There’s a lot of book here for something that felt so rushed and incomplete. Everything about this book had potential, but it all felt unfinished. Illyse was the most fleshed out character of them all, but everyone else felt flat and lacked any real grit or personality.

The narration was very repetitive at times (how many times can we explain that relationships between sorceresses and humans are illegal, really). A lot of the plot points felt like they were cobbled together from a bunch of other incomplete stories instead of one cohesive narrative.

I don’t know, this one just missed the mark.

This book reminded me of a relaxing summer afternoon in the sun. It was such an easy read and I adored the characters and the world they were set in. I honestly hope the author writes another book in this realm, with overlap characters or even totally new characters to be introduced.
If you love witchy cottage vibe books, I can easily recommend this book to you.
The characters were relatable and well developed. The story and the world had enough interesting details to keep the plot moving without being bogged down with too much fantasy building and magic rules.

I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

I really enjoyed the storyline of this book. I also enjoyed the relationship between Illyse and Garit. I like how they were open and helped each other through their struggles. There was a lot going on during this book and Illyse and Garit helped each other to grow and become stronger. As for the story, I enjoyed the water theme and how Nicole leaves you on your toes during the fight scenes with the antagonists. I was a bit confused when the story didn't finish after the first fight, but I really enjoyed seeing how Illyse and Garit lived during the spring. It was a great addition because if the storyline ended in winter there would have been a lot of unanswered questions!

I wish there was more world-building to understand more about the character's past and how why everything in this world is the way it is. I wish there were more information about what happened when Illyse got captured and when she and Garit started investigating the murders. I would say that their relationship is instalove, but I would be wrong. With that being said, I wish there was a more in-depth perception of their relationship and how they got to where they were when they started to become fond of each other in the book.

Overall, this book would be great to read on a winter's day in front of a fireplace with some hot chocolate. If you are looking for a nice quick fantasy book, give this book a try. The beginning is a bit slow, but keep with it.

WARNING: SPOILERS

The pacing of this was off and there wasn't quite enough worldbuilding to really pull me into the story. I never really felt I had a good grasp on the world as a whole - what the history was like, the motivations of the characters, etc. The romance felt rushed and unrealistic and the spicy scenes weren't good enough to make up for that (I also didn't realise it was romance when I started reading, so those came as quite the surprise). There were also a lot of apparent foreshadowing that led to nowhere - like hinting it was a bad idea to release sorceresses from their imprisonment but nothing bad actually happening when they were. It was deeply confusing when the plot switched from sorceresses being demonised to the main characters battling heretofore unmentioned semi-human magical creatures whose motivation was incredibly lacking. The first half of the book made it seem like the king was the antagonist, but then it was like part-way through another group of antagonists just showed up out of nowhere and decided to wreak havoc, turning the despot king into one of the good guys.

The more I think about this book, the more confused I am about the lack of substance. If I hadn't been on a plane when I read it, I probably wouldn't have finished.

*I would like to thank NetGalley for providing me with a free e-ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review*
"For you, this is a love story. For us, this is an adventure." This sentence stuck out for me more than any other in this book. However, as I sit and reflect on my review, I realize this remark is such a statement of the obvious while at the same time couldn't be further from the truth. The love story between our 2 characters was bombastic. Their tale was so in-your-face while simultaneously fragmented and utterly incomplete. I will give it credit for breaking away from the typical star-crossed lover's trope. This kind of jumped right into the affair with little back story or lead-up. I actually missed that. I want more mystery. More build-up. More ingredients to the recipe of their relationship. Instead, it came off haphazard and disjointed. What do they love about each other? Why are there such strong feelings toward one another? Where did those emotions stem from? Where is the enigma? There is the obvious Romeo and Juliet element. Two lovers who are not allowed to be together. Please! Give me something more involved, interesting and original!
While I found myself bored with the love story itself, I did appreciate some of the thorough visualizations. There was a plethora of flowery words and mental imagery. The world-building was sufficient. Character development was so-so. Lots of parts of the story were overly explained. The weather, the surroundings, and what clothes they were wearing were so meticulous that it was almost exhausting. Yet the characters were incomplete and could have definitely been elaborated further.
Overall, this book was okay. It felt scattered and haphazard. The love story, the actual basis of the book, was deficient and severely lacking. Solid 3 stars

Rating: 3.75/5 🌟
Characters: 5/5🌟
Cover: 4.5/5 🌟
Story: 4/5 🌟
Writing: 4/5 🌟
Type: Novel
Worth?: ❤️‍🔥

Sorceress
Forbidden Love

Dislike: The time leaps throughout the novel which left the love between two characters seem very instant. Would have loved to see the development between the two characters more.
•World building needs a little more development

••Received an ARC for an honest review••

"Nobody falls in love with a sorceress without being at least a little bit wicked."

When Illyse is captured by the king, she has no choice but to work with Garit to solve the problem of murders. With that begins a story of the forbidden romance.
I liked Illyse very much. She's clever, strong and a survivor. She does everything to save her life and the man she loves. The romance between her and Garit is very sweet.
The worldbuilding is also good. There are powerful sorceresses, spells, nixies and chameleon animals.
I recommend it to everyone who loves forbidden, sweet romance, sorceresses and mystery.

I thought this was a pretty good romantic fantasy. I thought it was cute and fun, but a little cliche.

What a lovely romance fantasy book! I don't typically like first person narratives but Nicole Bea's prose was definitely lyrical enough to keep me reading. I read this in one sitting, if that says anything!

Thank you to NetGalley and Sword and Silk Books for the DRC!

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of Beneath the Starlit Sea.

I ~liked~ this book but didn’t love it. I liked the idea of this book and enjoyed reading about a sorceress but something about this book just fell flat for me. The MC’s power is “contained” for basically the entire story. There is practically no character development or world building. The chapters sometimes jumped ahead months at a time which left the romance feeling extremely “insta-love” and was probably my least favorite part of the story. However, I did like that this book was fast paced, easy to read, and the plot was interesting.

Dnf @ 33%

She fell in insta-love with her captor. Sorry, the writing is really beautiful but I’m not here for it.

A light romantic fantasy with magic about a sorceress and a fox, forced into service of a King in order to solve murders of the sea.
I enjoyed the plot and the world building in this book. I felt that the romance came from nowhere and that it was a little forced to start with. I felt it needed to be built up to and not bam there in a forbidden relationship. I felt I needed more context in the whole monsters aspect In the book.
I feel this book had a good amount of potential but felt it fell little flat in some areas unfortunately.

Beautiful cover design and lovely quick read overall. I’d definitely enjoy delving back into this world in another book.

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and publishers for this eARC I received.

This cover caught my attention along with the historical fantasy romance involving a witch and a human doctor. I loved the world and atmosphere of this story. The Germanic and Slavic mythology was a really cool and unique addition to the story I loved the fox familiar and how Garit was essentially turned into a fox shifter as well. I didn't feel any chemistry between the characters though. They felt more like coworkers than lovers. Their sex scenes while descriptively well done held no emotional punch for me. I hated their fabricated "drama" with his betrothed. Illyse's actions were that of a jealous and untrusting teenager not that of an older sorceress I loved everything but the romance in this story

What a wonderful read! A light fantasy, romance that will keep you hooked from page one. The main characters are easy to fall in love with and root for. A very refreshing story!

Beneath the Starlit Sea has a lot of promise as a story. The premise is really interesting, and think that it could be incredible with a little work. The story follows a witch and a doctor who are tasked to discover what’s been killing men at night. The threat is potentially magical, but it’s been hard to find any discerning evidence.

That being said, this reads almost like a draft zero to me. Sure, there’s been line editing, but I think there’s a ways to go with developmental edits.

The first thing that struck me was the length of the sentences. Each sentence is a plodding run-on with little to no variation. I feel like breaking up the sentences would bring the book up to a three star book almost immediately. As it is currently, reading it feels like a slog. The sentence structure also, unfortunately, detracts from the really interesting descriptions because it’s all shoved into one line. This makes the pacing both incredibly fast, while feeling slow.

The story spends little to no time building emotional weight, and so scenes don’t stand out. Nor do the characters, unfortunately. And when the romance begins, I almost got whiplash. The love interest, Garit, seems like a stand-in for Geralt (The Witcher) for the first few chapters, until he’s suddenly waxing poetic about how his love is the kind that bards write about. It feels very out of character, and I have no other context clues to make sense of this shift in his nature. Similarly, Illyse, our main character, doesn’t seem to have more than an attraction to him at first. Then out of the blue she’s in love. We’re to believe these two have been working together for two months, and then this just occurs. Their relationship should have been more advanced than it was, in my opinion.

Ultimately, the reason I feel like this reads like a “draft zero” is because it reads as if the author is plotting out the story. I,e, “This happens, then this happens, then this happens.” While there are some good nuggets of prose, certain scenes definitely need to be expanded upon. I know people roll their eyes at the “show, don’t tell” advice, but this is a perfect instance of how a story could be improved upon by following it. We’re often told what is happening, but there’s no sense of what it looks, feels, smells, sounds, or tastes like.

Ultimately, I gave this two stars because I feel like it has so much potential to be something amazing. Howevre, it just didn’t hit the mark for me, personally. I genuinely don’t think it’s bad, just feel that it’s not for me and the style I’ve come to enjoy.

This was not the book for me. I DNFed it after the first chapter. The writing was too flowery and overly descriptive for me. I found myself getting distracted by sentence structure and the way the author described something. When I realized what the author was trying to say, I wished she’d been more straight-forward. Also, the action moved so fast right off the bat I felt myself reeling to catch up to what was going on.

This may be a book for you though. I felt the same way about Margaret Rogerson’s Sorcery of Thorns writing style, and lots of people love that book. Sorry I couldn’t post a positive review, so I decided not to include it on my bookstagram.

I liked this book's protagonist, and I liked its premise. It very much had the exiled sorceress Witcher vibe in terms of schooling; however, I found it lacking in substance.

The writing was too fast paced for the timeline that the book was supposed to be running on and it had what was probably a record in terms of the protagonist falling in insta-love. There was too much plot shoved into one book here, and I expected it to wrap up and move on to a second novel at least 100 pages earlier than it did. The world building needs some extra time put into it since it seemed interesting but wasn't elaborated on enough.

I really wanted to like this book, I think up until about the 50-60% mark I did really like it. Then it just went off the rails and everything moved so fast I’m not sure I really understand what happened. The characters and world building was interesting but for a 70+ year old sorceress Ilyse acts a lot like a child.

This book was so much fun to read and I have been looking for fantasy books that aren’t so heavy and intense 24/7.A sorceress is forced to serve the king falls in love with his right hand man - and he falls for her. It is light and lovely with captivating writing that is easy to visualize. The pace of the chapters is always a big deal for me and long drawn out chapters make me so bored but this book was amazing because it was fast paced but didn’t feel rushed - perfect length of chapters!

I read this in a few days so not so engulfed in it but it was still a very enjoyable read!

Illyse has all the qualities of other MC’s that I absolutely love. Somewhat problematic and unhinged but strong and knows what she wants and leads with her heart. The only thing I didn’t understand is the connection between the starlit sea. Maybe I missed it but it was unclear for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an eARC copy of this novel for free in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book. I didn't love it. I found it was a quick read with an engaging lead couple. But I was frustrated that there was little background or context provided for things like why sorceresses were hated or the outlawing of relations between humans and 'monsters'. The relationship between Illyse and Garit was pretty much an insta-love. There was no build-up, no tension and very little will they or won't they (hint: they did lol).

I think the premise of this novel was great - had all the makings of forbidden love/enemies to lovers mixed with an interesting mystery side plot involving the murdered men. It just needed a lot more meat - world building, character development, plotting, etc.

2.5 rounded up to 3 stars for me. .