This was such a unique, fantastical read! From the sapphic romance to the wonderful world-building, it had all the makings of an excellent story. I loved the plot between the knight and the witch that blends romance and mystery. Tasha Suri is a fantastic writer who knows how to invoke emotion and leave the reader wanting more.

My only complaint was that I wish it were longer, by splitting it into at least two books. I was also a bit confused by the alternate London setting and couldn't quite pinpoint its place in time.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an E-ARC of this book.

If this book was an incarnate tale, it'd be made from the whimsy and the doomed fated love of Once Upon A Broken Heart, the sharp social commentary & symbolism akin to Babel, and the complete batshit insanity re: the magic system and setting of The Starless Sea. Does this work? For the most part yes!!! I have a feeling Tasha Suri could write absolutely anything, and with the writing style this gorgeous and the characters so loveable, I would eat it up.

And the romance!!!! Despite the fact that the main characters - the witch Simran and the lady knight Vina - are literally fated to fall for each other and doom each other in every lifetime, it didn't feel insta-lovey at all. I loved both characters and was SO invested in their love story. The flirting had me swooning fr. I also thought that the side characters were well-developed and a lot of care clearly went into them, which I always love!

I have to say that I loved part 1, despite the fact that the pacing started to slow down quite a bit. But the transition into part 2 was crazy. I still don't know how I feel about it. I think I have to agree with the other reviewers that this story would work better as a duology, so that the plot would have room to breathe. I felt like the momentum was killed and there wasn't enough space left to describe what was going on in detail, so I was left feeling confused at times. But overall I was still invested in the story and the characters enough to keep going, and I loved where everyone ended up in the end.

This book is definitely worth a read, it's beautifully written and ambitious. I just wish it wasn't a standalone, so that all the plotlines and the characters could have room to be developed further.

I have yet to read any of Tasha Suri's other books, but when I found out about The Isle in the Silver Sea, I knew I had to read it. And although I might have set my expectations a little bit too high, I had a great time with Simran and Vina.

In this world, some people are born as Incarnates, fated to take on a certain role at a certain point in their lives. These tales are the very foundation of the Isle, and have been repeating themselves for centuries, no matter how tragic they may be. But now, someone is out there killing Incarnates, thus slowly destroying the Isle.

Simran and Vina, in particular, are Incarnates stuck in one of the most famous tales of all: the tale of The Knight and the Witch, fated to fall in love and die at each other's hands over and over again. But things are a lot different now: not only is there someone killing Incarnates, but both Simran and Vina are not of pureblooded Isle descent. These disturbances force one question: are things about to change in this never-changing Isle?

Reading The Isle in the Silver Sea felt like reading a fairytale: it's dark and magical, full of longing and yearning. But I'll admit I did think the romance between Simran and Vina moved too fast. I do understand that they have a connection through their past 'lives', but it didn't feel strong enough to warrant these strong feelings, especially this quickly. BUT I am weak for sapphic love, so of course I adored them and hurt with them (especially towards the end of part 1 and throughout part 2).

The pace did feel off at times, and I think that has to do with the fact that the two parts in this book aren't the same length.

The worldbuilding is interesting and compelling, but at first I was a little lost. We're given a lot of information from the start, and I guess it felt a little confusing? I did understand that the story is set in an alternative London (mostly), but the rest of the universe felt unclear for a while. That being said, I did really enjoy the world Tasha Suri imagined here, and the whole part about the Incarnates felt so unique and well-thought.

Overall, it was a satisfying book, with great characters and even greater writing, and yes: I will need to read Tasha Suri's other books. Give me more Fantasy with sapphic characters!!!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book. A gorgeous 4 star read book from me. What an exciting plot, vivid storytelling and relatable, rich characters. I couldn't put this book down – absolutely loved it

This was so unlike anything else I've read. Tasha has outdone herself with this book.

The world was beautiful and mesmerising. The tale of lovers past yearning for each other for centuries but ultimately ending in tragedy was so well told. The slow burn between Vina and Simran was very beautiful.

Tasha continues to be one of my favourite authors.

The Isle in the Silver Sea is absolutely everything I hoped it would be and more!! The world is so rich, immersive and otherworldly that I found myself lingering on pages just to savour the details. I loved the mythical, fairytale like feel, alive with history and magic and the recurring stories woven throughout the narrative added incredible depth.

The romance was tender, slow-burning and utterly captivating. I absolutely adored Simran and Vina and found myself completely swept away in their story.

My first Tasha Suri read and 100% not my last!! I can’t wait to read more from her!

✨️𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆
A knight and a witch. Soulmates. A love story that resurrects itself across lifetimes—only to crash and burn. Until this time, someone’s hunting them. The myths say they’re meant to suffer. But what if they just say “no” to fate and chaos the whole system?

🍵𝗧𝗲𝗮 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀
This book possessed me like a Victorian ghost in a crumbling manor. I was just trying to have a normal evening and instead got slapped in the face by a centuries-long love story that made me want to dig up my past lives and scream into a church bell. Listen. I read this book and now I need to be locked in a tower with a candle and a centuries-old love letter. This isn’t just a love story—it’s emotional reincarnation trauma with ✨sapphic yearning✨ and a side of poetic suffering.

Simran and Vina have that tragic, slow-burn, soul-deep yearning that makes me want to rip my own heart out and gift it to them in a moss-covered box. Tasha Suri wrote this with a quill dipped in pain and poetry and I’m not okay.

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿
📜 Sapphic Romance
🌌 Reincarnation Cycle
⚔️ Knight/Witch Dynamic
🌒 Medieval Folklore
🕯️ Emotional Depth
🗡️ Assassination Mystery

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri is such a good story... 5 star reading from me. I totally recommend everyone to read this book as fast as they can because it's really good and the characters are fantastic.

Loved the concept of an English island where the characters are trapped in the stories of their old folk tales, but I was struggling to keep up as we constantly switched location and introduced more and more characters. I finally decided to quit when the plot contradicted itself - Vina said in the crypt tunnels that if anyone turned up she'd know, and then two people immediately turned up. I'm lost.

2025 is truly the year of the lady knights and Tasha Suri wrote an appropriate tale for the occasion. She really captivated me with the concept of a magical Isle shaped by endlessly repeating tales, and it ultimately must be one of the most imaginative stories I've read all year. It's a world where some people are born as incarnates, which means that they will take on a role in a tale at some point in their lives. Their fate is set, however tragic it may be, as the tale forces itself onto its characters, feeding the eternal Isle in the process. Vina and Simran are reincarnations trapped in the "Tale of the Knight and the Witch", a story that has had them madly in love and dying at each other's hand for hundreds of years now. The old tale starts playing out once again, but it is during a time of many changes. Someone impossibly kills incarnates, causing old tales to vanish and therefore damage to the Isle. It is also unusual that the knight and the witch are not of pureblooded Isle descent, and so both Vina and Simran mark a bit of a disturbance in the never-changing ways of the land. They are of course not keen on eventually killing their beloved and would rather prevent the tale from unfolding. But all tales and incarnates are under strict surveillance by the Eternal Queen, and all information is regulated or straight up destroyed. The main plot has a quest-like nature with Vina and Simran setting out to search for answers. They meet supernatural creatures, walk through witchy forests and stumble into faerie bargains. The world is rich with folklore and I loved recognizing familiar stories. I was surprised to see that the book doesn't take place in a medieval setting, but it didn't bother me too much and it was a good way to include more modern themes. I also expected it to be more romance heavy, but Vina and Simran's relationship turned out to be one of the least convincing parts of the story for me. It's not exactly instalove, but most of their attraction relies on their past lives together and their connection through the tale, and that just didn't make me as excited for their current selves.

It's a book about breaking an eternal cycle, about rewriting one's fate, about bringing change to a world stuck in the past. It's an ambitious story and I'm sure it was hard to find the right way of telling it. The book felt really long in a way that I wished for it either to be shortened or to be drawn out into a series. There were some episodes that made me question their function in the overall story, because I just couldn't detect any progress. Then there's a big time jump in the second half of the book and it was really unsatisfying to say the least. All the characters are put into new surroundings, and it was exhausting to basically start the story all over again after already reading for a long time. I have no solution for the problems I had with this book, so maybe that's why they didn't dim my reading experience too badly. I was reading with great interest and I'm still in awe of the fantastical world that Tasha Suri created here. My actual rating is 3.5 stars, but I'm happily rounding up on Goodreads.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK / Orbit Books for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

★★★★★ — A story I’ll be thinking about for a long, long time

I made a NetGalley account just to request this book, and it was worth every bit of anticipation. I haven’t read Tasha Suri’s previous works yet, but if The Isle in the Silver Sea is any indication of what she’s capable of, I’ll be devouring the Burning Kingdoms trilogy next.

This book was everything I love in a fantasy book: gorgeously written, steeped in myth, filled to the brim with personality and UGH!!! It was so good. It’s rare that reincarnation (one of my favourite tropes) is handled so well in a book — it’s often used to justify insta-love — but here, while they fell quiickly, it felt earned. Part 2 surprised me in the best way, and while it could have worked as a duology, I personally perferred the fact that it was a strong standalone.

Simran stole my heart completely. She was exactly the kind of character I adore reading about. She was sharp, reserved, stubborn and didn't take shit from anyone (so her arc in Part 2 broke me a little). The way we see her interacting with people and the world, how she pushes them away yet cares so deeply is so well characterised. She's amazing.

I also fell in love with Vina. If you know me, you know I hate the "golden boy" coded characters because it feels like the narrative is trying to force my hand into liking them. But Vina was so genuine. An unabashed idealist and well meaning yet also cocky and so fun. She didn't irritate me like a character that was supposed to be a pure-hearted knight should've.

Their romance is exactly what I want in a romance. It was obliviously propelled by the tale that they were tied to but it was also believable on its own. They worked well together and the way they cared for each other??? There was also no misunderstanding/miscommunication trope, hallelujah.

And the side characters!!! My goodness, my heart is full to the brim with love for them. I loved that there were some unfriendly side characters that were allowed to just be unfriendly without being villains. Let witches be bitches! I loved Hari and his romance with [redacted], it was unexpected and made me emotional. I loved Cora and Vaughan and their sibling bond. I loved Ophelia and the Beast. I loved the Laidly Wyrm in her all her incarnations. I loved Edmund and the spymaster and even the less kind side characters. Meera was interesting and Vina's relationship with her father kind of broke my heart, same with Simran and her parents.

The world was rich, lived in and full of life. It was hard to pinpoint what time period it took place it but that was no bother to me. Tales are fluid and often, their edges undefined. The world-building was so satisfying. Figuring things out with Simran and Vina, how to stop the Isle from dying, what even was causing it. I love a good fairy tale and this whole book was steeped in them.
The way Elsewhere-born people lost their tongue, their origins, their own stories when they crossed into the Isle? Kinda gave me chills. Such a powerful and smart echo of real-world assimilation and colonial erasure.

The writing was stunning. I highlighted so many lines whilst reading and I want to tattoo them. I love when a book puts words to a feeling in ways I haven't already seen a thousand times and Suri does it beautifully time and time again.

In short: this was a solid 5/5. I fell so hard for these characters, this world, and this story. Simran, Vina, Hari, Galath, and the rest will stay with me. Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for the eARC.

(TikTok review to come in a few days @junifornow)

Tasha Suri wields language like a divine instrument, conjuring mountains from whispers and summoning oceans with a turn of phrase. The Isle in the Silver Sea is a love letter to the power of storytelling, and within it, Suri's own magic shines, reminding us that some authors don't just tell stories- they shape worlds. Lush, lyrical, and deeply emotional, this book is an unforgettable journey through myth, memory, and the stories that shape us. Suri is a master at crafting relationships that ache with longing, loyalty, and loss.
I'm truly grateful to the publisher and NetGalley to have received this ARC!

Thank you Natgally and the Publisher for this ARC.
I will give a more detailed review once the book is published.

I will be entirely honest upfront - I love Tasha Suri. As an author I mean, this is not some declaration of a para-social relationship.
I loved the Lotus Empire Trilogy and the second she even TEASED the sapphic knight and witch story, I was 100% in. When it ‘launched’ on NetGalley, I ran to request it and would’ve been utterly distraught to have to wait for publication date...now that date is going to be when I get a hardcopy for her to sign and will place like a trophy on my shelves.

It would’ve been so easy for this book to disappoint with how much I had hyped it up in my own mind. It didn’t it far surpassed all of the expectations I had.

The premise is ‘simple’: The Isle (read: GB) was created and maintained by Tales, these tales are embodied by incarnates over and over again through history. Live your tale, the land is safe. But like always, there’s complications.
Vina (our knight) and Simran (our Witch) have lived their tale countless times - enchantment, love and the subsequent ultimate sacrifice - but when two young women with ‘Elsewhere’ blood are the incarnates for the great tale, the Eternal Queen didn’t stand a chance.

This book truly has everything that my brain and heart could want in a novel. A range of queer representation: check. Lore: check. Sapphic yearning: check. Plenty of characters to simultaneously lust after, envy and idolise: check. Myths, legends and magics: check.

Tasha Suri’s The Isle in the Silver Sea is a sapphic doomed romance with an interesting magic system - perfect for fans of The Priory in The Orange Tree and A Forgery of Fate.

I am so here for sapphic fantasy, and this book was a fun play on folktales and legends.

Set in a fantasy Britain where magic is real and other countries are referred to simply as 'Elsewhere', legends and tales come to life. Those who come from 'Elsewhere', like Simran's parents, must eventually forget their own languages so as to not affect or influence the tales. Each generation 'Incarnates' are born - people whose destiny it is to be part of a tale, which they must live out in order to preserve the tale and the surrounding area, even if it means their death. Incarnates also have memories of their past selves.

Simran and Vina, our main protaganists and both Incarnates, are part of a tale called 'The Knight and the Witch', about a witch who uses her magic to lure a knight into falling in love with her, and who is eventually killed by the knight. But Simran and Vina don't want to die, and despite the growing attraction between them and their tale clearly beginning, will do anything to break the chains and change history. Simran and Vina felt well developed and distinct, and I enjoyed them as characters, particularly Vina's cocky self.

I really enjoyed the magic in this one, and also how we got to see other tales and legends - plus a magic system that requires sacrifice? Hell yes! It's so much more impactful than just being able to cast a spell with no consequences.

Halfway through I was puzzled as how this was going to progress because it felt like it was gearing up for the ending - I can't explain it without spoilers but the last half was unexpected!

Overall, a really fantastic take on myths and legends and the real people behind them.

“Was falling in love really special, really as miraculous as it felt, if thousands of versions of herself, across the Isle's blood-soaked past, had done and felt the same things she did now?”

~

This book was a masterpiece through and through. The world building was extremely well-done and easy to follow, the magic system as well, and both main characters incredibly lovable from the start. I have loved all the side characters the moment we met them, and I kept being surprised as the story progressed.

There’s so much more I want to say, but it’s so hard to put into words how interesting this story was and how much it kept me on my toes. Thank you NetGallery and Orbit for the advanced copy in exchange for a review!

5 ⭐️

Queer, Arthuriana fantasy with faeries, witches and a hot lady knight. Such a cool concept but I just found the world building and magic system to be underdeveloped. Simran and Vina were interesting characters but felt a bit surface level which I’m sad about as they had so much potential. Overall 3.5 stars.

2025 features Lady Knight autumn, and I'm here for it! I'm excited for all the different aspects these stories can entail.

This one is a story about how we are bound to the tales passed down for generations - or if we can overcome them and change our fates. Of which stories should be protected and what should be burned down to the ground.
It's also a story about what love is, and what it is not.
And it's a powerful story about how people in power try to shape the world, and thus erasing what is different, diverse, and does not feed their sense of what is "right".

Our Lady Knight and Lady Witch are destined to carry out a tale time and time again - ending with the death of their incarnate selves for the sake of stabilizing the land they live in.

The book is divided in two parts - and I admit I had trouble getting back into the story after the break, to get invested all over again. However, it's a crucial and very well executed part of the whole.

The magic system and overall concept were so intriguing: a land fueled by stories, the archives where the 'proper' tales are stored, the incarnates that preserve the land.
However, I would have liked to get a better grasp on the world and how the magic works. To me it seemed a bit shrouded (and got my head spinning I admit!). I am not sure if this was intentional or not, but at least while reading I would have wished for clarity at times.

As mentioned, the social commentary is powerful and multi-layered, and it will live in my head for a very long time.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm doing this story justice with my review - it's so complex and shows so many facettes. But these are my thoughts.

And if you need one more thing to convince you to read: adorable cat familiar!

4,5/5 stars

Thank you @netgalley and @LittleBrownBookGroup_UK for the eARC

#TheIsleInTheSilverSea #LadyKnight #Netgalley #Bookstagram

I was given this e-Arc in exchange for an honest review 🌱

Vina and Simran are the Knight and the Witch of the legendary tale, destined to fall in love and then kill each other in a never-ending loop.

The word that I can use to describe this book is "fairytale", the way it curls and soars at every word. I truly had a wonderful time reading Simran and Vina's story, and I was so happy to be able to read a sapphic story like this one. Special mention to Hari, who's a sweetheart who deserves all the best the world can offer him.
Fans of the Burning Kingdom trilogy (as I am) will be happy to hear that even though it is a stand-alone, there is the same intensity and depth to the characters than the previous books! Also I thought about Vina and Priya meeting, and I laughed out loud, they'd be so funny.
Thank you again for the e-Arc, I waited so long for this book, and it did not disappoint!