Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

• Author: Heather Fawcett 
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: January 16, 2024
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Series: Emily Wilde #2

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.

Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage. Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.

And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.

But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.

Despite this being one of my most anticipated new releases of 2024, I can’t believe it took me nearly a month after release to actually read this book. But, as I am fond of saying, better late than never. 

The story picks up a good bit after the events of the last book, and Emily’s comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries has been published. Her brilliant mind is finally starting to be recognized and appreciated in her field and things seem to be going well between her and Wendell, aside from that pesky marriage proposal hanging between them. And while Emily is working on her new research project to map the different realms of faerie, Wendell’s dangerous past comes back to haunt them. She already knew he was a noble, but he’s more than that—he’s an exiled king of faerie, hiding out from his mother, who wants to kill him to steal his throne. So when assassins sent by his mother come to kill Wendell in the heart of Cambridge, the upcoming research trip is altered slightly to search for a hidden door to Wendell’s kingdom so they can remove the threat hanging over his head and still complete research. 

I would read a million books about Emily and Wendell. Okay, I might be exaggerating slightly, but I really do adore those two. In fact, this book was even more enjoyable to me than the first, because we get to see their relationship in a different light, where it isn’t as antagonistic in the first book. And while both of them have their flaws, I think what I love about their relationship is that they love each other more because of their flaws, not in spite of them. Emily is a bit grouchy and she might be considered neurodivergent, because while she is brilliant in her field, she struggles in social situations, even with loved ones, as shown in this book. But she never has to worry about it when she’s with Wendell—he easily and smoothly guides dialogue in social situations, smoothing her inadvertent gaffes, and never making a thing out of it. And loving a faerie isn’t the easiest path to take, but Emily goes into it with her eyes wide open and knowing exactly what she has signed up for.

We get to meet some new side characters in this story: Emily’s niece, Ariadne, who has expressed an interest in Dryadology; and the department head, Dr. Rose, both of whom push their way onto the expedition with our meant-to-be couple. Initially, I wasn’t thrilled with Dr. Rose, but ultimately, it was Ariadne who irritated me more than I had expected. She was whiny and entitled, and I really had a difficult time empathizing with her struggles, when they occurred, although I can honestly say that my opinion on both of them had changed by the end of the story.

As for the story itself, it was everything I could have hoped from an Emily Wilde book. There were scary faeries more along the lines of what you’d find in a Holly Black book than the sexy ones from a Sarah J. Maas book, although we did get a nice little cameo of Poe, the cutest and most helpful Brownie from book one. And on top of all of these terrifying creatures, there’s the mystery of finding the right door to Wendell’s kingdom and fixing that snafu, while also stumbling upon potentially solving the disappearance of one of the most brilliant minds of the Dryadology field, which happened many years in the past. 

The fast pace, multiple plot lines, and wonderful characters kept me glued to the pages of this story, while the wonderful interactions between all of the characters had me loving the entire time I was reading this story. While this is clearly a fantasy, it felt more like a cozy fantasy to me. It had all the right elements for it—sweet characters, low stakes danger for the major characters, the coolest “pet” sidekick even if it’s a faerie grim, and a sweet romance—even if there’s still battles, scary elements, and some seriously vicious bad guys. But ultimately, this is the kind of book you don’t want to miss. And I hope that there are many more books forthcoming in this series.

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