOVE Georgiana and Mae’s relationship. The pining was done so well and the payoff was well worth it. Mae and Lizzie’s friendship is so sweet and funny. Lizzie was a bit infuriating at times with her constant musing, but that is essentially the entire purpose of her character.

Thank you to Random House Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall is a complete romp. It has a Regency setting with the addition of a fairy narrator who gets involved. There are angry gods and curses. The heroine must seek the help of another Lady who is notorious and possibly a witch. And they find each other attractive. There is a lot to keep track of in this novel, but it is an entertaining read. Recommended for anyone who likes quirky fantasy.

This was, I think, my 10th Alexis Hall book, and he never disappoints. His writing style is always ALWAYS so incredibly fun and engaging, and it especially was here, with such a unique narrator. Just based on the writing alone, this would have been 5 stars, but this book, while really enjoyable, felt needlessly drawn out to me. At around the halfway point, most of the plotline felt wrapped up, but it took so much longer for the book to actually end.