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jessfrarec 's review for:
A Forbidden Alchemy
by Stacey McEwan
Okay, well. I’m ruined now. Thanks so much. Emotional damage has been swiftly delivered, and what remains of me is a husk staring into the middle distance.
This book was such an unexpected gut punch of a surprise. The set, the setting, the tone — all of it felt like a breath of fresh, coal-dusted air. It’s giving Peaky Blinders’ criminal underworld meets the political gamesmanship of The Hunger Games meets the grit and longing of a Northern mining town straight out of Billy Elliot… except with MAGIC, you guys. And ROMANCE. A romance so raw, so inevitable, so truly earned it cracked me clean in half and left the pieces on the floor.
Stacey McEwan is a full-blown artist. Her prose is accessible yet elegant, poetic but devastating in its simplicity. Every character here feels alive and jagged-edged in the best way — real, flawed people making messy, desperate choices to save their families, their mission, their entire philosophy of life. The good blur into bad, the bad into good, and every betrayal or salvation feels earned. Even the places breathe — the streets, the mines, the pubs all sketched so vividly I swear I could smell the coal and hear the low roar of voices through the fog. It’s an absolute masterclass.
And then there’s that ending. That ending. Fuck. What are any of us supposed to do with that? A piece of me is still sitting on that last page like a ghost, holding my place until the next book arrives to stitch me back together. I am wrecked. I am grateful. I am completely, irreparably in love.