this book was pretty good, it kept me entertained, but there was a lot of details, and I was confused a good chunk of the time. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book.

A retelling of the fairytale Sleeping Beauty from the side of the Wicked Witch and how she was created. My first touch with Rosalyn´s writing and certainly it will not be the last.
So much i want to write but i will try to keep it short and without spoilers(i hope). The story is around the main characters Myravelle, a fairy or the Witch as the humans call her, and Byzarien a human soldier who hates fairies, or so he believes until he met her. The POV´s are changing quite smoothly and you can follow easily the storyline. The world building and the side characters help you to get through their journey. The writing of their emotions of loss, love, despair, fear, betrayal, their reactions and thoughts, how one good person can be turned into the wicked villain, what a person is willing to do of greed and power, how can someone manipulate one´s desires, what a person is willing to do and sacrifice for their true love can be seen and felt throughtout the whole book. Although, i have to admit i didnt like Byzarien attitude after they fell in love, probably too good to be true as they say, but nonentheless he was brave to fight for his love and their future together. The plot twists are unexpected and had me screaming cause i didnt see that end was coming. I loved all the characters, especially Little Nightmare :D

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!

Okay… wtf did i just read?

I loved everything and i mean EVERYTHING!!!

definitely cant wait to read more of your book my lovely Rosalyn!
please never stop writing amazing books and stories!

While I loved the premise of this book, I had a difficult time really getting into the story. The pacing was uneven at times, rushing through events that I thought could use more pages while going into detail about some things I didn't see as important to the flow of the story. The ending is where I had the most trouble, as it felt like a different author took over to virtually write the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. I love retellings pf traditional fairy tales and thought this one had it's good sections, but it fell a bit flat for me

Her Dark Enchantments is a retelling of Maleficent and her origins, through the perspective of Myravelle. Myravelle's only motivation was to free her mother until she became entangled with Byzarien. Love and longing, spin between the two lovers, as they go through their journey together.

I loved how the book is perfectly paced, not too slow or too fast. Romance in this book was phenomenal and it was just so easy to support and love Byzarien and Myravelle's relationship. The bond they share was deeper than love but also laced with the understanding of how they have both been misunderstood and longed to be loved. I also loved the multiple twists in this book which shocked me enough to gasp.

Definitely, a must-read for fantasy romance readers, with a good plot, good characters, good romance and turmoil of emotions.

A retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of Myravelle, a young girl made to perform spells for the King in a war against the Fairies.
I feel that maybe this is more YA, which isn't a bad thing, I enjoy a lot of YA books, but this one really missed the mark for me and I felt a tad old to be reading it if i'm honest.
The story felt slow and while there were elements that I found interesting, and sometimes wished certain parts were embellished, I found the plot to be plodding. The fact that it ends without a real conclusion and you need to read the next book makes the effort to keep reading not worth it in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a chance to read and review this ARC.

I think my biggest problem with the book is the pacing. Certain buildups take SO INCREDIBLY LONG and then other scenes (usually something to do with the aftermath of the buildup and the oh what are we going to do we're trapped/have nowhere to go) are gone so fast.

Like you do all the buildup and it doesn't end up paying off, y'know?

Also, you can tell that more than anything this book tries to be Maleficient and I really don't think it actually tries to be like the original fairy tale so it's like a retelling, of a retelling.

The first part of the book while admittedly a bit weird (read: infodumps on worldbuilding) I did catch on eventually and I'd say I think the first eight-ish chapters I was enjoying and thoroughly thought were fun. At this point, I was convinced this would be a four-star read.

However, things soon took a turn for the worse because I started noticing a repetition in the scenes. For example, the main character would do something, faint, need rest, do something, faint, and the cycle repeated. In fact, things like that happened so many times I found myself rolling my eyes like okay? move on?

Around 1/3rd of the book Byzantine, who is a soldier and someone whose POV I was enjoying in the beginning pretty much lost all of his characterizations. His sole purpose became to serve as a figurehead for something you could say, mostly to just remain a symbol for our other protagonist, Myravelle.

First of all the names in this book, I let out a lot of chuckles at the number of 'x's and 'y's lol but anyway. Myravelle is again a character I found interesting in the beginning but while she retains some of her characterizations her subsequent corruption arc is moved so fast that on one page she will think something like "They were afraid of her. This was never what she wanted" and you literally flip the page and she says "They should be afraid of me" like what.

Another gripe I had was regarding the magic system because we started off with a very interesting dynamic that is, Myravelle has to PHYSICALLY cover up someone to get magic but this is very quickly abandoned and never mentioned again and by like idk 1/2 of the book apparently, she never needed anything to make magic at all.

This book also tries to grapple with prejudices and greed but it comes off as very hollow. Mostly because of as I mentioned, Byzantine's utter loss of dimensions. There were also way too many characters like, cut them out what's their use?

<spoiler> Also, that everything can be brought down to a god messing with Myravelle's fate is SO bad at least give the characters their autonomy. </spoiler>

It's not all bad tbh like I said first third? Great, and the worldbuilding? Immaculate I want to hear every myth and tale they have. HOWEVER, the entire thing is brought down by the pacing and the characters and I honestly can't give it more than 2.7 stars.

A dark twisted Sleeping Beauty+Rumplestikskin retelling? Yes, PLEASE! I jumped into the read without any expectations, and OH, it did surprise me in a good way.

All Myravelle Spinner wants is to free herself and her mother --as they were being held captive by the selfish king for his own gain.
As a healer, she worked to cure those soldiers from the "death-like sleep", she then met her new canvas--Byzarian, a soldier who loathe the existence of fairy due to a traumatic past event.

When they were forced to work together in order to save their family, they learned about the tragic past+truths hidden beneath the scars, and soon their hatred & misunderstanding blossoms into love.

My heart ached for Myravelle, her innocent+kind kind-hearted personality gradually being polluted by the never-ending greed of the King plus experiencing the unfairly, painful deaths of her loved ones. To untangle the false accusations of "The Evil Witch" or "The Mistress of Evils," she wandered down a dark path to seek her revenge.


Thank you, Netgalley, for providing an Ecopy of Her Dark Elements in exchange for an honest review!

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley (thank you!), and this is my honest review.

I usually love retellings, but this story was SLOW, I am still not entirely finished and am not even sure if I will in the near future. I say "entirely" because half way through reading it still did not feel like much as progressed so I skimmed the rest to get to the end, to only discover that this book leaves you at a open end (in my definition) and you HAVE to wait for the rest of the series to get a conclusion which I honestly am not fond of.

I had no qualms with the writing style, just lost focus in the story - no lore, no character development and I don't see where this is going or the point it's trying to convey.

This was actually a bit of a surprise and I loved it! This book is a combination of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, and Rumpelstiltskin however it is a development of how “The Wicked Fairy” came to be. This was a unique and interesting fairytale retelling that I really enjoyed. Definitely some plot twists I didn’t see happening and some I did. I really liked Myravelle and Byzarien’s characters, they were both missing a part of themselves and found it in eachother which was cute.
Thanks NetGalley and Rosalyn Briar for the eArc!

This book struck me by surprise with how much I liked it! I thought it was beautifully written. It’s LGBTQIA+ friendly which is always a plus and an enemies-to-lovers story which is my favorite romance trope. Although I felt the switch between enemies-to-lovers to being in love a bit rushed, it was still good nonetheless.
Filled with romance, heartbreak, travesty, and magic, this book filled my head with a dark fairytale that I didn’t want to end. At first when I started the book I thought the first chapter was rushed right into the storyline, but after finishing the book I understood why that was. The ending chapters brought the beginning into it and it made complete sense. You can sense Myravelle’s heartbreak through her evil-doings and it made me love the story even more. I would recommend this book to any fairy-tale and fantasy lover!

There's a good deal of irony in finding a Sleeping Beauty retelling soporific, as if the story were the spindle you prick your finger on and fall asleep. You'd think a retelling that tells the side of the wicked fairy that cursed Briar Rose would be interesting, more so if you mix it with a pinch of Rapunzel elements and a larger pinch of Rumpelstiltskin elements.

But it wasn't. For me, the story was so very dull and plotholey that it was hard to stay interested in it. Myravelle wasn't an interesting character, and although the soldier Byze is more interesting compared to her character, with such a name, it's challenging to take him seriously. The characters in general needed to be more layered, especially the Wicked Fairy that ends up being cartoonish, and the ending is so very predictable. I think this book tries to be "Maleficent" too hard, and suffers from trying to explain too much in too short a space, doing time jumps that leave some things unexplained.

So im only giving this book 3 stars, mostly because the ending to me could have been so much better with the way the story was going. In the authors note she said this book was based off of a poem she had written, and the whole time i was reading I was so in love with the story. But as soon as it hit the point of the king and queens baby being born, that is where it went down hill for me. I started to feel as though i was just reading the exact story of Sleeping Beauty. Not some type of retelling or something based on it but with lots changed. No to me at that point it was latterly just Sleeping Beauty to a T with some name changes, and very little details changed at all. The whole beginning and middle of the story was amazing to me and i even felt the heart break and pain of the FMC. If the author would go and change more of the ending and make it less like Sleeping Beauty and more of what the story felt like in the beginning and middle i feel like this book would have been so much more then what it is right now.

We all know the story of Snow White and the evil witch better known as Malificent well this is her story. The premise was good but unfortunately the writing style was poor and the characters were wooden. I am sure a younger audience will lap it up. Unfortunately it did nothing for me.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

A dark, adult focussed retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with elements of Rumplestilskin. Overall, the story ebbed and flowed, and I found myself trying to fill in the blanks of what was going on, where, and why, which took from the story somewhat. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy.

A wonderful story. Are people who are different monsters or do we make them. We are totally immersed in a world of fairies, war, greed and discovery of oneself and love.
I found this a joy to read and was incredibly well written. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys slightly darker fairy tales.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘰 @𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 @quillandcrowpublishinghouse 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯

As much as I wanted, I could not get into this book. I loved the concept of a Sleeping Beauty re-telling from the viewpoint of the Wicked Fairy. I liked how to story began by going back and forth between the Myravelle and Byzarien in the hopes of building on a slow burn, enemies to lovers romance. The growth of their relationship felt rushed. Once they got together, I wasn’t interested anymore. Byzarien’s lovesick behavior made him seem more weak in my eyes. There dialogue began to feel cringey and I just wasn’t rooting for them anymore. I made it through most of the book because I feel like the story has a lot of potential. Ultimately, I had to stop when I realized I just wasn’t enthralled with the story or its characters.

An unfortunate DNF for me. I loved the premise of this book but was really excited to delve in. I’d heard wonderfully positive feedback regarding our FMC, Myravelle, and the relationship she cultivates with Byz. As an avid fantasy reader I sadly felt immediately bamboozled when I began this book; with so many characters and names that didn’t roll off the tongue, I felt myself questioning pronunciations rather than losing myself in the book. In regards to the plot it seemed that I could very easily guess it’s direction and it just didn’t captivate me.

Thank you Netgalley & Publisher for the opportunity to review "Her Dark Enchantments"!

Overall, I found the storyline interesting and engaging. I wish some of the background information had been provided earlier on, but in the end it "all comes out in the wash". Generally, I'm a fan of retellings and this was no exception. I especially enjoy the villain origin story as there's so much room for creative leeway, and this author certainly delivered on that front. My only other thought is that there was heavy reliance on a certain male character that didn't jive for me, given that the story is based on Maleficent, and to me, that's someone exceptionally independent who wouldn't be caught dead relying on "some man". Having said that, I do think it made Myravelle more relatable and, if we're being honest, it pulled my heartstrings an awful lot when her boy of scars came back. The ending though? Sobbing.

Overall enjoyable read, with beautiful writing and that indescribable "fairy tale" feeling (with a little darkness) - would recommend!

DNF…
I’m sorry. I tried.
In about 15% of the book I was already struggling, I tried to push it, and made it to 27% when I decided to DNF.

Motives:
1. The story wasn’t evolving, even in 1/4 of the book.
2. I hate 3rd person writing, I don’t feel as connected to the character as I do in 1st person writings.
3. Still don’t know what’s the main reason of the book, like, what are they after? Why?
4. They say it’s a retelling, but didn’t feel like it.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC, but this one wasn’t as good as I expected. Sorry.