The depth of conflicts is at the level of a young novel, immature and naive, and the resolution of these is beyond lackluster. It’s obvious Emily and Wendell are meant to be each other’s love interests but the way the romance developed felt very strange. But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors and of her own heart. Oh, but the author repeatedly wants us to know it's okay because Emily's so much more logical than other people, and she doesn’t need anyone else’s feedback because she’s the expert (can you imagine my eye-roll?

However, she wasn't aware that it would be so rustic that she would need to chop her own wood to keep warm. Emily Wilde is a character in where you’re not quite sure what to think about her in the beginning and by the end of the book, you absolutely love her. While this approach leads to some foreshadowing of what happened that day, it also ensures a focussed narration due to Emily’s very nature. Though Wendell’s own secrets might prove to be more useful than Emily could ever have imagined, she has no intention of letting him take the credit for her work.I will be proceeding with my breakdown as if she is a neurotypical woman with obvious social anxiety as the text suggests. Wendell is just the most flamboyant eccentric academic idiot to grace a page and I absolutely loved him from the start. Both easy-going and self-deprecating, his genial disposition means that he never stays moody or mad for very long. I had a lot of fun with this one and definitely recommend it to fans of Cozy Fantasy and stories involving the Fae!

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? The buoyant end promises further thrilling adventures filled with magic, fun, humour and hopefully even more of that delicious will-they-won’t-they romance.A charmingly whimsical delight, saturated with faerie magic and the equally wonderful magic of humanity…five dazzling, gladdening stars. The influence of Bambleby only enhances this, but as it goes on the plot gets somewhat lost underneath all the academic technobabble, so it does not manage to fire on all possible cylinders. Forget dark academia: give me instead this kind of winter-sunshined, sharp-tongued, and footnoted academia, full of field trips and grumpy romance and malevolent faeries. Academic grumps they may be, but these two have a friendship that makes me wish for someone that would battle faerie assassins for me.

Such a method really suits the story, especially as our main character, Emily, is quite a reserved character and so without this we wouldn’t have got to know her quite as well. I knew it wasn’t going to be a 5 star read but the setting and the local townspeople and Wendell really made the book for me. Not sure there’s a more perfect book for the winter hitting shelves this month, and certainly a great example of why we need more ‘light academia’ stories out there.This book is very weird to review because the humor is sly and biting (even when Emily is anti-social and oblivious), but it's definitely not a fantasy rom-com.