Eloria's Reviews > Once I Knew

**this book was given to me free of charge in exchange for an honest review that is in no way influenced by the author or publisher**

About the book: Violet, a young women lives in a small village caring and providing for her elderly grandmother. Violet tries her best to stay invisible from the evil Kingsmen that terrorize the town and town’s people, collecting taxes and enforcing laws. Then one day she finds an injured man in the forest not too far from her house and she begins to question her reality and her life as she knows it gets turned upside as she risks all to help the mysterious man in the woods.

My thoughts: This squeaky clean non-magical fantasy that is packed full of action interested me in many ways and I did enjoy many parts of this book. I enjoyed Obed’s character arc. I also loved how the author described all the clothing of the characters, particularly Violets dresses as I could tell that the author was a seamstress herself and had knowledge about how clothes are made. I also like the medieval small village farmer feeling I got from this.

Now just as I enjoyed some parts of this, there were a few parts I wasn’t as keen on. I felt like the pacing was a little off and the events in this books were sort of repetitive. Also I feel like marketing this as a non-magical fantasy is just a bit misleading and I would feel much more satisfied with the story overall if it was just marked as fiction if that makes sense because It didn’t feel like it fit the fantasy genre super well. Lastly there were just one or two minor theological aspects of this book I didn’t quite agree with.

Overall, this book was good, and I think it would be a wonderful fit for more sensitive readers who like fast paced medieval fiction.