The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains
Reena McCarty || Publication Date - 07.04.2026
Poppy Hill had lived in the Otherside for 100 human years, now she's employed to bargain with them.
Fantasy | Adventure
In the late 1800's, Poppy was taken by Othersiders to be brought up and work for Faeries. She was employed most of her life as a chef, cooking meals for those who wouldn't have the creativity to think of these recipes for themselves.
Roughly a century later, she's reintroduced to reality through a company which takes specific care of people like Poppy. In exchange for education to fit into current day society, she is employed as a liaison. Her job is to comb through contracts and pick out the loop holes which Othersiders could use to weasel their way around things.
After one contract was overlooked in a rushed attempt to expedite the benefits to a high profile client, the result was disastrous for the company and it's reputation. Thankfully, only Poppy and a couple others know what exactly has happened and now she has 7 days to go to the world of the Fae and retrieve this high profile client before everything hits the fan.
What got me from the get go with this novel was the premise. I love the thought of Fae interacting and granting contracts to humans in exchange for various boons. However, the fact that there are 'lawyers' present to go over these contracts and make sure the wording is precise enough that the Fae making the contract can't take it out of context and run with it.
The timeframe in the 'Otherside' is significantly slower than in the human world. 100 years 'Otherside' equates to roughly 30 human years, so specifying in a contract what timeframe the requirement needs to be fulfilled in can mean the difference between being gone for a few days to being gone decades. This was such a fun addition to an already oversaturated genre of Fae fantasy.
Again I am hit with the evidence of a lack of editing. A random capitalised word in the middle of a sentence? I went out of my way to borrow the book from the Library to check to see if this had made it to the ePUB version as well and - voila... Genuinely is it that hard for established publishers to ensure the books they're publishing are being edited.
I have read Indie published books and self published works that have better editing that what is being put out my major publishers these days and honestly it's incredibly disappointing.
Other than random grammatical errors taking me out of the book, the adventure and story were quite good. When it came to the latter half of the novel I found it dragged on a bit too much, as if the author wanted the reveals to be more impactful with the build up of apprehension and tension. Unfortunately for me personally it made the reveals all the more obvious and they didn't have the punch I would have liked them to.
Overall Thoughts
Can I say this was a good book? Yes, of course I can, and with a sequel already in the works it has clearly been well received. It has a solid storyline which has adventure, a little bit of romance and some court politics thrown in for good measure. The world feels vast and well designed despite being what could have easily been another copy and paste faerie world. It was unique in some ways and I appreciate the author for going out of her way to make it so.
However, as above, these editing issues are becoming a bigger and bigger problem from large publishers and as much as I want to recommend this book, because truly it was a fantastic read, I can't in good consciousness because of the lazy editorial work being done. If you have the ability to borrow this book through your local Library, or find it in a thrift store, please pick it up and give it a go.