"But after reading it, I realised that I liked it because it was like Northanger Abbey."

I adore this review of Cold Magic.

I particularly love reviews that make me out to be clever, and this one hits several elements of the book that I'm very pleased to see noted. It's not particularly spoilerific, but if you haven't read the book and hate any manner of spoiler, then I would skip it until after you've read the book.


At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with Northanger Abbey. Cat isn't the romantic dreamer of her family: her cousin Bee is. Cat is practical and sensible, self-deprecating and intelligent. She does not appear to have ever been in love or even had a crush before Andevai whisks her off to be his wife.

And it is for precisely this reason that Cold Magic is like Northanger Abbey. I'm going out on a limb here, but I have the feeling that Elliott wrote this book with certain assumptions about her readers. She assumed that most of them were readers of romance novels or at least romantic fantasy novels and were fans of (or at least familiar with) stories where good girls and bad boys fall in love. She assumed that we would read Cat and Andevai in this manner. And then she gleefully toys with our expectations for the remainder of the book.