Book Spotlight: Fable and Namesake by Adrienne Young

Welcome to book spotlight where instead of giving you another book review, I’m just going to talk about books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed. Prepare yourself for the fangirl gushing.

One of the book clubs I’m in decided to read Fable by Adrienne Young for our April meeting. I had been keeping my eye on this title to save for when the sequel released since I’m getting tired of waiting years between book releases for series. Fortunately, Namesake released only a few months after Fable.

(I have no idea why the publishers did that, but as long as books are still quality writing and have had the same amount of time for editing as other books, I’m on board with this kind of publishing schedule.)

I have a love-hate relationship with Adrienne Young’s books. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy them a lot, and I love her world-building details. But there’s always something about them that doesn’t connect quite the same as other books.

Until Fable.

Fable blew me out of the water. I absolutely loved reading this book. I love the gritty world, Fable’s character, West’s dark brooding charm, the crew of the Marigold, Saint, the tension between Fable and West, the details of the sailing and dredging. I’ve read several other pirate-y, sailing the seas type books before, but none of them really captured what I was looking for in that type of book. Until Fable.

The details and descriptions in this book are so amazing. I really want to know how Adrienne Young researched all of this and to ask her if I can please have all her research notes because it was amazing. Everything is so immersive and natural.

I love the story as well. Fable is such an interesting character. Because she’s strong and stubborn but she makes mistakes, she feels a lot, she does things for others even when she shouldn’t, and she fights for what she wants no matter what. I saw a piece of myself in her character, and it was so moving to have a book include a character like her.

West is the perfect balance of brooding and swoon-worthy. I had no idea a character that doesn’t talk a ton could make such an impression, but he did. His actions capture his character more than words ever could. And the slow burn romance between him and Fable is so well done. I honestly didn’t know if anything would happen between the two in this book since I knew there was a sequel. That’s how slow burn it was.

I also love all the members of the Marigold‘s crew. Some of them give me Atlantis: The Lost Empire crew vibes, which I am not going to complain about.

And that ending had me itching to pick up Namesake as soon as I could. (I even DNFed two books while I was waiting for my library hold to come in because I had such a huge book hangover from Fable.)

Sequels are definitely harder to judge, especially when book one was so good. I didn’t have as high of expectations for Fable as I did for Namesake. And while I definitely enjoyed Namesake immensely, some parts are a bit on the predictable side and come across a little anti-climatic. But once again, the world-building, the characters, the tension are all so fantastic that I didn’t mind if the ending didn’t exactly do what I had been hoping.

Also, those covers are so freaking gorgeous that I don’t know if I’ll ever get over them. I didn’t buy copies of the book, but I might just because of how much I enjoyed this series and also to have those books on my bookshelf.

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