Kind of struggled with my rating for this one. I went in to The Wolf and the Crown of Blood expecting a little more plot and less romance and spice. I started to enjoy it once I adjusted my expectations, but I don't think it's particularly memorable.

It’s kind of a shame that the plot took a backseat in this book because worldbuilding and history were actually the best parts of this book. There was also a gruesome side quest that added real stakes to the story. The foundations for a really interesting fantasy plot are here and I wish we got so much more of it.

The romance itself suffers from something I’m seeing more and more as enemies-to-lovers stays popular and that’s labeling anyone who vaguely dislikes each other as enemies. Bryony and Evander hate each other’s bloodlines, so I guess they are enemies in theory, but that tension gave way to lust very quickly. Because there isn’t really any development before they are lusting after each other, the romance is a little unsatisfying. And fair warning, the spice is abundance and explicit so if that’s not your thing, I’d suggest you skip this one.

If you’re a veteran of the romantasy and fantasy romance space, you’re going to clock a lot of familiar tropes. Some of them I love and will never get tired of like deadly trials, forbidden love, the "touch her and die". Others I’m not a fan of, namely the nearly-thousand-year age gap paired with a 21-year-old virgin FMC. Obviously, trope preferences are subjective, but the sheer volume of them is where this book starts to feel like it's mirroring other popular romantasies.

That extends to the main characters too. Bryony and Evander, are the most common archetypes in the genre. She's your classic impulsive, reckless young female lead; he's the quintessential morally gray male. I think they are done well, but still very similar to other FMC and MMCs I’ve seen. The real standout characters for me are Bryony's older sister, Theodora, and Evander’s older brother, Bastien. Both of them feel like people holding a lot of trauma beneath the surface, and I want more of their stories.

The Broken Accords series is planned as interconnected standalones, and I do think that hurt the pacing of this one. It felt like two books compressed into one, so it was awkward in places and dragged at times, but somehow the story still felt unfinished. I'm hoping the plot picks up where we left off even as the focus shifts to new characters.

All in all, this is a good book if you want a story that’s primarily romance and spice with some plot on the side. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's reminiscent of a lot of romantasy favorites — so if you want to relive that feeling while still getting a fresh story, this one might hit the spot.

I always forget how much I love a Gothic inspired setting until I’m reading one. Weavingshaw had everything I love about gothic fantasy — hauntings, secrets, and a brooding estate at the center of it all. If you're looking for dark atmospheric writing with a paranormal quest full of ghosts and demons, this one is for you.

The most important thing to know off the bat is that this is a slower paced story, but I think it serves the story well. There are quite a few subplots, backstories, and characters that need to be established before we make progress on the main quest.

Speaking of characters, by the time we meet our main character Leena, she has been hardened by years of being the sole caretaker of her and her brother. On top of that she has the ability to see and interact with ghosts, which has led to her alienation in addition to her refugee identity. She comes to St. Silas in a desperate attempt to save her brother's life, and it's the first of many moments where we see her choices shaped by needing to do what it takes to survive in a country that labels her as "other." I can't personally speak to the refugee experience, but I've witnessed the kind of "otherness" that comes with being an immigrant firsthand, and I really connected with how it's portrayed throughout the story.

St. Silas is our sharp, ultra-perceptive, and stoic MMC. I have a real weakness for MMCs like him, so it’s no surprise I loved his character. He's humanized the further we get into the story, and the more Leena saw of him, the harder she worked to figure him out and I honestly found myself doing the same.

The romance is a true slow burn, and I was absolutely dying at the tension between them the whole time. Personally, I love when characters don't get together in book one, so I'm excited to see where things go from here, but fair warning that there is no spice or really that much romance in this book.

My main criticism is that I wish the different storylines tied together more neatly. Between The Wake and their dealings, St. Silas' quest, Leena's father, and the rebellion against the king simmering in the background, there's a lot moving at once. For me, the most satisfying moment in a book is when all the pieces click into place and the bigger picture comes into focus. I was hoping that would happen when everyone finally ended up at Weavingshaw together. It almost did, but there were still enough gaps that I'm not entirely sure how everything connects.

FYI, this does end on a cliffhanger. The real downside with reading ARCs is that I have to wait longer for the next book to come out, but I will be adding book 2 to my TBR as soon as I get the chance.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Ray for the ARC!

Mysteries and thrillers used to be my genres of choice before I discovered fantasy, so I was excited to read The Raven Scholar. There's no question this book has a really interesting premise that blends a murder mystery and trials for a new emperor with epic fantasy.

It's ambitious storytelling and I can see why so many people love this book, but unfortunately, I think it suffers from trying to do too much.

This book is packed with an impressive amount of backstories, complex politics and history, and lore. Snippets of worldbuilding were delivered to us as the plot progressed. On one hand, the book avoided the dreaded info-dumping but instead it bogged down pacing and messed with the flow of the story. Frankly, I think the constant alternating between current events and their corresponding explanations or backstories made this book far longer than it needed to be.

Now, most of the time you can make up for a meandering plot with strong characters. But this is another area where the book tries to do too much and doesn’t fully deliver. We had a large, diverse cast of side characters but most felt underdeveloped.

Even Neema, who has the most fleshed out character, has an arc that falls flat. She has a lot of autism-coded traits like struggling in social situations, compulsively correcting facts, and feeling ostracized by her peers. The author emphasized Neema being disliked so much that I figured it’d be an instrumental part of her character arc or the plot. Instead, the book just stops mentioning it somewhere in the middle of the story. There’s no clear resolution or character growth, and her inner dialogue doesn’t evolve or mature. This left me wondering why the author emphasized her isolation and mistreatment so heavily early on only to drop those threads entirely. Too often, I see neurodivergent-coded (or otherwise marginalized) characters mistreated without narrative purpose, and unfortunately, I believe that’s the case with Neema. As an AuDHD woman myself, I was really hoping for a character arc that did her more justice.

It's pretty clear I'm in the minority with my opinion on The Raven Scholar because I've seen almost nothing but glowing reviews. Though this book had rich and layered worldbuilding and surprising twists, its slow pacing and flat characters made this a slog to get through and a whodunit mystery can only hold my interest for so long.

All in all, if you are interested in a book that blends a murder mystery with a beautifully imagined fantasy world, this is worth giving a shot. However, if you want richly developed characters or a fast-moving plot, I'd look elsewhere.