This one surprised me. It's a bit long, so the pacing is slow, and it takes a moment to show its true colors. It starts with a character born in the Fae realm as a "princess." She is very romantic, naive, and innocent at the start, and the melodrama is heavy (but the author is conscious of it, making the character call out her over melodrama as she narrates this story). We soon understand her choices, to whom she is telling the story to, and all that led up to that moment. Some scenes are quite visceral and garish, especially the nightmares, even if they are nightmares, they are described in detail. The book grabbed me when in one of these dreams, she sees her beloved one being mauled by evil fairies, and his eyes rolled to her feet. Now that is how I like my fae books. We get the story of generations past that baby in hands, and the politics and social conflict of the time is a war happening in the background, but has terrible consequences on the characters.It is a great, grim, dark fae story.

A Sister to Butterflies Review A Sister to Butterflies by Aaron Christopher Drown is a slow burn fantasy, steeped in rich imagery and decadent prose. Reading it is like taking a long, slow walk through an English garden. There is a good deal of world building, and readers who enjoy vivid descriptions of settings and immersive storytelling will enjoy this novel. The story is told in the first person, as the main character recounts her life to a young child. I appreciate the nod to oral tradition, but because of this approach, the pacing sometimes suffers and the prose leans heavily into “telling” and not “showing.” Because we’re seeing the story through the eyes of an (arguably unreliable) narrator, some of the characters feel one-note and I found it difficult to emotionally invest in them. There were also points within the story that were glossed over (the first encounter with the villain, for example) that I wish had been lingered on longer, and descriptions of gardens or thought processes that, to my taste, could have been cut shorter. I listened to the audio version of this book, and have nothing but high praise for Laura Horowitz. She did a wonderful job of bringing a diverse cast of characters of all ages, genders, and species to life. No easy feat! Overall, there were some really fantastic moments in A Sister to Butterflies. There was always something to hook me back in, and because of that, I would recommend others give it a try. While the slow pace wasn’t always my cup of tea, I can objectively see how readers of a different disposition would really love that aspect. The ending stuck with me, and I’m not sure I’ll ever look at the fairytale that inspired it the same way. Ultimately, that’s the marker of an impactful story.