Rook has a secret – he’s non-magical, yet a powerful sorcerer has taken him on as her apprentice. But when the Magical Consortium comes down on them for breaking the law, he ends up going on the run with Sun, the apprentice of a rival sorcerer.
I read FT Lukens’s So This is Ever After last year, which I gave an A for the romance but found the other aspects of the story less impressive. But I’ll try most things twice, and intrigued by the premise of rivals-to-lovers between a pair of sorcerer’s apprentices I decided to request Spell Bound on NetGalley.
Lukens, of course, continues to excel at writing romance. Rook is an awkward genius and grumpy Sun initially treats him as a threat, but I found myself rooting for them right from the start, and found the way they drift so smoothly from acquaintances to friends to lovers wonderfully satisfying. Their banter is so funny and cute that it gave me all the warm fuzzies, and I was excited every time they appeared on the page together.
Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with this book otherwise. While I thought the premise of the urban fantasy setting intriguing, the world-building itself left a good deal to be desired, the politics of Antonia and her interactions with the Magical Consortium unrealistic. After a very long set up, the actual conflict felt underbaked and the climax unsatisfactory, the happy ending unearned.
It’s not a bad book, but it felt unpolished, like a first or second draft which still needed development. I wish Lukens had kept the stakes lower and written Spell Bound as a cozy fantasy in the vein of, say, Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes instead.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
