Book Review: Courting Fate by A.R. Kaufer
Genre(s): Fantasy Romance
Book Synopsis:
When she’s not working at the bank or playing video games with her best friend, Ana’s nose is in a book. She is comfortable with her simple life until one night, on her way home from work, she is mugged and left for dead. Fate or luck, army medic Rafe was passing by and saves her life.
Grateful as she is, she can’t shake the feeling she knows him from somewhere. Their lives become intertwined as she learns more about him and more about herself.
Is she ready to face the truth? Will it answer her questions or break her in the process? Ana must find her strength and become who she was born to be, before it’s too late.
Review:
I need to preface this review with two points:
- I rarely read content warnings prior to jumping into a story and I usually don’t mention them in my reviews, but this book contains some themes that may be disturbing for some readers. Domestic abuse, attempted rape, murder, and attempted suicide to name a few. The abuse scenes were particularly difficult to read.
- Romance isn’t a go-to genre for me. I spoke with the author prior to agreeing to review this book when she contacted me, and believed that this had more fantasy elements to it than romance. It turned out the romance was central to the plot, and while I know there is an audience for this book, it really wasn’t me.
Courting Fate starts out feeling very much like a contemporary romance. There is zero fantasy in the story until around the 30% mark, and then it hits with a vengeance. That being said, I found the first part of the book to be very slow, almost tedious, and I nearly lost interest entirely. The romance moved incredibly fast, to the point it didn’t feel realistic to me, but romance is not my usual genre. I think others would enjoy it far more than I did.
The fantasy aspects, when they finally arrived, saved this book for me.
There are a number of different races depicted, with some unique aspects. For instance, the elves in this book have unusual skin and hair coloration and are nearly immortal. The guardians are human-like, but sport wings, and it’s their duty to protect the royal family of the realms. They’re also said to be immortal. Witches appear human, but like the other races I mentioned, are immortal too. I’m not entirely sure what else the witches can do, as this book didn’t mention they had any magic or special abilities. The term by itself implies there should be something… Maybe that’s addressed in a subsequent book, but I don’t know.
The realms are a series of planets ruled by a monarchy in some distant corner of the universe. The main characters eventually wind up there and are caught up in a war for power, assassination attempts, and court intrigue.
The main character, Ana, and the love interest, Rafe, have a tendency to both over-apologize for everything. Ana is depicted as having a traumatic past, and due to that, she has almost zero self-esteem for much of the book. I understand her need to constantly apologize—it’s part of who she is—but I never understood why Rafe did the same thing.
Even after a few days of giving this book some thought, I’m still unsure how I feel about Ana. Sometimes she’s perfectly fine, but someone will do or say something (usually completely innocent,) and she’ll get irrationally angry or blame herself (or sometimes both.) Again, I think this goes back to the trauma I mentioned, but I had a tough time connecting to her character. There was also the matter of her being depicted as the damsel in distress for so much of the book (a trope I really don’t enjoy), that made her a hard sell for me.
I liked Rafe most of the time, though he made some decisions that were a little baffling. Kara, Ana’s best friend, was the most well-developed protagonist character, in my opinion. She was strong and protective of Ana, and I liked that about her.
Then there’s Kane… What a slime! If there was one thing that really made this book worth reading it was him as a villain. I wanted to see him fail, wanted to see him eliminated somehow. He deserved to endure all the horrors he inflicted on other characters and then some.
As I said, there are some good elements to this book, but it just wasn’t for me. I think those who enjoy romance with a bit of fantasy will enjoy it more.
Author website: arkauferauthor.com
If you enjoy reading my book reviews, I post them often (as often as I finish books!) Why not subscribe to my blog, so you never miss out? Click here to subscribe.