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Mary E. Pearson: The Courting of Bristol Keats - Bristol Keats Book 1

I went to an author event hosted in my town where Pearson was promoting this book. I bought it and started reading it, and it's take me quite a while to get through it.

Bristol Keats has grown up on the run. Running from what? Her parents have never said, and yet they move frequently, live roughly, and drift from one small town to another. Until Bowskeep. And then, after her mother disappears, and her father dies, Bristol and her sisters are alone, poor, and unsure what to do next. Until Bristol is approached by someone who says they can make a deal with her. She meets the Fae king, Tyghan, and is whisked off on an adventure to save her father and find the truth.

In all, this book had some issues... It wasn't terrible, the romance was OK, but some of the tropes were difficult to stomach. In all, though, I did finish it, which is more than I can say for some other novels that fit this genre.

Let's start with characters. Bristol was likeable enough. She was fiercely independent, didn't depend on Tyghan too much, and didn't act terribly damsel-y. I didn't mind her perspective chapters, and she was decently well written. Tyghan was also fine for the most part. I didn't like how easily he became convinced that he loved Bristol, and there wasn't a whole lot of romance or spark. They didn't really seem to have much chemistry at all, which for the most part, I ignored. Romance isn't really my genre anyway, so I don't know. The side characters (particularly the other recruits working with Bristol) were largely forgettable, and hardly relevant to the story. They blended together and it was difficult to keep them straight.

Let's talk tropes... This plot for this book is entirely built around miscommunication. I know from BookTok, this is a huge disappointment for most readers. Basically, the whole plot is centered around Bristol not knowing the truth about her parents, and Tyghan and the rest of the fae knowing exactly who here parents are. If they'd just had a conversation like adults, the plot would have been 50 pages instead of almost 600.

Other issues with plot... It dragged. Then, I got to the end and literally nothing had been fixed. When I'm talking to my creative writing kids, I try to emphasize that books meant to be in a series have two kinds of conflicts: book-level and series level. I felt that there weren't any book-level conflicts other than the miscommunication about Bristol's parents. Everything else was series-level and I guess will get resolved in the next book. But because of this, the ending felt unsatisfying. There wasn't much payoff for the amount of time I spent with the characters, and that was frustrating.

This book does have some sexually explicit scenes. It's nothing crazy, but definitely open-door (with specifics glossed over). I'm not much into smut, so that for me was meh. I knew that it was going to have that going in, so it was fine.

This just felt like a cookie-cutter romantasy, which is kind of disappointing. I was hoping for more from an author with as much writing experience as Mary E. Pearson.

I rated it ⭐⭐⭐


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