This book, by Rebecca F Kenney, is a spicy fae Nutcracker retelling. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into it, as I’ve never read or seen the original Nutcracker story. Nutcrackers themselves give me the willies (I don’t know why) so it’s not content I’ve ever been fond of consuming.
Two young women, Clara and Louisa, are drawn into fantastic circumstances when they go to live with their guardian, Drosselmeyer. They end up in the fae realm of Faerie with the Nutcracker and the Sugarplum Faerie, and get into all kinds of mischief while in pursuit of their goal: to lift the curse that was placed on the Nutcracker by Drosselmeyer.
There is a lot of sex and intimacy in this book. Some of the sex is quite dark and even violent in nature, so take heed of the trigger warnings before starting the novel. To be frank, I found the violent intimacy between two of the characters to be alarming and a bit too far outside my comfort zone for a book. Not that I want expressly cozy and lighthearted reads either but that…was a bit much for me. Thankfully the violence was limited to just a few scenes.
That aside, in the end, I found this to be an entertaining story. The personality differences between Clara and Louisa were well done, as were the differences between the Nutcracker and the Sugarplum Faerie. But man, are these characters horny! Haha. The action was good and the Rat King was a convincing villain. The suspense had me turning pages!
Four stars!