Maci Aurora

I bought this book after reading the first chapter and being hooked by the grim world, where women are forced to marry by a certain age and produce babies, and the heroine and her sisters don't have the money to find decent husbands. When I started reading the actual book, it quickly became something different: in Chapter 2, the heroine Auri is pulled into a spell and becomes trapped along with Nixus, the god of night. Most of the book is spent inside the spell, where Auri has to follow certain steps to free herself and possibly Nixus.

The premise of this story fascinated me. How the spell works is unclear until Auri takes her first "action" within the spell, which happens about halfway through the book. Then it becomes VERY clear how it works, and it's dreadful and fascinating. (The author includes content warnings about this, and they are spot-on. I found the content okay for me, because the context it happens in sort of reduced the horror of it; but be sure to read her warnings.) In addition, after disappearing so suddenly, the first chapter becomes relevant again, and I was hooked by wondering how the events in the spell would affect the outside world.

I loved the romance but I did think the first half of the book, where Auri and Nixus get to know each other, went on a little longer than I needed. They fall for each other pretty quickly, which left a long amount of time for them to be keeping themselves apart from each other. The conflict keeping them apart was often misunderstandings about what the other was thinking, and some of the arguments they had didn't feel necessary to me.

The way the plot works out gets more complicated toward the end, and I loved how additional characters are drawn into it, and mysteries unfold, but I also felt like I'd need to read it a second time to understand it. (I think it all made sense?)… (mais)

Thank you, NetGalley and Mixed Plate Press for the chance to read and review In the Shadow of a Wish by Maci Aurora!

I absolutely loved this romantic fantasy novel by Maci Aurora! I loved the trapped with wishes thing, and the book was also pretty well edited. A lot of publishers can end up putting up weirdly formatted copies of the book on NetGalley, so I appreciate that this was well done.

I loved what happened between her and Nix! The way they came together and chose each other and trusted each other! The whole sexy broody man thing worked! More authors should do a bath house thing. Criminally underrated. I also really liked Nix's sister, and I want more of her in the next book!

I didn't particularly like the wish at the end. I feel like that just got far too complicated for me to make sense of and enjoy in a romantic fantasy. I'm also looking forward to the author developing the sister's relationships with one another in the coming books. I'm particularly curious about the eldest two; I mean in this book, one was sort of spared and the other made to sit in the marriage market. Who made that decision?

I also didn't get she's not fully mortal part, and that thing with the wizard, in the end, was weird.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to the next book and I can't wait to have my questions answered!… (mais)