The City of Stardust

• Author: Georgia Summers
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: January 30, 2024
• Publisher: Redhook

Thank you to Redhook and Angela Man for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: parental abandonment, child abduction, imprisonment, blood, murder, grief, torture, off-page abuse, trauma, violence

A CURSE CAN BE MANY THINGS. FOR THE EVERLYS, IT BEGINS WITH STARDUST.

For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their best and brightest taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick—and never forgives a debt.

Violet Everly was just a child when her mother, Marianne, vanished on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. And when Penelope cannot find her, the curse falls on Violet—unless she can break it first. 

To do so, she must slip into a seductive world of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods, and posters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted and yet whose knowledge is too valuable to ignore.

With the deadline looming, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.

The City of Stardust is a spellbinding debut novel from a new star of fantasy, perfect for fans of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Starless Sea.

I read this as a buddy read with the fantastic Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog and we couldn’t have picked a better book to read. It’s honestly rare to find a book summary that accurately describes the book without giving anything away, but this one manages to do it perfectly. So I went into this having a clue of what to expect, yet simultaneously having no idea of what I was in for.

Let me start out by saying that this is a pretty dark read. I wasn’t expecting it to be dark, and certainly not as dark as it is, but it actually worked. I can’t actually explain more about this without giving anything away, but let it just suffice to say that the story is so cleverly built up that when the dark parts do appear, it just sort of feels a little surprising yet it doesn’t feel out of place, instead it just feels organic, like it is supposed to be that way.

The characters in this story are incredible. We first meet Violet and her uncles, Ambrose and Gabriel, each of whom plays a very different role in her life. She’s sequestered in the family home to protect her from a curse that has affected the Everly family for generations. One member of the Everly family is taken from every generation as a punishment, but no one can remember what for. And thus we’re introduced to Penelope, the main antagonist of the story, who takes away the chosen Everly for whatever the punishment is. And along with her comes her assistant, Aleksander.

There’s a wide range of side characters that we meet, but the major characters in the story are so beautifully created and thoroughly rendered that they practically leap off the page. They’re flawed and morally gray and immensely relatable. Although it was painful to watch them suffer and struggle and make the wrong choices, sometimes more than once, it made it even better when I got to see them change and grow. The character development and their arcs were the highlight of the book for me. Becky and I spent so much time discussing the characters and their motivations, choices, and what we thought they were going to do next because it was so fascinating.

That doesn’t mean that the plot was lacking, however. I was swept away by the storyline, and wondering what was going to happen next. There’s a time limit set early in the book, so even as I was focused on finding out the next event, figuring out what was going to ultimately happen was always in the back of my mind. Whenever an author includes a bunch of surprising plot twists, there’s a pretty good chance that I’m going to enjoy the book, and with all of the other positives, this was a clear winner.

The world-building in this book is wonderful, and I loved how it was done. It isn’t easy to make a book involving multiple worlds and portals not only simple to understand but also seamless in its world-building, but Summers has pulled it off effortlessly here. There’s a dreamlike quality to the writing, almost as if you’re swept away into a different world while reading, one where anything can happen, even magic.

“She believes in curses like she believes in stories. For a curse is just another kind of story, dark and toothy and razor-edged.”

Overall, this was one of my favorite buddy reads with Becky (or anyone else), and giving it a 5 star rating was one of the easiest ratings I’ve given. From the very beginning, I found the book quite intriguing, and quickly went to thinking it was really good. Shortly after that, I revised my assessment to viewing it as impossible to put down or stop thinking about, and both Becky and I flew through it, racing each other to finish the sections first. This is one that I have no problems recommending to everyone.

People who have sat around with me while I’m reading, especially when there’s a surprising reveal, a shocking plot twist, or an unexpected event often look up in alarm when I gasp audibly. The gasp factor is directly related to the number of times I audibly gasp during a reading, and there isn’t an upper limit.

Gasp Factor: 14

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