Wow. This was an adventure that so was not prepared for. It had North Winds vibes but still stayed different. I will say that there were a couple of slower parts to the book but overall, It kept my attention and I found myself wanting to pick it up to read. 4.5⭐️ 1.5🌶.

Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and Angry Robot for allowing me to read and review this book before publishing.

Ledge follows a girl named Dawsyn who lives in a village they call the Ledge (because it sits on the ledge of the chasm). Every year there is a culling where a member of each household offers themself up to the Glacians. Dawsyn is I luck and is chosen this year and is taken to the king. While in the palace the humans that have been taken are given 3 choices: jump into a magic pool voluntarily, be killed and then thrown into the pool or try to escape and be hunted. Dawsyn chooses the later. Due to her deciding to try and escape the king asks for volunteers to go after her. One of the Glacians that volunteers is a half-Glacians half-human named Ryon. Ryon ends up saving Dawsyn and they leave together, but what Dawsyn doesn’t know is why he is helping her at all.

This book was slow at the beginning but once it started going it was very good. Some of the side characters I didn’t like as much as I would have hoped but I really enjoyed our strong and independent MC. For a first indy book I think it was really good. It did follow a similar plot to a lot of romantasy books but there were pieces of it that were very unique. The end of the book is left on a cliffhanger that I didn’t see coming and now I wish I knew when book two was going to be coming out. I can wait to see where this journey continues.

I would recommend this book to anyone that like NA romantasy. This book has some steamy moments but I would say there aren’t too many that it seems to be all about the steam. Overall, I think this book was really good and I look forward to reading the next one.

"Ledge" by Stacey McEwan is a tense, anxiety-inducing ride that includes teeth, winged beasts, and an axe-wielding badass female lead whose bite is worse than the icy, snow-capped village she was born on. "Ledge" is a wild and bitter expedition for truth, revenge, and justice.

Dawsyn has only ever known the frostbitten landscape she had the pure, rotten luck of being born on and the kingdom where the mythical creatures called Glacians live, separated from her only by a deep and unforgiving chasm. As far as she and everyone else unfortunate enough to live there know, there is no way off the ledge but a jump into the chasm ... or to be taken by one of the winged Glacians. Even then, it is impossible to know whether one even survives once they've been chosen.

It isn't long before Dawsyn's luck runs out and she is snatched up by one of the winged beasts. Taken into their kingdom, she is given a choice: die or flee. Knowing her chances are slim, but refusing to die at the hands of these creatures, Dawsyn flees. With the help of a half-breed named Ryon, she's able to escape the Glacians' thirst for her death ... for a while. Far from the only home she has ever known, Dawsyn finds herself on unfamiliar terrain, reluctant to trust Ryon with her safety, especially when he's hiding secrets that have to do with her family and the icy terrain she left behind her.

This gritty, action-packed novel will easily have readers hooked as they venture along with Dawsyn's sharp tongue and Ryon's determination to provoke her at every turn. The two of them butting heads provide a humorous break from the icy backdrop and the many cruel forces at work who would like nothing more than to snuff the two out to prevent them from stirring up trouble. On top of two easily likeable characters running the show, the world-building is extremely well done. The snowy wasteland can almost form goosebumps along the skin due to the vivid details. The brutal life lived by Dawsyn and many others on the Ledge is not one meant for those who are weak-hearted or weak-willed, which makes it easier to root for Dawsyn and to demand blood as justice for those who have done her and her people wrong.

The only setback I had when reading this novel is that Dawsyn is supposed to be this hardened, weapon-wielding badass but she has a tendency to pass out. It was hard to reconcile this strong warrior with someone who faints fairly often. Sometimes it made sense, especially when she was pushing herself beyond her capabilities but then she snapped back pretty quick. Mostly, it seemed like all the bad was focused on Dawsyn and sometimes it's nice to see other characters suffer too in the sense that it feels like the situation goes beyond just one person and others can be affected, too.

Overall, this was a pretty kickass book with two characters that were destined to be together or kill one another with the way their so quick to verbally outsmart the other. If this fantasy novel seems like your kind of wild journey, you don't have long to wait until you can give this one a read! "Ledge" is expected to be published on September 13, 2022! Save the date and add it to your TBR's!

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot for providing me with a free e-arc of this novel and for the opportunity to share my honest opinion in this review.

I'm going to say 2.5 stars on this one.

Interesting plot, and good beginning. But there's so much disjointed here that I don't particularly know where to start.

- I'd like to have spent a little more time in Glacia to understand the place. You learn absolutely nothing about the Glacians and who they are and why they do what they do
- I skipped over every sex scene bc it was weird and there was a lot of it in place of character development
- Two twists made no sense; mostly bc for the cliffhanger to make any sense at all would mean Ryon is the dumbest planner in existence and didn't alter his scheme with new evidence presented to him with plenty of time to do so but also that a lot of things had to happen with knowledge I don't know when gained (or how) and a WHOLE lotta luck. Idk. It feels like a major plot hole that was meant to shock and lead us to the next book but I was more like, huh?

That's not to say this trilogy doesn't have potential and there's prob a whole lot mapped out that will make certain things make sense. For now it was a lot of set up, far less plot so it actually could bode well for the follow up. Which I def want to read.

There were several aspects I enjoyed about this book. The world-building was unique, and I liked the concept of a people separated from society and the fish out of water situation when our leading lady is put back into the world. The politickings were interesting, and this book should have been my style. However, for some reason, I had problems connecting with the characters and their actions. I recommend people give this book a chance and make their own opinions. I rate Ledge 3/5 stars.


I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of Ledge by Stacey McEwan. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC to review.

I have been so excited for this book and it did not let me down. I loved the atmosphere! I could feel their pain of freezing and it made the story come to life.

We all love a woman who can take care of herself in a dystopian world and Dawsyn does that well.

I'll definitely be on the look out for more by McEwan.

There is something breathtakingly wondrous about being plunged into a whole new fantastical world, especially one as expansively and vividly realised as that in Stacey McEwan’s debut novel, Ledge, the first entry in The Glacian Trilogy.

While the title might be taut and sparing in its use of letters, the novel is not, an imaginatively told tale of Dawsyn Sabar, a 24-year-old woman who lives alone in a dog-eat-dog civilisation crammed on a narrow, snowy plateau high in the mountains between a precipitous rock face and a seemingly endless Chasm into which many of her fellow villagers have fallen, willingly or not.

It is a harsh, unforgiving existence, one enabled (barely; the supplies are meager at best) only by Drops which come from the sky, courtesy of the villagers’ captors, the Glacians, fierce, muscular, flying creatures who look human for the most part but who are bloodthirsty, cruel and possessed of fascistic supremacist beliefs that drive them to treat humans as an expendable, easily-consumed resource.

Quite why Dawsyn and her kin are high atop the precipice isn’t fully understood; all they know is that every year, the Glacians fly over, select six people, all of whom are spirited over the Chasm never to be seen again.

What happens to them? No one really knows but it can’t be good since the Glacians only seem to know how to be barbarously cruel and nothing else; so when Dawsyn, the last of her family, is selected in the latest cull, she expects nothing but oblivion and death.

This is where Ledge, already rich in mystical worldbuilding and the affectingly told grim realities of life for people like Dawsyn who’s an inmate in what is effectively a prison, really takes off.

Rather than giving into her inevitably dark, soul-sucking fate, Dawsyn opts to see if she can best her captors and as she does so, calling on all her sword fighting and axe wielding skills, comes into contact with half-Glacian Ryon, who is himself close to being cast out of the inner circle of a people who callously call him a “half-breed” and treat him as lesser than at every turn.

They are a wholly unlikely coupling, the onetime captive on the run, who may yet have to succumb to what the Glacians ordain for her, and the wannabe rebel who finds himself attracted to a feisty woman who is never going to be willing to sit back and let fate take a course of its choosing.

Dawsyn is a protagonist heroine for the ages, a woman who doesn’t need a man and who can survive on her own just fine thank you, but who discovers that relying on someone who actually seems to give a damn about you may not be the worst thing in the world.

They are a memorable odd couple, trading barbed witticisms and loaded oneliners with alacrity, who find themselves coming together in ways neither expected, and whose antipathy-cum-attraction propels Ledge through a story as heartfelt as it is imaginative and action-packed.

What really makes Ledge stand out, quite apart from its vivaciously immersive worldbuilding and its illuminating deep dive into the freeing highs and calculatingly nasty lows of the human condition, is the way McEwan makes her two main characters come so gloriously and originally alive.

Truth be told, there is nothing wildly newsworthy about enemies becoming friends and lovers and co-fighters for freedom and truth, but Ledge makes this happen in a way that feel boisterously, amusingly alive.

Dawsyn and Ryon are two characters cut from highly evocative cloth, people who come from wholly different worlds, and whose backgrounds are cloaked in as much mystery as they are painful memory, but who come to realise they share more in common than they realise, which is handy because as Ledge bracingly barrels on with revelations and conspiracies abounding, they are going to need that commonality of purpose to make it through to the other side.

They’re coming together is fraught and believable with lifelong trauma-laced Dawsyn, struggling to believe that life down the slopes in the warmth of forest, city and bountiful pasture is as lush and easy as it looks, and Ryon, who has one of the biggest, kindest but also most revenge-ridden hearts you will ever find, not exactly predisposed to trusting someone else.

They want and need each other but trust does not come easily; still when it does, it imbues their slow drawing together with real emotional presence and muscularity, in turn adding real depth and evocative humanity to every beguilingly intense turn of events in Ledge.

Ledge also benefits from a delightfully queer sensibility which is folded into the wider story in a way that feels wholly natural and highly enjoyable in the case of flamboyantly sweet Esra, part of a found family Ryon has built in the human kingdom on the plains below the Ledge people and the Glacians, and troublingly bleak in the case of Queen Alvira who’s is hiding a lot more than she is revealing.

The presence of these queer characters adds diversity and authenticity to Ledge which clearly intends to be representative of the full scope of humanity, which is the very core of its storytelling intent, and which is given so much extra lustrous appeal by going beyond the usual whitebread, heteronormative feel of many fantasies.

At its heart, Ledge is a thrilling and wild ride into rebellion, freedom fighting and self realisation and preservation that harnesses itself to a full-on narrative which even at its wildest, most intense moments still feels like it has the time to let people fully experience their inner authentic selves or deal with revelations that quite frankly are big and broken enough to rip a soul apart.

One of the best fantasy novels to come along in a while, deftly combining massively big story with raw, alive humanity, the kind which cannot stand by while injustice and cruelty run amuck, Ledge is a highly energising, often moving, read which places two people in need of healing and a place to belong into the centre of a novel which talks big, feels big and dares to be big and which nails it on every single page, all of them packed with a heady if terrifyingly overwhelmingly sense that the world is only as bad as those who do nothing allow it to be.

Dawsyn and Ryon are manifestly not those people and it’s exciting to think we have two more books in the trilogy to see who they will become, where they will go and how different, in so many good ways, the world they live in will become simply because they give a damn and are willing to act when so many others won’t.

Wow! This was a debut?! I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book when I first started it, but it blew me away! The world building was EXCELLENT! It drew me in right away and didn’t let up it’s hold until the very end! Dawsyn is such an incredibly strong FMC, I loved her immediately. And her growth throughout the story was so well done!

Epic fantasy, excellent world building, intriguing characters, great writing… my favorite trope (enemies to lovers).

The only thing I’m annoyed with is the fact that I somehow missed this is going to be a trilogy and now I have to wait for the next book!

Thank you Netgalley for this eARC!

I really enjoyed Ledge! I wasn't fully sure what to expect but I was blown away by a sort of nostalgic feeling. I must have read this book at exactly the right time/mood. This book's premise was so unique and yet it felt familiar in the best way. The blend of fantasy and a dystopian vibe along with a great enemies to lovers execution had me dying not to put this one down. I am DYING to get the next book in my hands, I am so excited to see where Dawsyn's story goes next because the ending of this book had me reeling! I loved how strong Dawsyn was and obviously we love a FMC who constantly threatens violence to her enemy-soon-to-be-lover!

The people of the Ledge have lived in an harsh environment, while waiting for the reaping every season. Dawsyn is the last remaining from her house and when the reaping comes she is chosen.
Dawsyn is forced into an entire new world that she had no idea existed. Through trials and unlikely helpers she discovers a lot about the world, the Ledge, and who she is.
When Stacey announced on booktok that she was writing a book, I was so excited. And the final product, was absolutely worth the wait. This book gave me so many feelings. The world building is fantastic. The humor and banter is perfection.
Thank you NetGalley, Stacey McEwan, and Angry Robot Books for the honor on reading an advanced copy of Ledge.

If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. This book had everything! Enemies to lovers, loads of action, a badass FMC (who can wield some serious weapons) a yummy MMC, and so much more! Stacey did an amazing job of world building without making it slow and had me hooked from the first page. I loved the premise and the way it had me rooting for Dawsyn from the very beginning. There were twists and turns I never saw coming, and that ending!! I just want everyone to read this book so that I can discuss it with someone. I feel so lucky to have read this book as an ARC and will be counting down the days until I can read the second book. I need book 2 NOW!

Thanks to NetGalley and to Angry Robot Books for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love the concept of this story.
The writing is quite beautiful in parts but I'm not sure I'm a fan of the third person present-tense. It took me a while to get back into the story every time I stopped, because of it.
I also feel it lacked real emotion, aside from basic sexual attraction and anger. I wanted to know the light and shade of the main characters rather than the tough front they both show.
What was Dawsyn's main goal throughout the story? It was hard to keep rooting for her when I wasn't sure what I was rooting for.
There were enough twists and turns throughout to have me turning the page, and I could easily see this as a TV series one day.
I do hate a cliffhanger ending, but with this one, I'm honestly still not sure what happened, even after re-reading a few times.
Overall, it was a good story, easy to read for the most part, and different enough to warrant a solid 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

I've followed Stacey on Instagram for a few months and I had remembered seeing this title on Amazon last year with a different cover that caught my eye so when I realized she was the author and this was a reprint I really wanted to read it. The synopsis gave me ACOTAR vibes so I was excited to see the similarities. Oh boy, other than the bat boy love interest this is a totally unique story. It hooked me from the beginning and I stayed til the end. I love Dawsyn's character. She's confident and badass but she also gets taken down a few times so she's not completely impervious. I enjoyed Ryon's character as well. He was arrogant yet protective but also encouraging and supportive. They had great chemistry that developed at a good rate. The plot was fast paced and action packed with just enough detail without being overly detailed to the point I skim read. There were twists that I didn't see coming and some that I guessed but wasn't completely sure of. That ending was infuriating, how long am I going to have to wait for the next book cause OMG!!! An amazing debut that stands on it own and I hope gets the hype it deserves. I am giving it a coveted SIX STARS which I reserve for the books that I can't find anything wrong with and will live in my head for months.

I’ve been pushing writing this review for days now because I typically don’t review a book when my overall opinion is not that good, and it’s even worst when I like the author.

From the first pages, I struggled to immerse myself in this book. Usually, Fantasy makes me forget everything around me, but no matter how hard I tried to remove any possible distractions in my surroundings, I couldn’t do it.

It took me halfway through this book to finally realize what was bothering me so much. The dissonant writing style and general vibe of the story prevented me from liking it as much as I wanted to. Stacey’s writing style has a pretty poetic tone and would be, in my opinion, better suited for a different genre. I would love to read more from her in the future. Maybe something more gothic or dark academia?

Disclaimer: This review is about to be very chaotic.
(You can’t give me antagonists that remind me of frozen chicken nuggets and expect me not to bring that up. )

So before we dive right into, or we can say fly right into it, let me explain why this book didn’t work for me. The worldbuilding and magic system failed to meet my expectations, the rhythm of the story was off, and the characters were so dull that I couldn’t even care about them or their overly used and classic motives.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s start with some important questions I found myself asking.

Question 1: What is their religion? I mean there are literal monsters and shit like that but are Christians between all that? I am asking this because one of the monsters said: “Fucking hell.” I mean I do know hell is in multiple belief systems in one way or another but still, what is its context in this book?

Question 2: So we all know Dawsyn is very strong, can defend herself, and survive anything. Somebody explain to me how someone who grew up in starvation and lived in the upside-down version of Disney’s Frozen can be this strong? She should be famished! She should be weak and skinny. She is a human after all, no?

Question 3: This might be a spoiler but you learn about it at the very beginning of the book so no big deal. So these Big Bird-looking ass monsters feed from the human souls to be immortal. They need humans. Then why on earth do they force the humans to live in a setting where they can just DIE at any given second because of the weather or starvation or wild animals or literally anything? Why? If humans are their main food source they should be taking care of them? I’m not saying take them in and give them a nice bath but giving them food every once in a while or medication would be better than THIS.

Anyway, let’s move on to the main character Dawsyn whose name kept reminding me of that one famous dish soap, was just too busy drooling over Donald Duck, the love interest, to have a personality. She just likes axes and is mean. That’s it. She was about to be pigeon food and was still making googly eyes at the chicken tender-looking monster instead of thinking of a way to save herself. So much for being a strong independent female lead. I’m not even gonna get into how she was saved by Ryon almost every damn time. Speaking of…

Ryon, the love interest. There is not much to say about this guy. He was suffering from the hot love interest whose only aid to the plot was just being present syndrome. One thing though: HE NEEDS TO STOP SAYING GIRL IN EVERY FUCKING SENTENCE BEFORE I TURN YOU INTO A SISH KEBAB. I can’t even begin to explain how annoying that was.

The relationship. Honestly I don’t know what the author was aiming for but if she was aiming for the worst insta-love possible, she succeeded. “We met three days ago and I went through something traumatic yet I do like you so much that I’d die for you.” Get a grip, please. This girl was ready to jump the bones of that hybrid, as she likes to call him, even though he was THE enemy and he haven't done ANYTHING to redeem himself other than using her as a survival tactic to save himself which was smart but not honorable or something that can make any reasonable human being forgive him and forget his kinds crimes. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ENEMIES TO LOVER NOT SLIGHTLY DISLIKED TO HORNY.

At some point, they fight and Ryon goes "Do you not know me, Dawsyn?”… My man, you've known her for two weeks tops, the barista at the Starbucks near my work knows me better than you guys know each other.

These two really felt weird. You could feel and see that they were forced to have feelings for each other for the sake of the plot and nothing more.

They also liked to get down and dirty in the most unavailable places possible. “We almost got caught by the enemies! Hurry, let’s have a make-out session out in the open for whatever reason… Oh no! They found us! How?! How did they do that?! (Insert shocked Pikachu face)
Aside from these, this book failed to give us the excitement and thrill of the upcoming war. There wasn’t preparation or anything. Just random sex scenes with Yakky Doodle who has the personality of a frying pan and an unexplained plan to take down a freaking kingdom.

The new cover was cute though.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to AngryRobot as I received an uncorrected eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This new adult fantasy brought me in right from the beginning if you set time for yourself just for the first couple chapters.

The book has your tropes ("enemies-to-lovers" and "quest") and the FMC comes from a survivalist community. Can't take anything personally and there's an empathy for others, at least from the FMC. That being said, even with the FMC's empathy, that doesn't mean she won't do what it takes to survive.

She keeps that wall up throughout the story and suspicious of others, which is totally understandable. Dawsyn (FMC) is a bad ass with an ax, which was fun to see from your traditional blade/dagger/sword, while also being practical from a survivalist's POV.

The twist at the I didn't see coming! I suspected initially, and then brushed it away through the read later, and then really was shocked that it did happen. So fun. I enjoyed this read and I'm sure when I have my reread of the final version of this book, I will see some obvious things now that I know where its going.

However that being said, I can see where issues arise from this book, whether that being Ryon (the MMC)/Ezra/the plot. I did receive this as an uncorrected eARC also, so I'm not sure if those issues were raised ahead of publishing and release and if they will be addressed and revised in the final copy.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an advance copy of this book. Below is my honest review:

1⭐️ DNF’d at 58%

I tried so hard to finish this book, but it was a truly terrible reading experience. First off, the only black character in this book (the male love interest) is half-beast and it just gave some racist undertones that made me uncomfortable. The love interest also calls the main character “girl” repeatedly and “child” at least once, which gave me the ick. However, the main character did act like an idiot for most of the book, so maybe that was an apt description of her? 🤪 just kidding, but truly, Dawsyn (the main character) repeatedly makes stupid decisions that nearly kill her, so Ryon (these names 😳) has to save her repeatedly. She then repeatedly tells him she doesn’t need his help despite REPEATEDLY needing to be saved by him.

The dialogue in this book is extremely cringey with repeated comments from other characters about how “gaunt” Dawsyn looks but she’s still well endowed?¿? And every character has to make a comment on how well endowed she is. If I took a shot every time this book made it clear how perfect Dawsyn is, I’d have been super drunk by the time I stopped reading this book.

The love story is also terrible. There is no chemistry between Ryon and Dawsyn, and him referring to her as “girl” or “child” only makes me like them less.

This book felt like a poorly strung together collection of tropes that ultimately falls flat and is, at times, painful to read. I do not recommend this one.

I loved this book! I'd seen the good reviews for it already so I had to see what the excitement was for myself. I was not disappointed. I'm unsure if this is a debut, but I will for sure be checking out more from this author!

Ledge is an Adult Fantasy Romance that follows Dawsyn, a woman that lives on thr ledge of a snowy mountain with the rest of her small village. Winged creatures called Galcians fly down and steal away several of the humans every season. Dawsyn gets taken and that’s when her adventure begins.

I was very entertained by ledge. It has a lot of the fantasy romance aspects that are very popular right now. (Enemies to lovers, winged MMC, forced proximity) Dawsyn is a strong FMC that can hold her own and Ryon was MMC who knew it, which I really enjoyed. I also really loved the side characters and their banter. I felt there were some slow bits around the second quarter of the book but it definitely picked up. I loved the plot and that ending was insane. I can’t wait to read book 2.

Thank you to NetGalley, and Angry Robot for the opportunity to leave my honest review.

“Ledge” is a new adult romantasy novel that, despite its heavier themes, I found to be a rather entertaining book.

Unfortunately, despite being entertaining, I found little separating this book from others in this genre, as there is nothing differentiating it from the big names. You have your typical FMC who comes from nothing, cursed to be the sacrifice to save her town another day. The MMC is your typical broody male, only this time with wings!

I also struggled heavily with the rioting style. It’s extremely choppy and the structure was just confusing to me. I feel as if the author took a few key phrases from what’s popular on TikTok and strung them altogether to make a story. In other words, you’ll get one gem out of a chapter but struggle through the actual meat of the plot with how the sentences are formatted.

It was still a fun read, but had the author spent more time developing the story and setting this apart to be more unique, then I think this would’ve been a more enjoyable read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4947893642?book_show_action=false