How Does It Feel? By Jeneane O’Riley - Book Review

Book Rating: ⭐⭐.5

Genre: Adult Fantasy Romance

Spice: Extra Hot

Summary:

Callie, a biologist studying moths and butterflies in small town Michigan, is trying to find a poisonous mushroom that she believes will save a threatened moth species. When she finds the mushrooms with the help of the town’s resident drunk, “crazy” Earl, he tries to keep her from staying too long, claiming he’s made a mistake showing her the location of the mushroom. When she later returns by herself, Callie falls through a portal made of the mushrooms into the realm of the Fae, landing on the Prince of the Unseelie when she does. After attempting to kill her, the darkly attractive prince captures Callie, and takes her to the dungeon.

Prince Mendax hates humans and was attempting to enter the human realm with his army when a human woman comes out of the portal. He assumes she is an assassin sent by the humans to kill him to prevent him from taking over the human realm, even though she denies she is there to kill him. Mendax doesn’t believe her but quickly becomes infatuated with the clever human woman. To prevent her from disrupting his plans, he announces she will undergo three deadly trials. If she can survive, he will allow her to go home.

Callie must try to survive the trials and get back to her family while ignoring her growing attraction to the villainous Mendax.

Reaction:

I thought this book had a strong start. I quickly liked Callie as a character for her humor, cleverness, and independence, even though I thought the character seemed a bit scatter-brained at times. I also thought the concept was interesting, and was reading quickly up until Callie is dumped in the Fae world. At that point in the story, there started being cryptic statements that made me think “Did I miss something?”. As the book went on, those occurrences happened more and more frequently, but I kept reading because the scenes where I did understand what was going on were relatively entertaining. Unfortunately, for me the ending was way too confusing. Even though there is some explanation for why Callie acted the way she did, in a way it answered one question but created another fifty. I think the idea the author had for the character was interesting, but I think I would have enjoyed the book more if the backstory was revealed as the story went along, instead of briefly referencing it at the end of the book. I was still interested in finding out what happens in the story, but when I read reviews for the next book, it seemed like it was more of the same – no full explanation related to the revelations introduced at the end of this book. For this reason, I probably won’t continue with this series.