Fantastical (Fantasyland, #3)

by Kristen Ashley

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

3.5 stars

This is the third book in Kristen Ashley’s Fantasyland series. In this series, we continue to have a female who is transported from our world into a parallel universe that is more like a Fantasyland (hence the series name). Two out of the three books in the series, the women have no idea what is going on, they just all of a sudden in a different world. They don’t understand what is going on or where they are at. None of the men know what is going at the beginning.

In this book, Cora Goode goes to sleep, but wakes up some place completely different. She is all of a sudden hearing birds talk to her. Her sister is there and she is like someone from a fairy tale as well, as she brisks about singing. That is until Cora lets her sister see her fiance before the wedding which brings about a curse. Obviously, the Cora of our world knows nothing about said curse, but the Cora of this world did. So everyone thinks she planned this.

Noctorno (Tor) Hawthorne is the prince of this land. He is also the ruler of another land that he conquered himself. His people and his men love him. He is the leader that everyone wants from a prince. However, no one likes his wife, Cora. She is nothing like the Cora from our world. The Cora of this world is lazy, selfish and quite frankly, a bitch. Tor doesn’t like her, but she is also the other half of his soul, so he’s stuck with her.

I enjoyed watching as Cora worked so hard to make people like her. It was not an easy task as her other self had gone so far out of her way to make everyone else’s lives miserable when she was around. She tries to explain to Tor that she is from a different world and that she isn’t the same Cora as his wife. He doesn’t know what his wife is up to, but he will enjoy the time that he has with this less bitchy woman. He is also a bit of a jerk in that it takes an awful long time for him to believe Cora.

While I enjoyed this story, it wasn’t as good as the first two stories in this series. I’m not 100% sure exactly what made me like it less. I think at times, it felt a little too Disney, maybe. There is also the case that both Cora and Tor go back to our world for part of the book. I don’t think I liked that part as much as when they are in the fantasy world. I don’t want to give this the impression that I didn’t enjoy it, I did. I just didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the first two books. I’m excited to jump into book four to see what happens next and what hero and heroine we have coming up. In this series, unlike most PNR series I’ve read, you meet pretty much a whole new cast of characters for each book. The previous characters do make appearances, but they are extremely small.

Narration
Once again, Tillie Hooper did an amazing job with the narration. I don’t think she can beat the narration of Golden Dynasty, because that book had the amazing language that she made sound like she had been speaking it for years, but she did an amazing job here. I really enjoy how she does all of her voices, male and female. In this book, she had to voice a bird, which was different. The bird didn’t talk like animals from The Lion King (i.e. like people), but more like a bird giving you it’s thoughts. I thought she brought that out really well in the way she portrayed it. If you haven’t tried Tillie Hooper, I highly recommend her.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.