Fairyloot Romantasy – December 2025

Betray Me Again

Perfect for readers that love:
🩸 Vampires
⚔️ High-Stakes Competitions
❤️‍🔥 Slow Burn Romance

We Who Will Die by Stacia Stark

🖤 An exclusive redesigned cover with artwork by @dariabobrova.art and design by @aeadraws
🖤 A reversible dust jacket featuring a colourway variation of the trade cover
🖤 Full colour artwork on the hardcover with foil by @stellabookishart and design by @aeadraws (front, back & spine)
🖤 Character artwork on the endpapers by @petit_kitsune with foil by @blanca.design (different front & back)
🖤 Digitally sprayed edges on all three edges by @dariabobrova.art and @aeadraws
🖤 Author letter with a digital signature bound into the book.

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BLURB

Life in the perilous Thorn district is a constant battle for Arvelle and her younger brothers. And the vampire standing on her doorstep is about to turn their world upside down.

Faced with an unthinkable choice, Arvelle makes a magically binding vow to do the impossible: kill the emperor, an ancient vampire created by the god Umbros. But first, she must enter the Sundering—an arena where only the fastest, strongest, and deadliest survive long enough to be selected for the emperor’s elite guard.

She quickly draws the ire of the Primus, the powerful figure charged with protecting the emperor. But the vampire under the armor is the last person Arvelle expects to encounter in the emperor’s court.

With her brothers’ lives in the balance, Arvelle has no choice but to ally with the man who once shattered her heart… and with the emperor’s sadistic son, Rorrik—two vampires whose motives are impossible to pin down. Rorrik holds the key to understanding the powers Arvelle is developing—abilities that would put a price on her head if discovered by the emperor.

To survive the arena and complete her mission, Arvelle must get to the bottom of a conspiracy that will change everything she thought she knew about herself—and the two vampires who are deeply entwined with her destiny…

Sound like something you’d like? I cant wait to read it!

Top Ten Tuesday is featured by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Topic: Popular Books On My TBR That I Haven’t Read

A swerve from the picked topic as I did my 2026 goals for blogmas! I thought I’d shame myself and post popular books that are on my tbr (because I can’t resist the fomo!) that I still haven’t read. I wonder if 2026 will be my year for them!!!

Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross
Silvercloak by LK Steven
Mate by Ali Hazelwood
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
Silver Elite by Dani Francis

Powerless by Lauren Roberts
Alchemised by Senlinyu
Daughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent
Quicksilver by Callie Hart

Any on here on your tbr?

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer  It’s a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received.

Hope you’ve had a good week!

Not much to report this week really. I’ve been stuck in a bit of a reading funk, and instead of picking up one of the ARCs I have, I reread ACOTAR!!!!!

I did also listen to an audiobook from my TBR, so I haven’t abandoned it completely!!!

I’m still really bummed about losing my Bookstagram account. Years of effort and love just… gone. It’s been hard to wrap my head around, and I definitely still feel the sting!!!

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🎧 A Scar in the Bone by Sophie Jordan
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

See my review soon!

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Feature – February Releases
Feature – Dismal December Reading

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Unboxing – Fairyloot Romantasy: December
Review – The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow

What have you read lately?

In March 2025, I posted about StoryGraph rolling out monthly reading stats… and then forgot all about it 🙃.

As I’ve been thinking about new ways to jazz up my blog for 2026, I realised I don’t actually post a monthly reading update. I track my stats, I obsess over them and then nothing ever makes it onto my blog!!!!

So I thought that, alongside my Sunday Post updates, I’d post my stats.

Reading slumps, end-of-year exhaustion, and festive stuffs made my December reading…..well…dismal!

1,715 pages.
Four books.
All fiction — fantasy-heavy
50/50 split evenly between eBooks and physical reads.

For January I made it a goal to read some of my arc’s so will see how I do in my next update!

Do you like seeing stats like this?

Here are some new books releasing in February 2026 that I’m most excited for…

In the spirit of decreasing my book buying, I am trying to be responsible and not buy many books. But then, 3 preorders later and here we are!!!

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
A Dark Forgetting by Kristen Ciccarelli
Cinder Vale by Caroline Peckham

Will you be getting any of these?

Top Ten Tuesday is featured by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Topic: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2026

For the first time in a lot of years, I haven’t noted down what books are releasing that I want so I had to go and find lists!

It looks as though 2026 is shaping up to be a phenomenal year for book lovers – lucky us! 

These are the upcoming book releases in early 2026 that I am most anticipating!

Enchanting the Fae Queen by Stephanie Burgis – 29 January
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett – 17 February
Erase Me Josh Silver – 10 March
Innamorata by Ava Reid – 17 March
Heir of Twisted Lies by LJ Andrews – 26 March

The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty – 7 April
We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune – 30 April
How to Fake it in Society by KJ Charles – 30 April
Fury Bound by Sable Sorensen – 5 May
Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter – 7 May

What are yours?

Do we share any?

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer  It’s a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received.

Hope you’ve had a good week!

Back to reality….a full week back at work, school runs, a hacked phone and an emotional audiobook! I survived. Barely!

So something unexpected happened….my phone was hacked? Or at least, that’s the only way I can describe it. The operating system was somehow changed, and my only option was to restore the phone to factory settings. I still can’t access Facebook or Instagram and I was locked out of Outlook. Thankfully, my son worked his magic and managed to get me back in to email. I was so happy as there are 9 years worth of photos of my son stored in that email. Lesson learned, I immediately backed everything up in two additional places!

I did manage to conquer one major goal this week. After a full month, I finally finished a 35-hour audiobook. Thirty-five hours. Completed.

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🎧 Empire of the Dawn by Jay Kristoff
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

See my review soon!

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Review – Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree
Review – Forged in Blood by Sadie Kincaid

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Feature – February Releases
Feature – Dismal December Reading

What have you read lately?

Title: Forged in Blood

Series: Broken Bloodlines #1

Author: Sadie Kincaid

Genre: Dark Romantasy

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Forged in Blood Summary

Every few millennia, a child is born.
Some say they’re marked with a curse.
Others claim they possess the power of the ages.

Meet Ophelia Hart. Lover of classic literature and unicorns. An orphan with nobody in her corner—no family, no friends. But it’s her loneliness that fuels her life’s ambition to become a social worker and help the forgotten children just like her. For a foster kid with only slightly above-average grades, it feels like a pipe dream.

Except it seems that someone is looking out for Ophelia after all. When an unexpected opportunity to attend Montridge University arises, she thinks her life is finally taking a turn for the better.

Too bad she comes to the attention of the three ruthless, arrogant commanders of the Ruby Dragon Society. Three of the most feared and powerful vampires on campus.

But Ophelia doesn’t believe in vampires. Or in witches, or magic, or ancient prophecies.

Until she has no choice. Little does she know, she’s about to have her whole world turned upside down. Because there is something about Ophelia Hart. Something that captures not only the attention of the Ruby Dragon commanders, but also their powerful, enigmatic sire—Professor Alexandros Drakos.

With no idea of the power running through her veins, Ophelia must learn to trust the very men whom all others fear. And she needs to do it fast, for there are darker forces at work than those at Montridge University. Forces that were long ago Forged in Blood.

I was in the mood for pure escapism — I wanted drama, spice, and vampires. Then this popped up on TikTok and I thought… why not?

You get a weak female lead, a dark and brooding professor, three vampy bad-boy boyfriends, and a long-buried secret.

It was okay. The dialogue felt quite juvenile at times, and I honestly couldn’t remember how old Ophelia was meant to be. I even went looking for her age and couldn’t find it, which didn’t help.

Unfortunately, I also found her pretty annoying. Malachi, however, completely saved the book for me — he was by far the standout character.

The ending also felt a bit odd, like it stopped. No cliffhanger, no drama, just stopped after some (hot) nookie!!!!

That said, I did get exactly what I wanted (see my opening paragraph!), even if it didn’t fully win me over and I’m not sure I’ll continue with the rest of the series.

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Sound like something you’d like?

Title: Brigands and Breadknives

Series: Legends and Lattes #2

Author: Travis Baldree

Genre: Cozy fantasy

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Legends and Lattes Series Reviews

If you’d like to read my reviews for the earlier books in the series, you can find them below:

Bookshops and Bonedust #0
Legends and Lattes #1

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BLURB

Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!

If only things were so simple…

It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.

A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.

As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when there isn’t a job to get in the way.

Back with Viv and Tandri in Thrune and who should arrive but Fern, who seems to be having an existential life crisis!

So what’s one to do when having an internal crisis? Get drunk. Sneak into a wagon to sleep. Wake up in a strange place with people you don’t know. We’ve all been there!!!!

Fern decides to hang out for a bit with Astryx the Legendary Blademistress elf, her captive, Zyll the crazy chaos goblin and a talking sword called Nigel! It ALL goes off and Fern learns a lot about herself and also finds a life companion!

It’s not my favourite of the Legends and Lattes series but Ferns expletives made my life!

‘Fern’s deep well of profanity temporarily ran dry.’

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Sound like something you’d like?