by Heather Fawcett
Read by Ell Potter & Michael Dodds
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some intense moments, and it’s a bit slow at times. It’s in the Science Fiction/ Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Emily Wilde has been working on her Encyclopedia of Faeries, documenting as many as she can, for years. And she’s finally gotten funding to go do a field study of the Hidden Ones in Hrafnsvik. She arrives just as winter’s beginning, and because she’s not a terribly personable person, she gets off on the wrong foot. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her colleague from Cambridge, who has followed her to Hrafnsvik. Together – unwillingly at first, on Emily’s part – they win over the villagers, gather stories of the faeries, and quite possibly fall in love.

This one was utterly delightful, particularly on audio. I think I would have liked it in print, but on audio, the story just popped. Both of the narrators were excellent, capturing Emily’s and Wendell’s personalities, as well as those of the villagers around them. (Side note: the jacket blurb for this book calls Emily “curmudgeonly”, but she’s not. It’s never explicitly stated, but the character is most likely on the autism spectrum.) Although the plot is super loose – at one point, Emily wakes up a faerie king and gets trapped in the frozen faerie lands – it’s still a delightful read.