NetGalley Review: La Vie de Guinevere by Paula Lafferty

Hey all, Sam here.

All right, it’s time to get a few more posts up, mostly because I have a lot of books to talk about and the longer I procrastinate on that, the worse it gets. I’ve read over 115 books so far this year (which is actually a semi-low number for me, but is still a really nice amount, especially with all the reading slumps I’ve dealt with over the last couple years).

If that was all I read in the year and I posted three blog posts each week, it would still take me about a year to catch up. Now, sadly, I don’t write up blog posts for every single book I read. I definitely make sure to review my ARCs, even if I review them after they’ve been published (which sadly happens quite a bit because I’m becoming more and more of a mood reader).

What I should probably do is try and write up mini-reviews for the rest of what I read. I could post about three or four books in a single post and give a 3-5 sentence review on my thoughts and feelings. Perhaps that is something I can try in 2025.

Anyway, today’s review is for a book that I did read just before its release day, but that I just didn’t have the time to get a review written for in time…and so this post has been sitting in the drafts folder for nearly a month now. Let’s not waste any more time….

After the sudden death of her boyfriend, Vera would have been happy to spend the rest of her days curiously unnoticeable, washing bed sheets and cleaning toilets in present day Glastonbury. But when the strange new guest at her hotel reveals himself to be Merlin and drags her back to seventh century Camelot, a place she knows only from legends, only Vera (or Queen Guinevere as Merlin calls her) can right the course of history and save Arthur’s kingdom from the will of a power-hungry mage. There’s one enormous problem: Guinevere was the sole witness to the curse that’s now draining the kingdom of its magic, and Vera doesn’t remember anything of her supposed life as Queen Guinevere.

With Camelot’s peace ebbing ever closer to shattering, the clock is ticking. But working with Merlin’s magic to retrieve her long-lost memories and save the kingdom brings more questions than answers: why is it that King Arthur, who treats his subjects with loving benevolence, can’t even stand to look at her? And why does that make Vera’s soul feel like it’s splitting in two? What robbed her of her memories in the first place…

And most importantly…

Why?

As Vera is about to discover; in a world of legend and power, the secrets of her memories are only the beginning.

My Thoughts

Rating: 4.5 stars

I had been hearing about this book for months and months before its release, because of all the hype around it and the hype around the Kickstarter for it. Paula Lafferty ran a very successful campaign for it, and has been picking up deals and awards ever since. It’s one of those self-published stories that someone dreams of having, one of those wild success stories.

I admit that I put off reading it until a week before release because I was worried that the hype would make me judge the story more.

But I’m also a big fan of books inspired by or based on Arthurian legend, and so I caved and started reading. And I’ll just say this…I started reading this book at work, and ended up reading about 80% of it, so if I had gone home and continued reading, this would have been a one-day read. Instead I waited until the next day at work to finish it.

I was absolutely intrigued by the set-up of this story, and by seeing how Lafferty was going to portray these characters that I’ve seen so many iterations of over the years. They were fascinating, and it was such an adventure to follow Vera as she tried to put the pieces together of what happened in her previous life/time in Camelot.

The characters, to me, were the shining stars of this story. The bond between Vera and Lancelot was really fun to explore, and what was interesting was how long it took for me to start warming up to Arthur.

I still need to get a finished copy of this book (something that has been slightly difficult because it keeps changing from “available” to “back-ordered.”

I’m going to need this book on my shelf, because I am probably going to re-read it, just to see what connections and foreshadowings and details I missed the first time around. I can’t wait to see what Lafferty comes up with next.

All right, that is it for me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.