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Daughter of the Forest
RECOMMENDED: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier is $2.99! I have such incredibly fond memories of this book. My best friend and I read this together in high school, but my school library only had one copy, so I had to wait my turn. It’s a lovely fantasy novel with some romance, but be warned that it’s a slow, slow burn.
Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to that talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love.
Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac.
But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift.
To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror.
When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.
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Whiskey Sharp: Unraveled
Whiskey Sharp: Unraveled by Lauren Dane is $1.99 I know Sarah enjoyed this one and is excited for the next book in the series. Here’s what she said about Unraveled, and she typed this while on a snow slope! She assured me that she stopped snowboarding first.
It’s low on relationship conflict and high on family conflict. I really liked the found family aspects. And the food.
The sharpest ache comes from wanting what you think you can’t have…
Maybe Dolan has lived independent, free-spirited and unattached since leaving home at sixteen. Whiskey Sharp, Seattle’s sexy vintage-styled barbershop and whiskey bar, gave her a job—and a reason to put down roots. Cutting hair by day, losing herself drumming in a punk rock band by night, she’s got it good.
But a longtime crush that turns into a hot, edgy night with brooding and bearded Alexsei Petrov makes it a hell of a lot better.
Maybe’s blunt attitude and carnal smile hooked Alexsei from the start. Protecting people is part of his nature and Maybe is meant to be his…even if she doesn’t know it. Yet. He can’t help himself from wanting to protect and care for her.
But Maybe’s fiery independent spirit means pushing back when Alexsei goes too far. Still, he’s not afraid to do a little pushing of his own to get what he wants—her in his life, and his bed, for good. Maybe’s more intoxicating than all the liquor on his shelf…and he’s not afraid to ride the blade’s edge to bind her to him.
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The Mistress
The Mistress by Maya Banks is $1.99! If the book seems familiar, that’s because it used to be a category romance from Harlequin titled The Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress. You can see it’s gotten a bit of a makeover. Be forewarned that this book has pregnesia (pregnancy + amnesia) and kidnapping. The holy WTF trifecta! Depending on how much crazysauce you like, readers either loved it or hated it.
Mistress. It sounded so sordid, so impersonal, so far removed from the kind of relationship Marley Jameson had with Greek hotel magnate Chrysander Anetakis. Until it all came crashing down around them.
Three months later, Marley awakened in the hospital with no memory of what happened before she got there. She couldn’t remember her past, Chrysander…or the baby she carried. All she knew was that when Chrysander showed up and whisked her away to his private Greek island, being with him felt like home.
Until she remembered the truth…
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Heat Exchange
Heat Exchange by Shannon Stacey is $1.99! If the cover is any indication, firefighters await in this contemporary romance. It also features the “off limits best friend’s sister” trope, if that’s your catnip. Sarah also picked it for a previous August’s Hide Your Wallet post. Some readers weren’t a fan of the heroine and found her to be self-centered, while others found it to be a great start to Stacey’s new Boston Fire series. It has a 3.8-star rating on Goodreads.
Lydia Kincaid’s shipping back to Boston, but she’s not happy about it. She left to get away from the firefighting community—her father was a firefighter, her brother’s a firefighter and, more important, her ex is a firefighter. But family is number one, and her father needs her help running the pub he bought when he retired. Soon, Lydia finds it hard to resist the familiar comfort and routine, and even harder to resist her brother’s handsome friend Aidan.
Aidan Hunt is a firefighter because of the Kincaid family. He’s had the hots for Lydia for years, but if ever a woman was off-limits to him, it’s her. Aside from being his mentor’s daughter, she’s his best friend’s sister. The ex-wife of a fellow firefighter. But his plan to play it cool until she leaves town again fails, and soon he and Lydia have crossed a line they can’t uncross.
As Aidan and Lydia’s flirtation turns into something more serious, Lydia knows she should be planning her escape. Being a firefighter’s wife was the hardest thing she’s ever done, and she doesn’t know if she has the strength to do it again. Aidan can’t imagine walking away from Boston Fire—even for Lydia. The job and the brotherhood are his life; but if he wants Lydia in it, he’ll have to decide who’s first in his heart.
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Took a while before it dawned on me that Maybe is the heroine‘s first name in „Unraveled“. Well, better than Perhaps, I guess.
Shout out to PREGNESIA, the best worst book I’ve ever read. *wipes away a tear*
Heat Exchange is probably my least favorite from that series, because the only thing keeping the MCs apart is the heroine’s hangups about firefighters, which seemed pretty silly to me. But it’s a good intro to the series, and the next one is my favorite.
Everyone who jumped on my rec of the Sevenwaters series my Marillier — this is where it starts. Daughter of the Forest is a retelling of the Seven Wild Swans fairy tale, but it lays the groundwork for so, SO much more. Slow burn, angsty romances mixed with complex Celtic mythologies and very realistic, relatable characters. I cannot recommend this trilogy, or her sequel trilogy (which I’m reading now) highly enough.
Daughter of the Forest is SO GOOD. Extremely slow burn, but when the ship finally happens?? HOLY SHIZ, YOU GUYS. There’s a scene where I basically highlighted every single word because of my emotions. Gah, I might have to do a reread now.
I adore Daughter of the Forest, and agree that it can’t be recommended highly enough. however, it needs a trigger/content warning for on page rape (definitely not involving the hero, but I find it disturbing to read)
@Magenta, it goes on like that for most of the book. Like SBSarah, I liked it a lot, but I would constantly have to restart a sentence when it turned out it wasn’t a question. It’s quite a conceit, using an adverb as a proper noun.
Rachel Caine’s ILL WIND, the first book in the Weather Warden series, is $2.99 at multiple stores checked. They got a little uneven in the last several books of nine, but I loved the first five or so and I’m a picky bitch, so others may think every book is a jam.
Also: DAVID!!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
(I don't have very many book boyfriends, so I'm loyal af to my small collection.)
@DonnaMarie Beside that, the blurb sounded promising. Maybe I should give it a try though.
Dissenting opinion: I can’t stand Daughter of the Forest because of the on-page rape. In retrospect, I guess it was ‘justified’ by the plot, but at the time, I was furious that she’d written it.
@Magenta, I generally recommend all things Lauren Dane.
Second the of opinion of @Ms. M.
Daughter of the Forest is miserable (all of the expletives) read.
@Ren Benton – In the Weather Warden series, are she and David together when the series ends?
@Ms. M – thank you for the warning!
@MaryK: Yes, Jo and David are together in the end. (I even checked spoilery reviews to confirm a happy outcome for them, so it’s definitely not a case of me mentally rewriting an enraging ending.)
@Ms M – thank you, I haven’t reread in a while so I did not remember that part; thanks for catching that. I do not believe that comes up in any subsequent books in the series; there is rape implied offscreen in Seer of Sevenwaters but it’s mentioned rather nebulously as possibly having happened to a secondary character and not described in any detail. Also the victim gets revenge in a rather gruesome but satisfying way.
I want to just repeat the TW for extremely disturbing rape in Daughter of the Forest–I read it at about fifteen and for years just the sight of the book made me sick. I would not recommend the book to anyone.
It’s so nice to hear others had a similar experience with the Marillier. She’s clearly a talented writer, so I wondered if I was oversensitive (not actually a thing with this topic, but still).
Also, “Nope to Swans” is SUCH a great name for this conversation!!
Bit late but for anyone happening upon this later on, I love Marillier, but Daughter of the Forest is a book where the content warnings are really needed. There’s on-page rape, it’s graphic and terrifying as has been said, it involves a young teenage girl, and the trauma stemming from it is not an inconsiderable part of the novel. I don’t recommend it to anyone without highlighting those themes. Marillier’s slow burn, mature romances are brilliantly done and her prose is beautiful, but that scene in DotF is visceral and years after reading it I don’t know where I stand on its inclusion.
Yeah the second I saw Daughter of the Forest pictured on the main page my first thought was ‘Oh boy. I hope someone posted a trigger warning.’ If not for that scene the first book would get an A from me.
I DNF the Sevenwaters series (I did get through Book 4), but I wish there were more books in the Wildwood Dancing series.
Wait…. Chrysander. Chrysander??? Can we talk about that??