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[katara]

The Maleficent Faerie: A Sleeping Beauty Retelling by Rebecca F. Kenney

Series:
For the Love of the Villain, #2

Genre:
Retellings, Romance, Enemies to Lovers, Fairytales, Fairytales Retelling, Fantasy, Fairies, Dark, Adult, Sleeping Beauty, Spicy Romance, Smut, Erotica, Age Gap, Touch Her and Die, the Fae, Monsters, BDSM, Genderswap, Book Series, Paranormal, Steamy Romance, Dual Points of View

Publication Date:
May 31, 2023

Pages Numbers:
337

Read Date:
July 12th, 2023

Date Finished:
July 13th, 2023

Rating:
1/5

Blurb:

A spicy, Fae Sleeping Beauty retelling with a male version of Maleficent, a dying realm, and intriguing twists on the old tale.

When Malec, the Void King, attacks Princess Dawn's carriage, her Fae bodyguard Aura switches places with her. Glamoured as a human, Aura must fool Malec into thinking she's the Princess he cursed 25 years ago. Relentless and powerful, but with a vulnerable side he hides from others, Malec begins to crave Aura's respect as much as he craves her body.


Trigger warnings and content warnings can be found on the author's website or in the front matter of the book.

Review:

This novel was one of the biggest disappointments in this series. The characters were anything but badass and villainy. They felt more like caricatures of their retelling counterparts (if we go by Disney's version of the characters). Malec's character comes out as a watered-down of his female counterpart and is made to be a sympathetic character with a redeemable backstory

On the other hand, Aura has been trained to protect her princess making sure that she is safe from the Maleficent One or the Void King, as he is also known. One day, while taking Dawn to a celebration, Aura finds their carriage being attacked on the way back to the castle. With her need to protect her princess, Aura changes places with her and ends up being captive to the Void King. Glamourized to look like her princess, Aura is carted off to her destined fate, but things are not exactly easy and secrets begin to unravel.

Aura is anything but badass. There is nothing about her that I liked. Her behavior did not feel at all consistent. One moment, we would get her acting badass and in the next scene, she is a mess. If the author believed she was upgrading Aurora's character, she failed in doing so.

I shape my mouth into a sly smile and edge closer to Reehan, laying my fingers against his chest. "Maybe you'd like a ride, too."

This scene rather made me want to facepalm. Why, you may ask? Because she literally led one of Malec's men to believe that he was going to get a chance to fuck her and she changes course and she nearly finds herself raped. Like gurrl, what the hell did you expect? You literally led him to believe he was going to get into your pants. What did you think was going to happen?

This nearly made me DNF this book because of how stupid Aura came across and how her character had no redeemable qualities to her.

And the plot? Well, there are many pieces of it that did not actually fit. We get into action and then pulled into some dream-like past event. This really has nothing to do with the scene. It is just placed there expecting that it would give some sudden insight into what the character was doing at that time. It added nothing. Not a damn thing.

And the whole blood storyline? So, her parents tell him no and he comes to curse Aurora causing the King and Queen to avoid offering their daughter up as a sacrifice, they give her to the Three Fairies and she is given a whole new identity. Here she is forced to train during her young life and made to watch over a Crown Princess that should actually be her instead.

The worst thing about this - her parents don't care when she is captured. Rather, their concern seems to stem from unaliving her (did I see that right from one of his ravens?). So, instead of going off to save her, they would prefer her to be dead.

I can seriously feel the love from this family. No wonder I did not like them at all. With parents like that, who needs enemies.

Final Thought:

Before you pick up this novel, make sure you check out the warnings and triggers. There is some BDSM in it.

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