Wolves and Roses (Fairy Tales of the Magicorum Book 1)

By Christina Bauer

Seventeen year old Bryar Rose has a problem. She’s descended from one of the three magical races—shifters, fairies, or witches. That makes her one of the Magicorum and Mgicorum always follow a fairy tale life template. In Bryar’s case, that template should be Sleeping Beauty.

“Should” being the key word.

Trouble is, Bryar is nowhere near the sleeping beauty life template. Not even close. She doesn’t like birds or woodland creatures. She can’t sing. And she certainly can’t stand Prince Philpot, the so-called “His Highness of Hedge Funds,” that her aunties want her to marry. Even worse, Bryar’s having recurring dreams of a bad boy hottie and is obsessed with finding papyri from ancient Egypt. What’s up with that?

All Bryar wants is to attend a regular high school with normal humans and forget all about shifters, fairies, witches, and the curse that Colonel Mallory the Magnificent placed on her. And she might be able to do just that—if only she can just keep her head down until her eighteenth birthday when the spell that’s ruined her life goes buh-bye.

But that plan gets turned upside down when Bryar rose meets Knox, the bad boy who’s literally from her dreams. Knox is a powerful werewolf, and his presence in her life changes everything, and not just because he makes her knees turn into Jell-O. If Bryar can’t figure out who—or what—she really is, it might cost both her and Knox their lives…as well as jeopardize the very nature of magic itself.

*~*~*~*

I like modern fairy tale retellings and Wolves and Roses looked promising when I picked it up. Bryar’s defining characteristic is that she’s sarcastic, otherwise, she falls squarely into the YA heroine template of “Beautiful with big blue eyes and long gorgeous locks of brown hair, athletic, and handy with a weapon.”

Three of the five characters in this book have big blue eyes.

She’s also good with computers, but that’s only relevant because of her obsession with the papyri and how she’s slowly breaking an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic code. Which…how she’s breaking a code Egyptian scholars have been trying to crack for a hundred years is never really explained. There’s a quick line about long nights of research over the last five years. But that puts here at twelve years old learning ancient Egyptian well enough to find a touchstone with this Code of Isis that she can now piece it together. Also, the papyri are in pieces, so she has to put them in order as she finds them and then translate them.

The love interest in here, Knox, is supposed to be seventeen as well, but reads more like someone in their early twenties. I would even say that’s initially how his character was written, but at some point someone said, “You can’t have a twenty-five year old getting frisky with a seventeen year old, people will riot.” So a passing line of why Knox doesn’t like going to high school was added in.

Knox is a werewolf and he is massive. He’s about 6’5” as a human, I assume, but when he changes into a wolf? He’s twelve feet long. And as tall as a horse. He is literally the size of a sedan. Where did all that extra mass come from? He has to weigh a literal ton. Just…how? “Magic” can only explain so much. How does he fit through the average doorway without bruising his shoulders or smacking his ears? Look at your doorway right now and ask yourself, “Could a quarter horse walk through there?” Or maybe a Clydesdale. It never specifies what kind of horse he is as big as.

Also, Knox’s wolf decides as soon as they meet Bryar Rose that she is their mate and it is now his job to protect her at all costs because she is his.

Cue side-eye.

But it’s totally fine, because Bryar Rose also comes to think of Knox as hers.

Side-eye, part two.

If you’re looking for a quick read, this book will work. I read it all in an evening. There are a couple of unresolved questions that I assume the next book will begin to answer, but if you’ve read enough YA fantasy you can pretty well guess what will be in the second book. So, Wolves and Roses was a decent read, but follows the template of YA fantasy better than Bryar Rose does the Sleeping Beauty.