Thank you NetGalley and TBR and Beyond Tours for the chance to read and review this book.
I love that for Pride month my first review will be that of a queer gothic romance!
And when the book starts off with a severed hand, you know it'll be intense because our main literally finds a severed hand just lying there.
And, shockingly, there are werewolves.
So here's the deal with The Alchemy of Moonlight. It's a YA fantasy, with some wonderful gothic elements and a queer love triangle. It's published by Page Street Publishing, which is distributed by Macmillan and focuses on being environmentally friendly. The book is also David Ferraro's debut novel.
That cover made me feel like the book was going to be absolutely perfect!
But the romance was not done well. I was supposed to believe that there was intense chemistry, and while I love Bram as a character, I hated hated hated Henri. I get that he's supposed to be a spoilt count and improving, but man he was horrible to Emile. Like basically trying to coerce him into sleeping with him and trying to stop him from meeting someone he actually likes.
Emile is 17, and he really does feel 17 in how he behaves with Bram and Henri, which can be really annoying. Bram is a decent person, and Henri is horrible; how can this be complicated? However, I do give him credit for having the courage to run away the way he did, with what's happening with his aunt. As a whole, he doesn't take the easy way out in any of these situations; he won't marry Blanche and have them live in misery, cheating on the other partner forever. In comparison, Henri is okay with that.
As a whole the story was fairly interesting, especially after they get to the castle of Udolpho in Italy, which is meant to be a nod towards The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. At this point every one of the characters is so desperate to help them escape that it's just the most insane set of schemes, which eventually work.
Some authors cannot write romance, but the Bram and Emile thing worked, which is why I don't get the Henri thing or the most randomly introduced start of a polyamorous relationship, with Blanche now okay with being married to a dude because she can then be with a chick thing.
This author does have a lot of potential though. For better or worse so many of us seem to have stuck around and read the whole of this book, even if it was to give it a 3 star review.
The buildup is good, the different characters are good (I would have loved more of the female characters, like Annette and Blanche) and the plot is also good. But there are so many things happening at the same time that none of them can be fleshed out properly. Any news on the leeches? Why did that one servant hate Emile so much?