Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
by Heather Fawcett
☕︎☕︎☕︎
This book had me hooked from the premise alone: a grumpy scholar whose best friend is her dog heads north to do field research on faeries. Sign me up. And for the first two-thirds, I was completely on board. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is a delightfully awkward, socially inept academic who'd rather observe faeries than interact with actual people (relatable). Her adventures in Ljosland, where she charms the local faeries while managing to irritate every human in sight, were fun and immersive. She even admits she's not great with people ("I was delighted to sit in the corner with my food and a book and speak to no one"), which, honestly, same.
Then comes Wendell Bambleby, her colleague/competitor, sweeping in with his effortlessly charming demeanor and a gaggle of graduate students in tow. He's elegant, insufferably knowledgeable, and... not exactly what he claims to be. But even his secrets pale in comparison to the real trouble—the faeries of Ljosland are far more dangerous than Emily anticipates.
Told through Emily’s journal entries, the book has a grumpy, academic tone that I loved. She can be a bit of a pedant, but the footnotes and folklore details were fascinating, and I admire her ability to keep her wits about her in life-or-death situations. Personally, I’d be panicking, not remembering to cry a sword of tears, but hey, good for her.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm started to wane once the romance ramped up. Emily and Wendell seem like they’d be much better off as friends, but instead, we get increasing sentimentality and an unnecessary shift in Emily’s character. Suddenly, she’s in distress, and the fiercely independent scholar I enjoyed so much gets sidelined. And once I was annoyed by that, I started noticing the historical inaccuracies—this is supposed to be 1909, but the characters act like modern academics, just with cloaks. Tenure and publishing pressures weren’t really a thing yet, and Cambridge didn’t even hire its first female professor until 1939—years before it even awarded degrees to women. Little things, but they add up.
Would I read a sequel? Maybe. But do I need to own this one? Nope. Also, why do books about misanthropes always end with them suddenly discovering the joys of friendship and love? Let a grump stay grumpy!
