Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde, 2); Heather Fawcett

The elements that I loved about the first Emily Wilde book are still present in this story and I couldn’t be happier. Emily is still a delightfully grumpy scholar, which is still the perfect foil to Wendell’s lackadaisical sunshine viewpoint of the world. Their banter is still adorable and so fun. Emily is still single minded with her research, for the most part, but in the “Map of the Otherlands” we finally see Emily grow more emotionally, occasionally. Our girl still has work to do. But in this book, Emily, Wendell, and her niece all embark to Austria in search of Wendell’s Faerie door, which will finally lead him back to his home kingdom. But before they get very far in their search, assassin’s sent by his step-mother, and a threat from Emily’s professorial supervisor immediately complicate things and make the journey all the more urgent.

---

If you didn’t like the writing style of the first book, you still won’t like it here. Personally, the journal aspect and the historical fiction elements still blend perfectly for me for this kind of story. My one complaint is that, occasionally, this format can be used to hand wave away describing some of the more terrifying faerie’s that Emily encounters. I genuinely love that these fae are more of the trickster and disturbing kind you find in traditional folklore. But each time things get too harrowing, Emily writes that it’s too horrific to recount, which was something I was starting to get annoyed by toward the end. But, thankfully with how things ended, this should be the last time Emily has such blackouts. While Emily does get to show off her backbone with the professor who, at first, tries to ruin her, we don’t really get to see much of her softer side with anyone but Wendell. Her niece is incredibly bubbly, and I can understand why that would annoy someone like Emily, but the way her niece cares for Emily toward the end didn’t entirely feel deserved. It would have been nice to see some moments of tenderness on that front, is all I’m saying.

But that’s really it for the minor things that bothered me. The rest? I think I liked more than the first book! My major complaint with the first book was how rushed the romance felt. In this book, we get more on that front, and it’s so incredibly sweet and wholesome I can’t help but smile! Hopefully, with how things ended (remember, this is a cozy fantasy so expect nothing but happy endings) we get to see more of Wendell actually courting Emily. But I think the aspect that makes this book a 5 star read for me this time when it didn’t before, was just how lovely Emily’s relationship with Shadow is in this book. He’s the real MVP and I could not adore him more!