Review by alice2000 - Smoke and Scar

alice2000 's review for:

Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox

4.5

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was gifted a digital arc from the author.

I went into this first book in a planned trilogy a little blind, without knowing anything other than the few descriptors Gretchen Powell Fox had posted on social media. I am a DNF’er and I was a little tempted the first 20%, however, I wanted to give S&S a fair shake and I am thrilled that I did!

This book is full of magic, trials, prophecy and, towards the end, shocking twists. The world building is solid and gives plenty of room to expand in future books. The secondary characters are amazing and I enjoyed every minute with them.

Elyria is everything that was promised: a 250+ yr old fae with wings, shadow magic and major attitude. She was loyal, competent and didn’t let fear hold her back. I’ll be honest, Cedric didn’t really do it for me until the end. Even then, it was more about me finally being interested in him then loving him. But that is a-okay because I’ll have two more books to see him grow and I suspect I will come to love him.

GPF did a wonderful job with the plot once it got going. Boy, was this plot plotting. The twists and turns were a coming and she laid excellent ground work for them all. I did figure out a couple of them, but that didn’t take away my gasps when what I suspected came true. I also shed quite a few tears over characters lost. As to romance, this was a slow burn with a 🫑 rating.

I hope you make this one of your reads for the year and support GPF, who seems to be a lovely person as an added benefit. I will 100% be reading book 2, Splintered Kingdom, when it comes out (November 30, 2025 if Amazon is to be believed).

Content Warnings