[NOVEL] Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby.

Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous stepmother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers.

She also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by his stepmother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby’s realm and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.

But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors and of her own heart.

Emily Wilde series. Book 2

A solid continuation to the first book.

It has a "cozy mystery" tag and indeed it is. Although there are some places to feel the thrill, but in general it's a comfortable read with no high stakes.

Maybe because of its format of journalling that allows you to treat any potential threat with calm, after all the journal entry comes after the fact and is just a retelling of the events, so before any thrill will come we know that everything was resolved here and now.

What I want to point out is that comparable to the first book I liked how author tied all the characters and items together. If there is a ribboned man in the beginning of a story, it will make sense later. If Wendell's cat is mentioned again, it will also mean something. Although these are simple details, but I liked them working together like that.

As for the characters. I still stand by the things I said about Emily under the previous book.

At least I read it like that between the lines where her inability to make a small talk prevails, I see it as her personal indifference, like she sees no point in it thus making no progress. She's all about her research after all. The edges of this trait of hers are smoothed at the mention of her personal feelings about this.

It's not the worst of her, doesn't make her bad, but sometimes she gives a feeling of being self-absorbed. Although it's undeniable that she's great at what she does.

Wendell is still Wendell, although he was a bit marginal in this one.

We have an additiona of Ariadne, who is Emily's biological niece.

And Farris Rose, who should serve as a counterweight to Emily herself. But Rose is a bit of a reason that Emily sometimes loses.

So it was good for what it is, a cozy mystery.

RATE; 4,25/5.