A review by shelbyfayy
To Flame a Wild Flower by Sarah A. Parker

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Rating: 4 stars
Spice: 🌶️🌶️

Tropes:
✔️Dark romance
✔️Fae/fae adjacent
✔️Fairytale retelling
✔️Forbidden romance
✔️Mutual pining
✔️Forced proximity
✔️Secret identity/disguise
✔️Monsters
✔️Marriage of convenience
✔️Only one bed
✔️"The people I love die"
✔️Morally grey heroes
✔️Fated mates

This series has left so conflicted. I feel like I’m on the cusp of something life-changingly incredible here, and yet I’m constantly being yanked away from that possibility. While I really enjoyed reading these stories, at the same time, I was left incredibly frustrated.

Laith is back in Bahari, intent on going through with her marriage of convenience--at least to a certain point, when she can incapacitate her groom and stage a heist to rescue the people trapped in his Unseelie father's cavern. She's more firm in her belief that she is a murderous monster than ever, and to a certain degree, she's absolutely right. She now knows that what she did at the end of the last book was a critical mistake, but she doesn't believe there's anything she can do to correct it. She's just determined to think for herself now, and not allow herself to be swayed by the opinions of others. To "grow up," as she calls it. Along the way of carrying out her major plan, she uncovers more tragic secrets and even more questions about herself and the world she lives in, and potentially endangers her life by venturing into a community of shunned Blighted citizens. She has to make decisions not just for herself, but for all those she cares about. We end on another small cliffhanger, with a decision made yet again for her in defense of her life that could potentially alter the course of the entire story.

So again, plot-wise, not much actually happens in this book, although it's by far the most fast-paced and linear of the three. Orlaith does a lot of growing, though she remains slightly irritating in her "my love is poison" crap--but then, I hate that trope as a whole anyway. She owns up to her major fuckup at the end of the last book and does everything she can to set things right. However, when presented a golden opportunity to fix her broken relationship, she still refuses to open up and let him see those broken parts of her. I understand her trauma and I even understand her reticence to give him even more power of her, but it's frustrating because Rhordyn has made such a conscious effort to change this book as well. To open up and let her in, answer all of her questions. It's frustrating that she doesn't want to allow this to happen.

This book was the best of the three for me in terms of the pacing and the overall plot structure. I liked that it wasn't so character-driven anymore, that we had a definitive storyline running through all the interdependent moments building Orlaith's character. I did not enjoy the sudden spike in the flowery prose, however. I like this author's writing for the most part, and up to this point, her metaphorical style had been well-balanced with plain prose enough for me to just enjoy the story. This book took those metaphors to the nth degree. Every other paragraph was about her "crystal domes," or "vines of hope/regret" etc--all not truly existing, but metaphors for how she felt. It was so overloaded that it became hard to follow the story at times. I would have appreciated the return to balanced that made me love this series to begin with. 

I'll definitely be following for book 4, I'm too invested now to not see where these characters end up.