iffer 's review for:

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

3.0

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This surprised me a little bit, especially since I'm generally not keen on urban fantasy series with female protagonists. The main characters frequently grate in my nerves, because they're usually written in a way that's supposed to be snarky, but just comes off as insecure with a chip on their shoulder. In contrast, Toby is a little sarcastic, but she reads like a grown woman, maybe because McGuire gives her a compelling back story and actually has her protagonist make decisions like someone with that background instead of as a feather-brained wish fulfilment last action hero who gets saved by overly aggressive hot supernatural dudes.

I enjoyed that this wasn't yet another 20% sex romance masquerading as a supernatural mystery, and that the potential live interests weren't all cardboard cutouts because the author spends time developing the characters instead of merely using reader knowledge of different supernatural types to have steteotypical stock characters (e.g. bitchy all-powerful, beautiful, petty queen, angsty vampire struggling with temptation, primal werewolf). I can definitely see why others might find this series less appealing because of all the time McGuire spends developing her characters and her fae setting, or because even the full- blooded fae are humanized as far as their emotions and motivations. However, these are some of the reasons why I probably enjoyed this more than other series of the same genre.