Series written by Brigid Kemmerer, published 2019-2021.
Welcome to Emberfall, an otherworldly kingdom of magic, mystery, and a healthy dose of romance. Brigid Kemmerer presents a trilogy that focuses on the struggles and the impact of important relationships in life.
Harper, a native of Washington, D.C., just wants to help her brother. As a teenager with cerebral palsy, the best she can do is play lookout whenever her brother goes to take care of questionable business. That’s what she’s supposed to be doing when she witnesses an attempted kidnapping. Without thinking, Harper leaps in to defend the young woman against her attacker, and Harper suddenly finds herself in Emberfall. She’s impossibly far from home without any way to get back.
Rhen is Emberfall’s last prince—the sole surviving member of the royal family. And he is cursed. If he doesn’t find love by the end of the season, he will transform into something hideous, ravage his kingdom, and then wait for the cycle to begin anew. Apparently, that’s what happens when you offend the most powerful sorceress in the world. After so many failed attempts, Harper’s arrival seems like a slap in the face. He’s on his last season. His last chance to make things right, and he’s stuck with the most headstrong, stubborn girl he’s ever met.
Commander Grey’s loyalty to Rhen is unquestioned. Despite being the only one to have witnessed and survived Rhen’s monstrosity in its entirety, Grey can’t bring himself to leave Rhen to his fate. Bringing Harper to Emberfall was an absolute accident. He is usually very careful and selective in whom he brings to court Rhen, and someone like Harper would never have before crossed his mind. But maybe she’s exactly what they both need.
This trilogy begins as a rendition of the classic fairytale, “Beauty and the Beast”, but it evolves into its own unique story centering around Emberfall’s politics, all the while showcasing the importance of fighting for the people we love.
I’ve read quite a few renditions of Beauty and the Beast, and only a few I liked well enough to actually buy. This one soared to the top of my list. I tore through this series. I flipped back through each of the books as I finished them. I couldn’t get enough. Kemmerer created a story where everything is well balanced. The world-building was immersive and detailed without confusing me. The plot caught me off guard in places with realistic plot twists I never predicted. The romance element was wholesome and sweet without being overly cheesy.
Since I went out and bought the whole trilogy for my collection almost immediately after finishing the third book, I think it’s safe to say that this rates high for me, and I would recommend it to anyone that loves a fairytale as much as I do.
This series contains mild language, off-screen sex, and some serious injuries (but only minor gory details).
Keep reading for an in-depth review, but beware of the spoilers ahead!
'Eventually, Grey says, "You are merciful and kind. But kindness and mercy always find their limit, beyond which they turn to weakness and fear."
"Where's the limit?" I say softly.
His eyes find mine. "That answer is different for each of us."
One of the things that I like about Kemmerer’s rendition is that it’s modern fantasy—meaning Harper is originally from Washington, D.C. This small change to the traditional tale freed up Kemmerer’s writing style so that Harper talks like we do. It’s a nice break from the much more formal way that Rhen narrates his half, so it makes the story easier to read and to follow.
There’s one thing I can’t decide if I like particularly more or less, and that’s Kemmerer’s interpretation of the Beast. Because Rhen is cursed to be a beast once a season, he’s human while he’s trying to form this relationship with Harper. So there’s nothing strange about his appearance. And since he's had a couple dozen seasons to find love, he’s had a lot of practice perfecting his manners and playing the gentleman, so his personality isn’t particularly repellant either. He still needs to work on a few bad habits, but he comes across as a perfectly decent fellow. The reason why this bugs me is because there’s nothing really beastly about Rhen other than the fact that the curse physically transforms him. So the traditional moral that you find in Beauty and the Beast isn’t there. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it’s really a good thing that sets Kemmerer’s story apart from anything else I’ve ever read—my brain just sticks on that for some reason.
BUT, what I really want to get into in this review is the theme of relationships throughout the trilogy. So the first two novels are mainly driven by two romantic relationships—the first being Harper and Rhen, the second being Grey and Lia Mara. What I really appreciate about these relationships is that they take their time. There are a few moments of vulnerability here and there that help add to the tension of attraction in the moment, but these relationships focus on building trust first and foremost and romance second. And at the end, the two couples weren’t even ready to admit that they loved each other, but they were ready and willing to explore that possibility. I feel like this is the kind of example our world needs, especially concerning fairytales because this isn’t usually something that we see. Usually, these tales take over the space of days, not months, so the concept of “true love” seems a little . . . well, fictional. But these relationships bring a healthy dose of reality into a romantic tale, and that makes the romance itself a little sweeter to swallow.
Like I said, the plots of the first two books in the series are driven mainly by romance, but both visit a secondary (but equally important) relationship between Rhen and Grey. Rhen and his guard commander have endured many seasons together, and they’re very close, but there has always been this formal distance in their partnership because of the difference in their social standings. Like, they trust each other wholeheartedly, but they don’t really open up to one another emotionally. So the first book was all about building this foundation for Rhen and Grey’s relationship and establishing the distance there. The second book goes into how that distance really begins to separate them as their loyalty to each other is tested. But like I said, it’s just an underlying theme.
So this is where I start to get kind of sad because as much as I loved A Curse So Dark and Lonely and A Heart So Fierce and Broken, the third book, A Vow So Bold and Deadly, wasn’t as good. Here’s why: I expected this book to primarily focus on Rhen and Grey and how they come to grips with the change in their positions and how they begin to bridge that distance in their brotherhood. But no. Instead, most of the attention went toward solidifying the two romantic relationships we were talking about earlier—which is kind of fine? The hopeless romantic in me doesn’t want to complain because they’re adorable, but the writer in me thinks that we could have established that these two couples were endgame without giving them all the attention in this final installment. So the whole plot for the third book just felt anticlimactic, to be honest.
The other thing that bugged me about the third book was that the quality of the writing wasn’t as good. For example, in the solidifying of our two relationships in A Vow So Bold and Deadly, both couples end up getting sexually intimate. The buildup to those nights and the morning after read almost exactly the same. Not necessarily word for word (although there was one phrase about how she was “curled against him” that was exactly the same), but they were close enough that I didn’t remotely think it was sweet; I was just bored. And then, if I want to get really nitpicky, there’s this one completely different scene where the phrase “in his arms” is used three or four times in as many sentences. It was redundant, and for my brain, it detracted from the emotion Kemmerer was trying to convey. It was still a decent book, and I still went out and bought the whole series as soon as I finished reading it, but I wasn’t as pleased with the end as I was with the beginning and the middle, which is kind of a shame. But hey, as always, I encourage you to read it for yourself—decide for yourself how the ending is, and let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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