THE COURTING OF BRISTOL YEATS - Mary E. Pearson

2 stars

What the actual heck was this. I liked it enough to finish reading it—hence the 2 stars and not a 1 star rating—but it was lowkey a mess.

The Courting of Bristol Yeats is a hotly anticipated romantic fantasy release that received a TON of hype this year. It has it all right there in the pitch: a beloved YA author writes an adult romantic portal fantasy involving hot fae, intriguing portal door magic, and an approachable female main character.

That flytrap of a pitch caught me, and caught me GOOD. I eat those kinds of stories UP.

It's been several weeks since I've read this novel, so let's ignore the stereotypical "here's what this book is about" portion of the review because listen, the blurb is right there in the book's description and the details are already fuzzing for me so we're better off getting right to the point.

I have no gentle way of saying this, so pardon my bluntness but... Was this novel edited or peer reviewed? Was it written on such a tight deadline that it didn't receive a logic pass?

I know, super harsh. But I'm sorry... this book honestly made such little sense that I questioned whether I was even reading the novel properly or not, or if it was a me problem. (Let's be honest, call me out if it's a me problem.)

It started out very strong. I liked Bristol, I enjoyed the story setup, and the logic flow from chapter to chapter made sense and felt like the dozens of novels in its type that I've read and loved before.

But then, we got into the main plot arc.

Without going into explicit spoilers, I can't really footnote these opinions properly, but in summary here's what kind of issues I had with this novel:

1. The "action" of this story happened almost exclusively off-page. As in, there WAS exciting, action-driven content happening in this world. But it seemed to happen in-between our chapters? And was almost always recapped via description and dialogue after the fact.

2. Because the majority of the action was off-page, this meant that 80% of this novel felt like filler / montage content that seemed to go nowhere and exist purely for the vibes. Bristol feeling things, Tyghan (the fae king love interest) feeling things, people talking about things, etc. It was a frustrating edging experience where I WANTED us to DO things and instead we lived in the micro-scenes of minutiae in between content.

3. The timeline of this novel... was not fact-checked. I'm not a detailed reader, this kind of thing usually doesn't even make my radar. But Bristol enters the faerie world and is essentially given a 3-month timeline, and that timeline is VERY important to the plot. But then we get recap moments that explain "days are passing" over and over and over again and the math... doesn't math. There aren't that many weeks inside of 3 months, no matter how you slice it (and there's no time-y stuff happening, this is a linear timeline). Some of the chapters illuminate that WEEKS are passing off page, and on the page it's many days passing... so much time flowing by without us actually experiencing much more than dialogue and internal musings, and again, it's all supposedly within a 3-month window? I'm calling B.S., it was so distracting that I found myself irritatedly tallying timelines while reading.

4. The love story had some logic-based issues. Mainly, that it was trying for a slow burn... and it was succeeding... but then a moment happens and WHAM BAM!!! All the sudden our well-done romantasy slow burn novel turned into the epitome of instalove and it honestly ruined the characterizations of both main characters in different ways. I truly, truly can't express how dramatic that shift was—and how QUICK it happened—on the page. Follow that shift with a kind of squicky/Oedipal flashback sequence right after it and it truly gave this novel a "Before the Incident" and "After the Incident" energy that I did not appreciate at all.

5. And then, beyond all of this, we also had more than 8 different POVs throughout this 500 page novel, but their inclusions to the story didn't enhance the narrative at all—it just muddied the already muddy waters. 80% of this novel was a relatively even split-POV between the two leads, Bristol and Tyghan. But then we continued to have these interjections of POVs that all felt like the same voice, but were dramatically different people, and all of them gave us more plot details that were told to us, not shown to us, in increasingly irritating ways that seemed like narrative cop-outs to action scenes that should have occurred with Bristol herself.

6. My last and final quibble, in this rant review to end all rant reviews, is the fact that ending of this fantasy novel is literally insane. The last 10% worked like many novels in this romantasy category. So many reveals! So many twists! Much drama! Angst! The need for an Intense Romantic Climax! And all that was fine, it was actually kind of interesting for me, which was a new feeling after 300 pages of confusing irritation. But then...the last 3 pages? Was actually unhinged and so out-of-pocket for both this novel's scenario AND for honestly any novel, ever. I can truly say that's not something I've ever considered to be "cliffhanger appropriate". I closed the novel and immediately said "wtf" over and over again, so take of that what you will. (Nothing against the WHAT of what happened, but the WHY and WHEN was insane.)

Anyways, if you made it this far, we're besties now because this is essentially a transcript of the phone call rant I made to my friends after finishing this. My recommendation is: try other novels instead unless you're really, REALLY interested in this story/author and the above issues don't bother you.