A review by samanthampg
A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft

4.0

This book ended up being one of my favourite reads this year and I wished I had picked it up sooner. I'm a big fan of a well written stand alone, and often I find they suffer from a lack of relationship build up given that they have less pages to work with - such is not the case with this book!

This book had so many things to love about it:
- a female main character hardened to the world but not suffering from the "i'm not like other girls" trope.
- A male main character with a dazzling amount of charm but a sad, soft heart underneath it all
- reluctant allies to lovers
- She falls first but he falls harder

While I had no affinity for even beginning to understand the concept of Alchemy, I didn't find my lack of understanding hindering for the story. I thought the plot was simple but effective and this was certainly a very character driven novel, so if any of that appeals to you then I would highly recommend this book.

My only issue that I couldn't overlook was that this book has no real set time period, some parts of the world seemed modern and others were old fashioned. I'm not a hater of combining time periods and other such concepts but I think if the author had spent a little more time just aligning the audience with the world then it would've been easier to really put myself in the story wholly.

TW: sexual scenes and discussions (nothing super graphic), injury of an animal, general blood and gore, emotional abuse, family related emotional abuse, prejudice and racially motivated bullying