Overall, this was a pretty good first book, it ended on a cliffhanger and I definitely wanna know what happens next! Carra is likeable and sympathetic but Straid is just so very well done that the poor woman suffers in comparison. I enjoyed the respect for sex workers and rigorous adherence to consent and boundaries, that being said, I didn't love that she just went straight back into work without having her memories back. I just felt that was so dangerous and she's so practical about everything else that it didn't make sense. Also, and this might just be a me thing, I didn't love reading about her sexual exploits with all these other beings, I wish more time had been spent on her and Straid's relationship.

I am sure others will love this book. I just had a very hard time getting into it. The world building just fell flat for me.

Mortal Memories is the first book that I have read by F. A. Eden and unfortunately it will be the last. I picked this book based on the intriguing summary, but nowhere did it say that there was prostitution in the story. It also has extramarital relations as well, both of which I avoid in stories. If I had known about this being a part of the main character’s life I wouldn’t have selected it. I tried skipping some parts thinking that then I would be able to finish it, but that didn’t work. I just couldn’t get past the prostitution and cheating.

Marriage is the only way for Carra to escape execution after she is found alone in a forbidden part of the fae lands; Straid lost his mortal love 50 years ago and feels compelled to rescue her by saying that they are getting married the next day, and the fae can’t lie…

The romance is very slow & the spice revolves around one of the characters being a sex worker (which I felt wasn’t approached as well as it could’ve been, without spoiling it I think that the decision to do that job wasn’t explored enough & felt a bit too instant). To be honest, I wasn’t drawn into this book at all until about 60% of the way through, but then I was in a big way!

Unfortunately, because it took so long for me to become invested & then ended on a massive cliffhanger, I felt this book wasn’t big enough of a story alone. I wish it had either continued and started to unravel the mystery or had been faster paced in the beginning and then I would not have felt so shortchanged.

A frustrating read for me, but I do want to read the next in the (presumed) series, so if you are patient and need another fae fix maybe this one is for you.

Excellent book, loved it! Looking forward to more from this author! Apologies for the lateness of my review

I feel, in a word, BAMBOOZLED. I snagged this ARC from the “Read Now” section of NetGalley the day before it disappeared forever, thinking it was just going to be a short lil novel that was a fun fae-human romantasy like all the amazing ones that fill my digital library (I’m looking at you, KU).

And I mean, sure, I got that, sort of. But ALSO: this novel is sex-worker positive, centers an amnesiac storyline, has dual POV with a yearning man who truly is so soft even when he hides it (I mean, he makes her dresses and she doesn’t find out till the endddddd, my heart), AND THEN!!!!! Horror of all horrors! There was a cliffhanger!!!!!! I thought this was going to be self-contained and a happy ending. And then I got utterly and completely ~~clobbered~~ by the cliffhanger. I think I gasped out loud. I think I blacked out. I think I shrieked, “You’ve got to be f***ing kidding me.” Who knows what other insane shit happened when I finished the last page and realized that the biggest mindf**k had taken place and I was, again: BAMBOOZLED.

Suffice it to say: this book was an utterly pleasant surprise, and I am so very much looking forward to the sequel. In addition to all of the good stuff written above, the quality of the writing is also beautiful, and I enjoyed it immensely. 4 fabulous ⭐s

*Thank you again to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and the spice was good. I will say I want more! I want to never leave this world the author has created

A human found in the Fae quarter means death but maybe she has a chance as Fae offers to marry and keep her safe. She has little memories of her life but takes a chance on being safe. Life settled for them both but darkness is looming and people are going missing. is there a connection to Carra?

This had a really interesting premise and began fully in the action. But the world building was a little lacking so didn't develop why and how things might happen. That being said I did enjoy the story. It does have a bit of a cliff-hanger ending so I'm hoping there is another to follow eventually. I would like to read more. The characters are tough to really like as we don't get to see them deeply but I did warm to Straid and Carra as the story developed. The ending was clever and did leave me wanting more. A good beginning to hopefully more books.

Fae magic, lost memories, slow burn romance, consent-cautious MMC, and a curvy FMC? Amazing.

Mortal Memories ticked SO many boxes for me! I was so engrossed I didn't come up for air until I was done (sorry to my spouse for that). It takes a lot for a book to make me completely lose myself and yell audibly at the characters (again, sorry spouse), and this book did that for me. I really enjoyed Carra's cleverness, compassion, independence, and confidence. Her determination through frustration was refreshing. She handled adversity admirably, feeling the fear and sadness and struggle without doing the damsel in distress please save me oh strong man thing. I also absolutely loved the level of world building - enough to give an idea of the world, but not so much that we get mired in complexity. I got to fill in details so it felt real to me, didn't distract me from the plot, and didn't have me feeling like I had to take notes to remember odd world details.

This book feels like a refreshing take on the current fae romantasy trend. All the things you look for (spice! miscommunication! emotional men! strong women! intrigue! magic! mystery!) without the "primal urge" trope. I highly suggest this as your next romantasy read!

I will die every day until the next book comes out, because THAT CLIFFHANGER! I need to know what happens!

Carra is found wandering in the Fae Quarters without her memory and enters into a marriage of convenience with the Fae Lord Straid in order to avoid execution. As Carra begins to recover her memories, she joins Straid in investigating a series of disappearances in the Quarters. This path leads them into a part of Straid's past that he thought he had left behind.


As is typical with a lot of romantasy books, there was very little plot and a greater focus on the romance. Unfortunately, Eden put all of her effort into fleshing out the two romantic leads and not much else. The world building is incredibly scant to the point where no locations have actual names beyond 'the Quarters'. (The nearby village is called 'the village' and the same with the closest human town. It's just 'the town'). The side characters felt like props rather than fully fleshed out people which is a shame as some of them did have potential.

I appreciated that there was positive representation of sex work in the book. (Carra is a sex worker which Straid is quite supportive of even when he falls in love with her). I also liked that Straid wasn't just the generic shadow daddy that we've seen in so many romantasy books recently. He was actually fairly unique when it comes to male romantic leads.

This book had potential, I think more time in the editing process and fleshing out of the world and its people could have helped a great deal. Sadly, it's just rather forgettable.

Review going live on Goodreads, Storygraph and Fable on 10/23 and Tiktok on 10/26

With a few tweaks and some editing, I think this has the opportunity to be something special for sure!

We follow Carra, a mortal human who has suddenly and unexpectedly lost her memory and searching for it. She is found and saved by Straid, a grieving heartbroken fae who is avoiding his own past.

As a Romantasy, I expected the magic and the intrigue, plus a decent romantic subplot but this gave us just a little bit more with the acceptance of Sex Workers and some fantastic representation of boundaries and consent. I absolutely applaud the author for ensuring this is included. The relationship development between Carra and Straid is this books strong point, a very lengthy Slow Burn and both characters hesitation about one another result in a beautiful story of learning to trust and eventually love.

My main concern with this book is the backstory. I understand we’re not going to get much from Carra, and her background does develop as the memories come back. But we need to know more about the world, its people, its layout. The relationship between Fae and Mortals in more detail (maybe Straid should have recanted this as a reminder of the history and why it is like this as part of helping Carra return her memories).

I do not know the plan for the physical book, but the visualisation of this world would 100% be enhanced by a map. I’m not sure of the layout of the town, its closeness to the mortals and so on.

I think, if the author could put some time aside and expand on the background just a little bit more we would have a fantastic introduction to a new series.

One final, strong, opinion. The very final epilogue is unneeded. This should have been the beginning of book 2, the original ending with its cliffhanger was perfect and just enough to frustrate you to the point of needing boom 2 ASAP.

I want to thank NetGalley, BooksGoSocial and F.A Eden for the opportunity to read this as an ARC. The review is my own opinion and I have given this freely.

It would have been great for more in depth plot. Great plot twist though. Worth the wait till the end of the text.

I think the premise of this book is fantastic. The execution was lacking just a bit. Not a terrible book by any means, but it felt like it could have used a bit more developing and time spent on world building. I will say, this book does put the pedal to the metal by throwing you right in, and sometimes I loved that a book doesn't have a whole bunch of fluff leading up to the more integral parts of the story, but it felt a bit like it worked to a disadvantage for this particular story.

I would definitely consider reading more of this series because again, the heart of the story is good! The premise and characters are good! Just felt a bit underdeveloped.

This was an interesting read. Mortal memories gave some ACOTAR vibes for me, I enjoyed the relationship between the characters and felt it gave a good slow burn. The ending caught me off guard, but kept me intrigued for a sequel. Would definitely recommend.

3.5 /5 stars

At first, I had quite a hard time connecting with the book and for some reason I got more of a human x vampire vibe than a human x fae (not sure why tho).

Anyway, I pushed through and I really enjoyed the 2nd half. I really liked the characters and they really started to get more depth, I especially like that the FMC is confident and won't let anyone tell her what to do, but it's still a reasonable human and has enough logic to understand when or why some things have to be done in a certain way.

The ending however, it was great and now I really want to know what's gonna happen next. If the 2nd volume is gonna be as good as the 2nd half of this book, I can't wait to see what's gonna happen.

I DNF'd this at 40%. I really wanted to love this book. The blurb sounded amazing, human girl with a fae savior. I think the idea itself is great, I just don't think it was executed well. There were several grammatical mistakes. I can handle a mistake here or there but it felt like I was seeing them every other page. There were several times I had to go back and re-read something because there were extra words in the sentence, think "I want to go outside he she thought." It happened on multiple occasions. I understand that this is an ARC so there are bound to be some mistakes, but this was excessive. It feels like this book had no editing before being sent out.

The writing also felt stiff, which made it hard to connect with the characters. I felt no connection with either of the main characters so I didn't really care where their story was going. One of the main things that made me DNF was the FMC going right back to her profession after figuring it out, it just felt really unrealistic. There was no second guessing or hesitation at all.

I think if this had another round of editing and some minor changes to the reaction of finding out what her profession was this could be an amazing book.

This book sounded great just going off of the synopsis but honestly, I was a bit disappointed with this book. The world building was basically non-existent and needed a lot more details added. The plot didn't actually grab me at all, and there were quite a bit of plot holes, and I found myself not really caring about what happened at all and at some point I definitely started skimming just to get through it. The main romance was also a bit bland and most of the spice was due to the main character's profession as a sex worker. The ending of the book was also very weird to me with the direction that it went with Carra, and I can't say that I was a fan of this cliffhanger.

Really good plot, though i do feel like it was spread out a bit unevenly. The beginning was very detailed, maybe a bit too detailed, and relatively slow, and i feel like everything plotrelated happened in the last 20% of the book, though i should say it might have been intended to be slowly building up to that. I really liked the characters as well and their connections. There were good plot twists here and there as well. I've got to say i was not expecting the ending at all, and i wish i could have already learned more about it, but i guess now it's just waiting until i can read book 2, lol.

Thank you to netgalley and the author for sending me the book in exchange for an honest review

What an exciting read!! Just when you think you know what will happen, a big twist is thrown in.

When a mortal woman is running in a Fae area of town alone with no memories, she is saved from Fae guards when a saviour claims that she's his fiancee. Carra has no memories of the night she lost her memory, but being married to a Fae will save her from death.

Lord Straid, a Royal Prince, has been living in seclusion for the past 50 years after his mortal fiancee died. After meeting and marrying Carra, he helps her retrieve her memories and slowly falls in love with her. But soon others are disappearing and Straid needs to find out the connection between them and his new wife.

Someone he never expected to see again is orchestrating a sick game. Will he figure it out in time?

A must read!

*I received a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀:⭐⭐
𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗲:🌶️🌶️.5

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: 2/5
𝗣𝗹𝗼𝘁: 2.5/5
𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 3/5
𝗣𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴: 2/5
𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: 1.5/5

I wanted to like this one. The premise had potential, but the execution? Eh. I found the characters fell flat, and we didn't get enough backstory to feel anything for them. The pacing? Imagine a Tilt-a-Whirl that never slows down.
While the writing was decent enough to keep me from throwing the book, the worldbuilding had gaps big enough to drive a truck through—and yet, there was a lot of info-dumping at the same time.

Things that didn’t work for me but might for you:
• Carra's profession means she has intimate scenes with other characters. Don't get me wrong, the spice is there, but I wanted more emotional connection between her and Straid. Guess I'm a sucker for feelings.
• Carra and Straid’s relationship felt too surface-level for me. They barely interact for half the book, and when they do, it’s like watching two people politely nod at each other at a bus stop.

I didn’t realize this was the first in a series, so fingers crossed the next book