***Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book to review.***

I REALLY ADORE THESE BOOKS. I love losing myself in the lush and elaborate world Heather Fawcett has created. This was a wonderful sequel — just as unique and charming as the first!

I must first discuss our main characters, since they are so engaging and well developed. Of course, I adore Emily Wilde, Wendell Bambleby, and, most of all, the interactions between Wendell and Emily—their dynamic is wonderful. I really was just smiling like an idiot through all of their moments, and I simply cannot wait until it releases next year so I can annotate all of said moments. Not to mention!! Both Wendell and Emily had incredible and quite unexpected character growth, which was done so subtly and really just added to the story and their romance as a whole! I loved seeing Emily open up to those around her, especially Wendell :’)

And the side characters were so lovable—a perfect addition to the story! We get to see how Emily really desires to win, not only the respect, but also the affection of her young niece, Ariadne. Emily struggles with open displays of affection, so this is difficult for her, and she fears that she’s only pushing Ariadne further away. Rose, on the other hand, is an older dryadologist that Emily respects and seeks to impress, even though his temperament is initially quite grating. I think it is the mark of a very good author to take a seemingly unlikeable, stubborn, close-minded character, like Rose, and make that character likable. I really appreciated how well Emily’s relationship with both Ariadne and Rose, respectively, were developed.

Lastly, I absolutely cannot get enough of Heather Fawcett’s writing style! Her prose captures the voice of the era, while being fun, unique, and engaging. I am looking forward to reading more of her works in the future!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC.

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands is truly a delightful follow up to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

I loved almost everything about this — the character development, the slow burn between Emily and Wendell, and especially the reappearance of Poe. There is more adventure and the stakes are a bit higher but it still maintains the feeling of a cozy fantasy. The format and Emily’s voice is so unique and I’m happy to see that this continued flawlessly.

I found the middle of the book to be a bit stagnant (maybe it’s because poor Wendell is going through the ringer and isn’t always present) but I understand this was needed to move the plot forward. I would have liked more interactions with the local townspeople.

All in all, I truly enjoyed every whimsical moment of this book and cannot wait to add a physical copy to my collection.

If you loved Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries I have no doubt that you will love this too.

Thank you to Random House Publishing - Ballantine and NetGalley for providing an ARC.

Finding out there would be a second book with beloved characters like Emily and Wendell was a treat. This sequel followed the formula of the first book with Emily and Wendell doing fieldwork to further Emily‘s research and get Wendell home.

The pace is quite slow for most of the book and that can be a little bit tedious as we wait for the big conflict. I was happy to hang in there as the footnotes and small interactions with the folk are so entertaining.

When the big conflict occurs, and it seems as though resolution is about to happen, there is a time jump and a POV switch. This is explained by saying that Emily is woozy from being in the faerie world and cannot carry on with her usual journaling of events. Just as you think we’re about to have a big crescendo and triumphant return to the human world, we have Wendell appearing into Emily’s journal to say everything is over. I almost wish some of the early interactions between Emily and the folk had been cut to allow for the action scene to be complete.

This was the coziest fantasy I’ve read in a long time! All the characters were absolutely adorable and just the cutest together! I never wanted this one to end!

On the formatting of this e-book alone, this reads better than the kindle version of the first book. The footnotes are at the bottom of the page instead of at the end of the chapter. I found this very helpful, as navigating between pages on an e-reader can be a little tedious.

In this Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, our favorite dryadologist tackles finding her maybe fiancé’s( its complicated ) way to his kingdom. Though Emily has her doubts about Wendell, she doesn’t let them set her back as she hunts down a door to the most fearsome of the faerie realms, the Silva Lupi.

Along the way, they will come across totally crazy assassins, pretentious department heads, and even other bumbling dryadologists stuck in the fray of the elusive nexus. This book takes a step forward from low stakes fantasy, really laying on the action through Emily’s remarkably reliable narration.

I loved this book just as much as the first, loving the addition of characters and fun faerie friends. I especially loved that Poe made another appearance, as he was one of my favorite parts of the first book. Snowbell was viscously adorable, helping Emily find her way through Faerie.

The aspect of found family was even stronger in this book, as Emily finds herself growing closer to the people that came with her on her expedition and some even more surprising characters that they find along the way. I can’t wait to see what else comes of this world, because I love to get lost in it!!

I will go ahead and post my review on GoodReads, but I will wait until closer to publication to post my review on social media.

This book continues shortly after book one and it is of course amazing! We meet lots of new fae creatures and finally get to see Wendell's world. The book does end with a bit of a cliff hanger that leaves you wanting book 3 right away.

I was anticipating the sequel and it is every bit as splendid as the first book! It has the charm, whimsy, creativity of the first book but with added layers of themes of family, romance, and finding ones place.

Emily and Wendell's romance was a joy. They have such a wonderful grumpy/sunshine dynamic and it was so lovely to see more of Wendell on page.

The plot was convoluted and introduced new characters that added to the depth of the story. The end felt a bit rushed to me and I would have gladly read more of that final resolution. I felt like it was hinting at a third book and the last page happily did confirm this!

The characters are engaging, the story whimsical and fun, the times of tension well written and gripping, the romance tender and funny. The story kept me engaged and interested and I am so looking forward to more of these characters.

And Poe has my whole heart!

Highly recommended!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC! This is my honest review.

The second book in the Emily Wilde series holds just as much charm as the first. The story told via diary entries allows you unique insights into the characters frame of mind and the new setting opens up all new kinds of hijinx. I enjoyed the call back to the first book with de Grey and Eichorn but felt the search for them was leading up to a climax but once they were found nothing really happened with them. I absolutely love Emily and Wendell’s will they-won’t they romance. It is the perfect amount of tension that keeps you rooting for them. I did feel that this book is almost more of a set up for the next book, not really completing a big quest like the first book. It doesn’t leave you unsatisfied but there are a lot of questions about what comes next for different characters that I am looking forward to finding out in the next book.

4.5/ 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story of Emily and Wendell continues in this fun sequel! Emily's newest project, following the publication of her encyclopedia, is a map of the faerie realms. This project takes the pair to the Austrian Alps, where Emily believes she'll be able to locate a door to the exiled king Wendell's home.

Their journey crosses paths with scholars that went missing years prior, new lesser faeries, and dangerous vegan folk whose appetites are satiated with carrots. Emily and Wendell are in over their heads as their quest for the missing door continues.

The world of Emily Wilde is such a fun, whimsical take on the fantasy genre. The writing felt a bit slow at times, but the lull was short-lived, and it didn't take long for the story to draw me back in. I'm 100% here for a grumpy sunshine trope, but the smaller characters like Poe and Shadow have my heart.

This is a read I'd recommend to any fan of the fantasy genre. My first love is a good battle filled book with dragons, assassinations, and fast moving plot however, there's such a feeling of home with a cozy fantasy book like this one. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a continuation of the story!

I was so ecstatic to receive this ARC! I read the Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Fairies arc in December last year and it was easily one of my favourite reads of 2022!

Let me tell you, Map of the Otherlands does not disappoint! If anything I’m pretty sure I liked it better than Encyclopaedia?! I can barely even put into words how wonderful it was to be back in this world so soon!

From the very first page, reentering this world is an absolute delight! I loved that we get to see some of Emily’s Cambridge and what her usual life in England looks like before everything goes dramatically wrong! We just pretty much straight into the action and he stakes in book 2 are definitely more personal and it was wonderful to see both Wendell and Emily growing together and relying on each other!

The plot of Otherlands felt like it was setting a lot up for an eventual third book (🤞), but whereas I felt some parts of Encyclopaedia were a bit slow for my liking, Map of the Otherlands flowed wonderfully, I couldn’t put it down!

Heather continues to write beautifully engaging prose, characters I can’t help but root for and a world full of whimsy that I wish I lived in, genuinely cannot recommend this series enough!

Thank you to Del Rey and Netgalley for the opportunity to review this ARC.

I love this series. Firstly I love the style in which it is written. The journal entries are done so well and they really show Emily’s personality in such a fun light. Side note that Wendell’s characters are always my favorite thing ever.
Fawcett has such a great way of writing characters that you shouldn’t really like and yet you can’t help loving them.
While I did not like this one quite as much as the first one I still very much enjoyed it and I am very excited about the third one, which I will definitely read.
The plot was good and moved at a good pace making it easy to follow. Emotions were all over the place but the sarcasm in this book never fails to get me to laugh out loud. The only slight down side to the writing style is that the stakes never seem very high to me. Because Emily starts every entry with a small recap of where she is, for example that she made it home during her long entry about what happened in Farrie, you know that nothing too terrible can happen because she did make it home. Regardless such a fun read and series.

A charming read with adorable characters

I was very pleasantly surprised to like this second book in the Emily Wilde Series more than the first one. As before, the biggest strength of this book is the writing style—I love reading though both Emily and Wendell's perspectives; their monologues/dialogues are so well written, witty, confident and self-deprecating at the same time. I also enjoyed the plot a bit more than the first book, since it seemed to have a more well defined mystery to be solved and a proper villain. There are also more characters that we get to know (namely, Ariadne and Rose) and which are a nice addition. On the negative side, I still feel the plot is not as good compared to other fantasy books. If there is ever an escalation of a conflict, it's immediately diffused, and sometimes through magic you were not aware it existed (e.g. the Veil), which can easily make a fantasy book feel unsatisfying. But overall it was fun read!

Emily Wild has just finished her encyclopedia of Faeries, gotten tenure, and has managed to get herself the perfect little cozy life. With a new project in hand, she’s ready to settle in… even if she’s not so sure she’s ready to settle down. Of course, Emily’s luck has never been very good when it’s come to staying out of trouble, so when a pack of assassins come through to try and Bambleby, she has to find a way to save him, find a cure to the poison they left in his system, and find a way back to Bambleby’s realm, all while keeping herself alive… and keeping the two tagalongs alive as well. After all, her brother would never forgive her if she let her niece get eaten by a faerie.

This book was spectacular. Amazing. Even better than the first! We meet a whole new cast of delightfully creepy faeries, all new main characters to grow to love, and an exciting new adventure with a thrilling new problem to solve. This book made me laugh, gasp, and even go “No way!” out loud. It was impossible to put down! Every new chapter was a new clue to follow, and I never could have guessed how it all went down. This was a beautifully enchanting read from start to finish and I’m already desperate for the next installment! Seams impossible to wait! Shame I can’t get my hands on a Faerie King to fast forward time for me!

I loved this sequel more than the first book! I feel like what lacked in the first was rectified in the second. You start right off with nonstop action and it continues throughout the entire book. We get introduced to a new set of characters along with ones from the first book **Poe 🥰** I can’t help but be slightly frustrated by Emily and Wendell’s slow burn relationship (slow burns always frustrate me). I compare them to Sheldon and Amy on Big Bang Theory, one wants all the love, the other is hesitant and pushes away at first. BUT, I loved the ending and am waiting for a book 3 to be announced, because there has to be a book 3 😊

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC!

I must have spent 80% of the book kicking my feet with joy. The things that I loved about the first book in this series continue in this book too— a delightful grumpy sunshine dynamic, fantastic neurodiverse representation, a coziness that makes it hard to put down. This book continues to follow the story of a Cambridge professor of dryadology hyper-focused on her studies and a should-be faerie king turned academic dilettante, but also introduces us to a process driven senior tenured professor and a bright eyed assistant. These two only add to the grumpy-sunshine relationships in ways I felt completely charmed by.

As a long time fan of both cozy fantasy and dark academia, this book feels like a wonderful hybrid. Light academia perhaps? The dialogue is punchy and fun, and I found the plot to move quickly, with lots of moments that made me want to know how a situation would resolve.

From the beginning, it felt very clear where the book was headed, but the joy was in tagging along for the experience as they got there.

The one piece about this book that I found a bit overwhelming was that the plot felt simultaneously full of small details that felt like they could have been consolidated or edited down at times— many small elements make a brief appearance, then come together in the denouement once you’re certain it’s no longer pertinent. The positive side of that though is it created lots of motivation to keep reading, as each chapter is dotted with little clues and directions the subplots could go.

All in all I absolutely loved it. I know this is one I’ll read again and again.

I recently read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies (book 1) and I thought it was perhaps my coziest read of the year. Then I saw Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (book 2) on NetGalley and literally gasped in delight when I got approved to read it!

Well, our fave little academic duo is back! The story picks up where it left off after Emily and Wendell finished their adventures in Ljosland. However, they were left with the question on how to find doors that’ll lead them into Faerie (more specifically, Wendell’s homeland). In Map, Emily and Wendell are off on their next adventure (or research project?) in search of the nexus between worlds. Accompanying them are Ariadne (Emily’s niece and self-proclaimed assistant to her aunt), Dr. Farris Rose (the Department Head at Cambridge), and Shadow (Emily’s trusty pet Grim).

Map was just as cozy and sweet as Encyclopaedia. I will admit that I am a bit smitten with Wendell, so the fact that he was out of commission for most of the book (darn you, poisonous things!) made me a tad melancholy since he wasn’t around as much. Despite this, I still enjoyed the characters and the story! (And apologies on being so vague — I don’t like summarizing sequels since I don’t want to inadvertently spoil anything.)

On a side note, I figured out why I like Emily and Wendell so much—it’s because they don’t try to change each other. Rather, they accept one other for exactly who they are. She is bookish, unkempt, scientific, and unaffectionate. He is all charm, loves comfort, and has a confident, disconnected, devil-may-care-but-not-condescending attitude. He loves her for the footnotes in her personal journal. She finds his need for perfect stitches and clothes ensembles endearing.

Overall: If you haven’t read Encyclopaedia, then this is your sign to get on it! If you read Encyclopaedia and liked it, you’ll be equally delighted with Map!

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands comes out on January 16, 2024. I thought this was going to be a two-book series, but I think our author has more in store for us and I am definitely here for the ride!

I LOVED this book! I enjoyed the first one but #2 was even better!

Heather Fawcett uses exquisite imagery. I tend to skip over things that are too detailed. Not in this instance! The words, and the views, all brought such vivid details to the picture in my mind.

We got right into the action this time which …*chef’s kiss*.
The same characters we know and love are still here, with some other really loveable additions. This time around Emily really evolved. She was less icy than the first time we met her. Wendell was less flighty, we got to see a more serious side of him. I loved the evolution of their relationship. We really got to experience how they felt about each other.

Great read and there better be a third!!

This ARC was free from Netgalley. This did not influence my review. Available for Pre-order now. Expected release day is January 16, 2024.

A delightful follow up to Emily Wilde’s first adventure!

Faerie mischief, a quest to find a magic door, disturbing yet endearing creatures—this was a perfect continuation of the previous book. I absolutely loved seeing Emily and Wendell’s dynamic deepen, and they were both so beautifully in character throughout the story. ALSO the addition of a faerie cat was everything I hoped for.

THRILLED that a book 3 is coming! I will read as many Emily Wilde books that are published.

Reverent awe and gratitude to Netgalley for this arc of one of my mostttt anticipated books!

When you love the sequel EVEN MORE! ✨️

I squealed when @NetGalley approved me for an ARC of #emilywildesmapoftheotherlands 💙 and then I finished the book in 2 days 💚 which, of course, only means I'm now desperate to read a book which is EVEN further away than this one is from publication 😅 But just the thought of a book 3 makes me happy!

We get to meet two new characters, some new and old fae friends and foes- and a couple of enchanted garments (and pens!) courtesy of Wendell, of course! I don't want to give too much away, but rest assured- if you've loved #emilywildesencyclopaediaoffaeries
you will love this one even more! 🧡