by India Holton
Berkley Romance, 2024. 361 pages. Romantasy
Rival ornithologists hunt through England for a rare magical bird in this historical-fantasy rom-com reminiscent of Indiana Jones but with manners, tea, and helicopter parasols. Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that's beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon. When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can't trust anyone else--for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.
With clever wordplay, tongue in cheek humor, and sly twists on classic romance tropes (instead of one bed, one inn has too many beds in a storage room, while another offers only cushions on the floor), The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love was a delightful read. It blends elements of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, historical fiction, romance, and light fantasy into a playful and entertaining whole. Pick this book up for an enemies to lovers Romantasy with a lighter tone.
If you like The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, you might also like:
by Zen Cho
Ace Books, 2015. 371 pages. Fantasy
At his wit's end, Zacharias Wythe, Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers and eminently proficient magician, ventures to the border of Fairyland to discover why England's magical stocks are drying up. But when his adventure brings him in contact with a most unusual comrade, a woman with immense power and an unfathomable gift, he sets on a path which will alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain--and the world at large.
by Heather Fawcett
Del Rey, 2023. 317 pages. Fantasy
In the early 1900s, a curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town to study faerie folklore, where she discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on dryadology, the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--much less get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hransvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: the dashing and insufferably handsome Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of her research, and utterly confound and frustrate Emily. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.
SGR
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