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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)

Heather Fawcett

Start date: July 10, 2023

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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What Members Thought

Aug 29, 2025 ✨ tweety ✨ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2025, multi-pov, read-in-english, urban-fantasy, fantasy-sf

This was yet another book I waited to read until the series was complete and because I have a love/hate relationship with popular books. Most of the times, the more something is popular, the more I will dislike it. Thankfully, it didn't happen with this book!

I think what captivated me instantly about the story was that Emily Wilde is close to me in age and she's an academic at Cambridge (most English lit/lang majors dream is to study/research/ teach - and when I mean English lit/lang majors ofc This was yet another book I waited to read until the series was complete and because I have a love/hate relationship with popular books. Most of the times, the more something is popular, the more I will dislike it. Thankfully, it didn't happen with this book!

I think what captivated me instantly about the story was that Emily Wilde is close to me in age and she's an academic at Cambridge (most English lit/lang majors dream is to study/research/ teach - and when I mean English lit/lang majors ofc I'm referring to myself too lmao). I also felt Emily very relatable because we have a similar personality. Plus, she has a black dog named Shadow.

Emily goes to an island off the coast of Norway to study faeries for her encyclopaedia, in the hopes to become more known and respected among her peers and have the chance to do more research in the field. I feel like the setting was heavily inspired by Iceland and I loved that! You could feel the vibes and it felt as if you were really there because the pov is 1st person and this book is in the form of a diary, which is also something I really like.

Along with Emily, another important character of the book is Wendell Bambelby. He is her colleague at Cambridge, and of course, they are a bit of rivals in the field. He is esteemed already even though he's younger (just of one year) than her. Emily finds Wendell super aggravating because she thinks he got where he is thanks to his charm but she isn't sure his researches are based on scientific evidence.

Wendell comes to the island claiming to help Emily with her research and obviously, she's annoyed because she thinks he may steal her research or something. But Wendell ends up being helpful in a lot of occasions and we will see how much he cares for Emily, under his charming attitude.

Along with Wendell, there was an array of secondary characters I really liked and that gave their contribution to the story. For example Aud, Lilja, Thora. They all had a recognizable personality.

I'm not the biggest fan of faeries as a fantasy creatures but it was so easy to like this book. It used existent folklore of the North with other elements, which I appreciate. I also liked that the book didn't drag. Sure, Emily could have lived more adventures and some things could've taken more time to be solved, but in this book one of the most important things is time. Emily marks time with the dates of the diary entries and it is often said how in faerie realms time passes in a different way than the mortal world. Time is precious and is ticking, and it is subjective. And sometimes, we have to act quickly. ...more

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Jul 04, 2023 Laura Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy

I loved the story, this was a fantastic tale. Reminded me of an old school adventure from Victorian times. However, there really is hardly, barely a romance here. This reads very clean, like a middle grade book would. So if that’s not your thing this isn’t a book for my smut loving friends 😘

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Sep 29, 2024 Erin Riedle rated it really liked it

What a nice cozy read! The main character is autistically coded which I loved!! It’s like dark academia’s light sister. There were foot notes, interesting side stories, and a character on an academic journey. Emily gets in a lot of situations due to her autistic traits, but I loved that the author never says she’s autistic. It makes the story so quirky and wonderful!

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