dani ༊'s Reviews > Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 5/5 stars

read if you like:
♡ fairies and other magical creatures
♡ grumpy x sunshine (but she’s the grump & he’s the blonde beam of sunlight)
♡ cozy fantasy
♡ slow burn
♡ epistolary (written in journal entries)
♡ howl & sophie coded

➸ deliciously whimsical and playful, heather fawcett has struck gold once more with her sequel, emily wilde’s map of the otherlands.

➸ emily wilde, prodigious professor of faeries along with her encyclopaedia brimming with its knowledge of faerie folklore and research are back. once again, she and her far more charming, if insouciant, fellow scholar wendell bambleby are united on an adventure. only this time they’re searching for a door back to his faerie realm, whence he was exiled. there’s a new cast which poor antisocial emily must begrudgingly navigate and more mysteries to solve, not the least of which are that of her feelings for wendell.

➸ ordinarily, it’s a rather rare author who pulls off a sequel on par with their first book in a series, especially when said first book is such a literary pearl. fawcett has done just that and with verve. reading the gorgeous, delicately selected words - an art unto themselves mind you - is akin to drinking a glass of bubbly (non-alcoholic will do too if you’d rather do without) and being absolutely buoyed up in this effervescent world. there is something so innately joyful in fawcett’s narrative voice which could perhaps be chalked up to her body of work having previously focused on middle grade/children’s works. there is crack in these books, which frankly, i’m not even sure i’m referring to the proverbial sort at this juncture. it’s everything studio ghibli and folk of the magic faraway tree brand of escapism. fawcett’s conception of fairies and other magical creatures continues to impress upon me a feeling of once again reading holly black’s imagined fairfolk, in that there is beauty and also a profound rich sort of ugliness and simmering if not untethered violence in many of these creatures.

➸ there was no divorcing from character, wendell and emily kept their hilariously singular dispositions here too. emily was just as resourceful and curmudgeonly as ever and wendell just as gloriously vainglorious as ever. the academic journal format continues to do wonders for this book and for the reader (as well as for the tremendously amused wendell).

➸ whilst there is finally more delving into and development of the romance between emily and wendell, it remains a more bashful slow-burn with a great deal else occurring at once. as far as i’m concerned this was the most logical outcome considering the first book, despite being furnished with their romance, does not align the whole story around it; rather it is simply one of many faces to this series. an overindulgence of their chemistry would have mauled this into a fanfiction. as always, their interactions and nature as being all but diametrical opposites had me kicking my feet like a schoolgirl and giggling from the hilarity.

➸ conclusion :
as someone who is most adamantly not a cozy fantasy fan and a zealous worshipper of this series, i beseech you to come be transported in emily wilde’s map of the otherlands, regardless of whether or not you have a partiality for the genre. my hunger for fawcett’s prose in the interim will be insatiable again as i wait, thoroughly impatiently, for the next emily wilde’s instalment as it’s looking like we will be provided with further nourishment.

thank you netgalley for the arc !