The Beholder

!!!Spoiler Warning!!! If you haven’t read this book yet, I give away some key spoilers!

The Beholder

by Anna Bright

I read this book as part of the Goodreads Summer Reading Challenge 2019—check out how I’m doing!

Oh, Selah. Your beautiful face is the very, very least of you.

This is a lovely book.
It’s absolutely brimming with things taken from fairy stories and mythology. There’s a whole lot of research gone into this book, and it shows in a wonderful way.
There’s also a lighthearted feel to most of the book that’s very refreshing.

The future does not roll in great waves. It comes in a thousand tiny moments, turns on hinges too small to see, follows a winding path carved by yeses and nos that change the world.

The story follows Selah. She’s the seneschal-elect of Potomac (which basically means princess), and her wicked stepmother is forcing her to get married. Because her stepmother, in typical fairy tale trope, isn’t a very nice person at all, she’s forcing Selah to leave behind her ailing father, and her country, to sail across the sea and meet her prospective suitors. All of which are required to remain at their homes, whether they marry Selah or not.
It looks like, whatever she chooses, she won’t be able to return to her father any time soon.
We only meet two of Selah’s prospective husbands in this book, but both are like chalk and cheese from each other. In fact, the author did an incredible job of making two whirlwind romances so different.
Meanwhile, in the background from all the romance and state dinners, there’s a subplot going on about war and rebels and revolutions. All threaded through with enough mythology and fairy tales to make it sound magical.

Life is short and death is certain. So every moment I am aboveground and not below it, I want to feel the difference. We’ll all be in our graves soon enough.

Speaking of mythology and fairy tales—they’re everywhere! Seriously, here’s just a few that I came across. Baba Yaga, Will Grimm, Beauty and the Beast, The Odyssey, Merlin and Arthur, George and the Dragon, Yggdrasil, Thor (and a Loki kind of character), Huginn and Muninn, and Hansel and Gretel!
There were more, too! Some were obvious, but some were really rare or old stories that I don’t think most people have heard before.
Personally, I’ve done a lot of research into both fairy tales and mythology. Both are sort of my pet interests of choice, so I caught pretty much everything, and let me tell you, it was tirelessly researched and every snippet of information was used in such a unique and fun way. I really loved the sheer amount of effort that’s gone into this book!

When Baba Yaga locks the door,
Children pass thereby no more.

The writing style is easy to read and the chapters are relatively short, making this a quick book to get through. There’s never a dull moment, and when you’re not grinning like a fool over some romantic banter, you’re scratching your head and trying to puzzle out what’s going on in the background.
In fact, I think the only thing I didn’t really seem to enjoy was the fact that Selah falls in love way too easy. She falls for at least three different boys during the course of the book and, truth be told, I can’t really blame her, I fell for two of them myself. But, she does seem plenty naive. She grows through the book, so there is some character development, and I don’t dislike her. She’s a delight, really. But, girl, guard your heart a little more, you know! But, that said, there’s no escaping just how delicious some of these lines are.

I will keep you safe, and you will be my home.

So, in conclusion, I will definitely be reading the sequelwhen it comes out. I want to know what happens to this shy girl. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good romance story, or fairy tales in general, and I honestly think the sequel is going to be even better than this one because the background plot is just kicking into speed now.

They’re people, not weapons or possessions. And they decide who they belong to.

Villain Rating

There’s a lot going on in the background of this book, but I think one of the biggest villains is only going to become a problem later on in the series. Instead, we’re going to focus on Alessandra for this rating. Alessandra is Selah’s wicked stepmother, and that’s done on purpose because nearly everything in this book has its origins in fairy tales. This woman has married Selah’s father, gotten pregnant, and now wants to remove Selah from the equation.

To make matters worse, we discover later on in the book, that she’s most probably poisoning the king—Selah’s dad—so she can rule uninterrupted. All of the suitors she lines up for Selah are required to remain in their respective countries and can’t return with her, so Alessandra has clearly been planning to get rid of Selah forever for quite a while. Aside from the poisoning, which hasn’t been conclusively proved, she hasn’t actually done much wrong, though. Selah likes her suitors, they’re all respectable. There’s no proof Alessandra is as wicked as Selah claims. 3/10

Happy Reading,

Claire