Her Dark Enchantments tells the story of Myravelle Sinner, the healer of the King’s Sleepy Woods Company, who uses her dark magic to wake soldiers infected with a cursed sleep by draining the life forces of her canvases (men chosen to bond their will with her power). Myravelle’s newest canvas, Byzarien Dumont, a man physically and emotionally scarred by his own past, performs his duties reluctantly, though over time, he, like all the canvases before him, falls under Myravelle’s seductive spell.

Myravelle is a complex character who is hated and feared for her power. She grew up in an isolated tower in Eglantyne Castle, watching her enslaved mother spin gold for the King. Now, Myravelle’s magic has become something to be coveted and controlled, and as she discovers her lineage and comes to terms with her own difficult past, she wears her grief “like heavy chainmail.” Her power and pain earn her the labels “Spider”, “Witch”, “Wicked Fairy”, and “Mistress of All Evil”, but though she ultimately seeks dark revenge, her story elicits sympathy as readers discover she is far more than the labels that are applied to her.

This book is a delightful romance which tells the origin story of Sleeping Beauty’s villain. I enjoyed the detailed presentation of the beautiful but dangerous fairy world which features creatures like water fairies, flame fairies, and plant fairies working in delicate balance with nature. I also loved the consistent return to the act of spinning and the mantra of “draft, pinch, spin, park, and repeat.” Fans of fairy tales will find much to love as they are introduced to a classic villain and forced to consider her actions in the context of her own painful experiences. If you enjoy “Sleeping Beauty” and “Rumpelstiltskin”, give Her Dark Enchantments a try!

Thank you to Netgalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

Dark, mysterious, magical, and intriguing! New genre and author for me but was pleasantly surprised! Would recommend for readers who are in need of something new and unlike other romances on the market!

it was an amazing book , that would be an understattement , wow just wow thats what this book get out of me,.
I mean the twists and turns , the ending everthing is just fascinating about it

This was totally different and I so loved it!!
I just reviewed Her Dark Enchantments by Rosalyn Briar. #HerDarkEnchantments #NetGalley
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2.5 stars

Ive always been fascinated by Maleficent; I feel that I watched Sleeping Beauty mostly for her appearances, both terrifying and intriguing.

Anyway, this is an interesting retelling of the Mistress of All Evil. The pacing is a bit odd and some of the characterizations fall flat but overall a good book.

Awwww Little Nightmare.

This was quite the easy read, and when I say that, it's never negative.
I sat down for a few hours and flew through the book, and it entertained me.
I liked the main characters and would happily read any more books by this author.
Enjoyable. Rich characterisations, realistic emotions, and a lovely story make for a can't-put-it-down book!

<i> "What was a heart for, if not to be stitched to another?" </i>

It was a good retelling of Sleeping Beauty slash Rumpelstiltskin, and I enjoyed it a lot! The first half was darker, the part when they were at the camp the Myravelle was forced to use her power under the King's thumb. Love Byz! The second half, for me, is way much lighter since they arrived at the fairy kingdom. Personally, I would love if the book kept the dark vibes from the first half because it gave me chills and (personal preference) was better than the second one. But I love all the pretty dresses in the 2nd half so there is that.

Overall, it was an interesting take of fairytale retelling! Perfect for retelling fan's casual read :)

If you love fairytale retellings I highly highly recommend this book! It gives such a beautiful spin on the sleeping beauty fairytale, which happens to be my fav fairytales. I absolutely devoured this book. I could not put it down! So many great tropes as well. Enemies to lovers and revenge mixed with magic and the humans against the fairies. All tied up into a beautiful dark bow.

This book truly shows you how wicked someone can become from a broken heart. Myravelle is a fairy that has been used and abuse by the human king whom captured her mother before she was born. All she wants is freedom for both her and her mother. She longs for someone that will truly love her for her. Through her magic she finds Byzarian, but he despises her as she is a fairy and the reasoning for his best friends death.

dnf at 57%

i really tried to give this book a fair shot. i wanted to dnf long before i did, but i pushed through to see if things were going to improve. sadly, they did not.

despite it's misgivings, the novel started out pretty strong. the first few chapters were engaging and well written but at some point shortly after, the dialogue and characterization goes completely off the rails. the characters became super shallow and all of the dialogue suddenly was cringe inducing. i'm not sure what happened, but there was a marked shift between the type of writing in the first several chapters and the writing that the rest of the book contained.

i'm sure a different type of reader would love this because of how interesting the premise is. unfortunately, because of the way the novel was written i was unable to fully appreciate the good aspects of this book.

I really wanted to love this book but it just fell a bit short. The concept and premise were great and exactly what I normally look for in a read but for some reason I just couldn't get into it. I found it hard to connect with the characters and I just wish there had been a bit more for me to grab on to.

Review posted on my goodreads and the book was shared on my Instagram stories.

Review:

Sophisticated dark gothic fantasy set in a beautiful, magical world!

This book is a supermix of some of my favourite Disney tales - Aurora/Maleficent/Sleeping Beauty - retellings are my absolute favourite to read so this book is right up my alley!

The fantasy world-building is great; the never-ending feud between fae and humanity, misunderstood heroine longing to be loved and free, and the action-packed scenes make this book one of my favourite fantasy reads in 2023 so far!

Now, the thing that bugged me the most and is the reason I couldn't give this book 5 stars its because its told in 3rd POV. They are some of my least favourite type of books to read and I think that if it was a dual POV I was going to be absolutely obsessed!

Special thanks to the Author and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange of my honest review.

I wasn't a fan of this book sadly. I dnf it. What I didn't vibe with as much was how this book started. we are thrusted into this world with no information with characters we know little about. some people like this but I'm not one of those people. I really hated how the characters actions and speech were written. Things were repeated alot and the plot didn't move smoothly. It had an interesting idea behind it but wasn't thought out.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

"What was a heart for, if not to be stitched to another?"

I always love a dark fairytale retelling. This one is sort of a mix between Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin, but as a villain origin story. Our FMC, Myravelle, is forced into being a healer for the king's soldiers. She uses her magic to bind herself to a man (a "canvas") so she can drain their life with her dagger in order to wake soldiers from their sleeping curse. The draining is actually pleasurable for the canvas, though painful for Myravelle. This magic has killed at least 20 men, and the story starts when Myravelle is forced to choose a new canvas to condemn.

One aspect I appreciated right from the beginning was the author's ability to artfully detail a scene. The opening scene sucks you in with its vivid imagery and the characters' emotional turmoil. My chest constricted so many times for our main characters early on in the novel. I empathized with Byzarian's anger at being fated to be slowly drained of life like his late best friend and the several men who were canvasses before him, and his reluctance to fall for a woman who has made so many men fall in love with her before only to lead them to their deaths. I also empathized with Myravell's genuine care for each of the men she's forced to slowly kill, and her deepest wish for a friend and to do what she can for those who will never appreciate her efforts.

There are two aspects that caused me to knock off a star in my rating. One is the way that the MMC went from hate to love really quickly. That felt rushed. The second aspect is that, stylistically speaking, the writing itself lends the story an odd pace. Intensity and anticipation aren't built up the way one might expect. A good majority of the first half of the novel is about the same routine. There's a lot of page space given to this routine. Then, when the stakes are raised, there is little page space dedicated to it. A whole high-stakes moment might be captured in a single paragraph, prompting me to reread it so I could mentally stretch the moment and give it an appropriate amount of consideration.

With that said, I loved the main characters' relationship dynamic and all the drama and tension it encourages. I loved watching Myravelle slowly enter her villain era. She never wanted to be a monster or to do monstrous things, but it was the only way to survive.

I'd recommend this book to people who loves dark fairytale retellings. Be aware that there are some gory (bloody) sex scenes and a general feeling of hopelessness throughout the novel. Overall, this is a very beautiful and creative story and I'm very glad I read it.

Oh… it was love at first sight with the cover and then the story blew me of my feet
I am sucker for a good villain origin story. I am also a sucker for a good villain story.. so well.. that says enough and also a lot about me.

Malificent is one of the most famous Disney villains and of course Disney gave us her origin story. But… well that left a lot to be desired, don’t you think? Well, if you agree with me then her dark enchantments is the book for you!
In this book we meet Myravelle Spinner, a young woman who has been in the thralls of the king since the moment she was born. Her mother, a fairy who spins wool into gold is kept hidden in a tower in the castle to make the king his own fortune. But when the king learns that her daughter is a healer who can wake soldiers cursed by the poison inside the trees in the woods he has everything he wants within his grasp. However Myravelle soon is feared by the soldiers, because her healing powers come from pain. So she needs a human canvas to gather enough magic. Lonely as a prisoner of the king and seen as a witch by the soldiers, Myravelle adds sweet pea to her enchantment to find a new canvas. Sweet pea to find a soulmate and stop her loneliness.
This book reads like a fairytale and that might sound obvious considering it is based on a fairytale. But in all of my years of reading retellings and origin stories I must admit that not a lot of books can capture that true nature of fairytales. But her dark enchantments did just that. And we all know how this story ends, we know who Myravelle will become… well that didn’t change the amount of connection I made with her. I was wishing this story to end differently. To have that happily ever after that Myravelle deserved! Even when she finally became Malificent I could nog love her any less.

I can’t recommend this book enough! Thank you so much netgalley and the author to share this beautiful story with me.

Thank you Net Galley for letting me read a copy of this awesome book!
I enjoyed the elements of the magic and hints of my most beloved story Sleeping Beauty, with many differences of course, but I still felt it :) I just kept reading and reading until I was done and now I just need more! I have am for sure going to recommend this to friends and family because I loved it so much!

I received a free arc via Netgalley. This is my honest impartial review. (2* Stars)

2* Stars - Enjoyable fairytale retelling, but room for improvement.

A retelling of the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty. Think Maleficent's backstory meets elements of Rumpelstiltskin.

What did this book do well? Well, this definitely was an easy read. I read this book in 2 evenings and I didn’t have to work hard to get into this book. The concept of this book was really interesting, I could see how the author was pulling together the strands of the original “wicked fairy” narrative from sleeping beauty and making it her own.

This book had the potential to be really great. Some of the narrative was really beautiful and a few lines really stuck out to me. “Had the stars truly fallen for her?”

What fell flat for me was the pacing. It was a mix of stretches of narrative where nothing really happened to multiple events happening in a few pages. The plot also closely followed the main characters - I think exploring scenes without the main characters or even snippets of other locations - just to add some more background to the narrative would have helped just bolster the overall plot.

I personally didn’t connect with the enemies to lovers aspect of the book. Again it had the building blocks to be something great, but the change to “lovers from enemies” just didn’t connect with me and felt superficial.

Despite flashes of great narrative, some of the description wasn’t there. I found myself filling the blanks in a lot of things and I felt there was a lot of telling me how the characters felt. Where I just wanted the characters to be developed enough to just show me instead .

Overall, it’s an easy read. If you like a fairytale retelling you will like this book. I wanted it to be just a bit more developed and perhaps take time to focus on some elements of the plot longer, but it was still an enjoyable quick read.

The concept of this book really sold me. As it’s a retelling of the Wicked fairy (Maleficent) from sleeping beauty. Which makes it different from the other retelling on the market.

In my opinion that is the greatest strength of this book, the concept and the ideas behind it as I found the actually dialogue very repetitive in parts especially when it came to the main love interest and the relationship that is within this book.

Myravelle isn’t a badly written character but I felt that her character progression was being told to us instead of being shown. As she suffers a lot from needing the help of main male lead even when we are told she is fierce, she is strong.

The second half of the book was more engaging than the first as you discover why Myravelle and her mother never got help from their fellow fairies whilst enslaved to the King. More of the backstory is also revealed about Myravelle’s mother and who her father is.

Again I think some of this information should have been revealed sooner, as towards the end of the book it felt a bit info dumpy, which could of helped with the pacing during the first half if we had some clues as to her mothers past etc.

A dark Sleeping Beauty's retelling. But we see how the Mistress of All Evil was created.

It's the first time I read Rosalyn Briar. And it won't be the last as it seems.

Myravelle is such a gentle soul who has suffered all of her life. Byzarien is a soldier, who has lost many things, like Myravelle. Will they overcome their differences and see how painfully same they are; that the scars on their souls are the same?

It is a story full of emotions and plot twists. The world building is truly great and complete, nothing is amiss. The characters are well written, not just the main characters but all. You can see true human nature, you can see yourself in them. You can understand them.

What does it take to turn a gentle soul into a monster?

Her Dark Enchantments is the story we didn't know we needed. I'm all in for the villains' POV.

The writing is great and the vocabulary Rosalyn is using is a little bit more formal with difficult words, but after a few pages you get used to it. It makes a big difference! Because words matter.

I loved Little Nightmare and I hope there will be a second book when we can see him being fed fairy cakes.

I want to thank NetGalley, Rosalyn Briar and the Quill and Crow publishing house for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC. This is my HONEST review! I simply loved it!

Her Dark Enchantments by Rosalyn Briar is an entrancing villain origin story that had me glued to the page and forsaking sleep to stay with these characters until the end.
What I loved
1. Amazing almost poetic writing style
2. the almost painful knowledge that no happy end was possible
3. The all encompassing atmospheric vibes
4.Dialogue and pacing were handled exceptional well

My only compliant is that I must now wait for physical copies to be available for purchase. Her Dark Enchantments is a perfect read for fans of fairy tale retelling and villain origin stories particularly if you like the story of sleeping beauty.

Wow! There is a lot to say about this title. The first was that I literally could not put it down. I stayed up till 3:30 am reading it and then read it in my downtime at work. I love a good fairy tale retelling and the fact that this one focuses on Sleeping Beauty and seems to have a dash of Rumpilstilskin in it as well? Perfect.

This story had me forgetting that we were reading a villain origin despite the description for it. Myravelle had me rooting for her the entire time and I can honestly say that this book made me cry. The enemies to lovers aspect of the characters is compelling, making you want for them to be happy together and hoping that the story doesn't go the way that you think it will. There are quite a few world building aspects that I really like and I love how very few people here have clean hands when it comes to doing good or doing evil. So many people are looking out for yourself that just when you think you can trust someone, it gets yanked away from you. Beautiful writing. I highly recommend it and I honestly fell in love with the cover.

When this is released I will likely have a physical copy for the cover and to try and ply my friends to read it so I can make them cry like it made me cry. Keep some tissues handy. Keep an open mind, and look at this lovely retelling that makes you wonder what exactly makes a villain and what would misfortune drive us to do? Our male lead was my favorite character and I honestly wanted so much more of this story.

This gets four stars for me because of how well it was written, that it genuinely made me forget what kind of story I was likely going along for, and because it had one of my absolute favorite tropes in it. Beautiful story.