A review by incipientdreamer
Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

4.75

 Second installment in the Emily Wilde series, and this time Emily and her friends are in Austria searching for a door to Wendell's realm. Otherlands had the same magic as Encycleopaedia but at the same time I felt as if something was missing here. Of course, this was a very minor complaint as I loved the sequel and had the best time reading it. I love romance in my books, but I've come to realise that the perfect book for me is when there is something more to the story than just romance. I loved the slow burn between Emily and Wendell in book 1, and I loved their flirtations here as well, but it felt as if the plot was being propelled based on romance rather than Emily's intellectual curiosity. The curiosity was still there but idk it felt damped here. It was also a bit obvious that Fawcett had written Wendell to be a bit too OP, hence having to remove him from scenes so everything couldn't just be solved by hand-wavy fairy magic.

But I am nitpicking, this was still an enjoyable read and I will be reading further books in this series. I think my issue is simply to do with how Wendell's proposal was handled and with Emily's choice at the end. It seemed fitting but at the same time, I wasn't very satisfied.