Review: By Fairy Means or Foul by Meghan Maslow

Posted September 14, 2020 by Lola in Fantasy, Review, Romance / 2 Comments

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By Fairy Means or FoulBy Fairy Means or Foul (Starfig Investigations #1)
by Meghan Maslow
narrated by Greg Boudreaux

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Fantasy Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: MM

Blurb:
The last thing half-dragon, half-fairy private investigator Twig Starfig wants to do is retrieve a stolen enchanted horn from a treacherous fae, but there’s no denying the dazzlingly gorgeous unicorn who asks Twig to do just that. Literally, no denying, because compelling the reluctant detective is all part of a unicorn’s seductive magic.

To add to his woes, Twig is saddled with the unicorn’s cheeky indentured servant, Quinn Broomsparkle. Dragons are supposed to want to eat humans, but Twig’s half-dragon side only wants to gobble up Quinn in a more . . . personal way. Making matters worse, it’s obvious the smokin’ hot but untrustworthy sidekick is hiding something. Something big. And not what’s in his trousers. In the PI business, that means trouble with a capital Q.

Throw in gads of zombies, a creepy ghost pirate ship, a malfunctioning magic carpet, and Twig’s overbearing fairy father’s demands to live up to the illustrious Starfig name. Naturally, an old but abiding enemy chooses this time to resurface, too. Those inconveniences Twig can handle. The realization he’s falling for a human who isn’t free to return his affections and whose life may hang on the success of his latest case?

Not so much.

My Review

I was so happy when I won a copy of this book from the author. It sounded like a fun read and the author said the narrator was great, which made me even more curious. By Fairy Means or Fouls is a fun fantasy romance book set in a fantasy realm called The Elder. I had fun listening to this on and the narrator really did a great job with this one.

This was such a fun read, the couple gets in some funny situations. And I liked how things took an unexpected turn at times, when I was expecting things to go a certain way and then something else happened. The book has a light feel, but still deals with some serious topics as well. Mostly this book just made me smile. It was just a lot of fun and there are plenty of great characters and the narrator was awesome.

This book is told from the point of view of Twig Starfig who runs Starfig Investigations. The story starts when a new client enters his office, it’s a unicorn who ask Twig’s help to retrieve his horn from a fae. The unicorn has some special magic and Twig can’t say no. As the unicorn can’t pay the upfront fee he ends up having to take the unicorn’s indentured servant Quinn while he investigates. What starts off as a pretty straightforward quest turns out more and more complicated with some interesting twists and turns. And Twig finds himself falling for Quinn along the way.

Twig and Quinn get in a variety of dangerous and funny situations. They end up making friends with some interesting creatures, land in situations they hadn’t expected and end up making some enemies along the way as well.

I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the romance at first. Quinn basically is a slave and Twig at first is very controlling and keeps telling him what to do. They both keep secrets and don’t communicate, which could be frustrating at times. They also seem to go from one emotional extreme to the other at times. But slowly I found myself warming up to their romance. Quinn’s bite was more a defense mechanism and he and twig develop a sort of banter that could be entertaining to read about. They actually work great together too when Twig let’s Quinn. And they were great together and both could use the other in their live. I was happy with a certain development later on in the book as it made them feel a bit more on even footing. I also kept wondering how the whole Quinn being a slave thing would be dealt with and in the end I quite liked how that was resolved.

Overall I liked both Quinn and Twig, they both had been dealt a difficult hand and weren’t always treated right by others and they had trouble finding their place in the world. At times I wasn’t fully happy with their behavior, twig could jump to conclusions at times and could be a tad rude at times. While Quinn could be ridiculously stubborn, which at times was a nice touch and other times it could be just annoying. As the book progressed their personalities get rounded out a bit more and I ended up liking them more. It also made a bit more sense why they were they way they were. I was still surprised how Quinn ended up being such a nice person even after everything that had happened to him.

This whole adventure nicely gets wrapped up by the end, but leaves enough room for future adventures.

I am so glad I got an audio copy of this book as the narrator really added something to the book. I liked how different Twig and Quinn sounded, where Twig’s voice was more gruff and low, Quinn had a totally different voice, slightly higher and it sounded very different. This made it really easy to know who was talking. And he did some great voices for the side characters too and had their personalities shine through, like the unicorn or Bill or the parrot. My favorite was probably the voice he did for twig’s father, who really sounded like a grumpy high pitched fairy.

To summarize: I had a lot of fun listening to this book. While this book has a simple enough set-up it quickly gets more twisted when things go in a different direction than I had anticipated. They have to deal with a variety of weird and strange and dangerous situation. Sometimes it bordered on ridiculous, but in a good way. It was quite funny at times and the author really has some great imagination with how she came up with some of these things. I liked the characters, although they could be a tad annoying at times especially first, but I grew to like them more as the story continues. The romance between the characters slowly grew on me, there were a few parts that didn’t quite work for me and sometimes they had the same argument over and over without really communicating, but they were good for one another and I liked seeing them try and figure things out. There also is a variety of great side characters. The narrator did a great job with this book, each character had a distinctive voice and their personalities shone through in their voices. I liked how different Twig and Quinn’s voices were as it always was easy to know who was talking. This was such a fun listen and I look forward to the rest of the series.

4 Stars

Links:
Goodreads
Bookbub
Amazon
Audible

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.

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2 responses to “Review: By Fairy Means or Foul by Meghan Maslow

  1. It does sound like a fun set up and I already like Greg Boudreaux’s narration work. Looks like a a good storyline even if they didn’t communicate well at first. I’ll have to put this one on the wish list.

    • Greg Boudreaux’s narration really worked here. It was a fun listen, especially once they get over the whole not communicating well thing.

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