Advent 2025 Book 14 – Magic, love and peril

We change genre for Book 14 of my Advent Calendar. It’s a stand-alone fantasy novel, written for Young Adults – An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson. The version I have been sent has a beautifully illustrated cover with a picture of a young woman and a bird, presumably a raven. This is a book written for much younger readers than myself and, as I explained yesterday, I haven’t read a lot of Young Adult fiction recently but I do like a good fantasy novel and am especially encouraged by this one as it is stand-alone – quite a rare thing in fantasy as after the author has gone to so much trouble to create a new world they often like to use it again.

This book is about a young woman who paints portraits, especially of people from what the author calls the “fair folk”. When she makes a mistake in how she portrays a fairy prince she is called to his kingdom to stand trial and is escorted there by the prince himself. I suspect that this is a book where the two travellers encounter lots of challenges along the way and that they probably fall in love.

Whether or not I enjoy this book depends very much on how the characters are written and on the land that the author has created but I am definitely prepared to try it as it’s been a while since I read a new fantasy novel.

With this book came a red leather looking book corner in the shape of a heart. It’s designed to slip on the corner of the page you are reading, although I have found that this sort of bookmark works best on books with thicker rather than thinner paper. Anyway, it’s a lovely thing and even if I don’t use it just looking at it will make me feel happy.