Fantasy novel where heroine gets hit with love at first sight for this love interest, love interest is kidnapped in the first chapter, and she has to learn magic and adventure skills and go save him, hoping the whole time that he loves her back

[Sarah]

Hey everyone. I have a book that I cannot remember the title of and it is driving me insane. I thought it was written by Tanith Lee, but I cannot find the story. I do not remember where I was when I read it or when it was when I read it, but I think it was within the last 15 years and I bought the book from Halfprice Books as a used paperback, so there's no telling when it was actually published.

Genre: fantasy
Protagonist: female
Basic Plot: Hero(ine)'s Journey

Plot details without spoilers:
A girl from a village sees a handsome man come into town (possibly a musician?) and she falls hard for him. (Please note that they have had virtually no contact with each other and won't until the very end. I don't even remember if this guy actually even sees her before he disappears.) Then the antagonist kidnaps the guy and she decides to rescue him. She has a mentor-type who is like, "You might be trying to save a person who doesn't love you back," but she's like, doesn't matter, I'm going to do the thing anyway. The mentor is like, okaaaaaaaay, but if you save him, look into his eyes, and you'll know if he loves you or not. And then it's basically a hero's journey where she learns magic and skills and there's a form of magic where she is kind of...astral-projecting, and there is a thread-type thing that links her soul to her spirit and I believe she can only do this between sunset and sunrise, and there is one tense part of the book where she might not make it back to her body in time and she will end up really dead.

Ending: (view spoiler)[In the end, the girl goes through all the things and beats the bad guy and saves the dude and he looks at her and he's like, very grateful, but she can tell that he isn't looking at her with any kind of recognition and she's like, ding dang he doesn't love me, and she pretty much walks off into the sunset. (hide spoiler)]

Any help would be much appreciated! I've been looking for the title of this book for years at this point.

[Taelle]

It sounds like a twist of the classic fairy tale, "East of the moon, West of the sun." Looking for variations of that story might unearth it.

[Taelle]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

[Sarah]

Thank you for the suggestion, but it is unfortunately not my story. If anything, this story has more closely related to the story of Psyche and Eros in that a girl is willing to go to the ends of the earth to save her beloved, but it's also very different because the love interest is merely a macguffin in the story I read. He is the reason the girl decides to act, but other than appearing in the first chapter and the last, he makes no appearance in the story and the story is almost entirely about what this girl is willing to learn and to go through in order to find this guy. They don't even have any meaningful interaction with each other until the very end.

It's basically a gender-flipped version of the whole "brave young boy goes out to save princess who he doesn't actually know from certain evil." It also feels like a commentary on the idea of "love at first sight" and how much stock society puts in it.

[Sarah]

I would not say this is high fantasy. I think it's closer to a sword and sorcery setting. Vaguely medieval European setting. I think the girl must also not have much in the way of family because it is very easy for her to just decide to leave her current life and go on an adventure.

[SamSpayedPI]

Perhaps one of Anne McCaffrey's? I immediately thought of Dragonsong or Dragonsinger, but I don't remember the kidnaping plot. It's been 40 years since I read them, though, so don't take my word for it; plus there are a lot of her books that I haven't read.

[Sarah]

These books sound rad, but there are not any dragons in my book. (I might check these out, though. One of my friends' moms tried to get me to start reading Pern books in late elementary because I loved dinosaurs, but I just ended up reading Jurassic Park 8 times.)

[Sarah]

The kidnapping is the protagonist's call to action and is central to the protagonist's motivation.

[Sarah]

This is hazy, but the title MIGHT include vale or veil. I am not having much luck tracking down a title with either of these words that matches the plot of the book in question.