EMILY WILDE'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES

A Cambridge professor specializing in the study of faeries gets more than she bargained for when she goes meddling in the Folk's business.

Emily Wilde arrives in the Scandinavian country of Ljosland with a singular goal: to become the first scholar to confirm and formally document the existence of Ljosland's legendary faeries. As a dryadologist—a sort of anthropologist specializing in the fae—Emily has spent a lifetime studying these nigh unknowable creatures. She receives a cold welcome in the village of Hrafnsvik, however, and a troublesomely handsome and infuriating colleague named Wendell Bambleby soon shows up to offer help, leaving her with no choice but to accept it. Emily and Wendell's relationships with the locals grow even more strained when they begin investigating the courtly fae—that is, the "tall ones": humanlike fae who bewitch humans and replace their children with changelings—and she accidentally blows Wendell's cover as a fae prince exiled from his court. The tall ones have plagued Hrafnsvik for years, returning their children as empty husks when they deign to return them at all. The kidnapping of a local woodcutter and her girlfriend spurs Emily to action for not altogether altruistic reasons. After all, what better way is there to report on Ljosland's courtly fae than by going to their lands herself? Rescuing the women buys Emily and Wendell some grace with the locals but creates a domino effect that eventually turns Emily into the unwitting heroine of a fairy tale very much like those she records. Emily's first-person account of her story tends toward purple prose, which may turn off some readers. Once Wendell enters the story, however, the fae prince's charm radiates both on and off the page, and his conversations with Emily give the novel some much-needed jaunt.

A somewhat uneven novel that will nevertheless charm readers of cozy fantasies.