Review: A Fragile Enchantment by Allison Saft

A Fragile Enchantment by Allison Saft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided both a digital and audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This was a cute romantic fantasy set in a regency type of setting.  Niamh is a talented tailor and dressmaker, who is able to enchant the items she makes with emotions and memories.  She is one of the last of her line with her abilities, and her abilities have caught the eye of the aristocracy.  She is surprised and thrilled when the Prince Regent calls on her to make the wedding wardrobe for his younger brother Kit and his bride to be.  Determined to make a name for herself and support her family, Niamh is going to do her very best to make the young prince and his new wife look spectacular, unfortunately when she arrives the estate and city are not at all what she expected.  She is thrown into a city full of unrest, all while trying to fit the prince for wedding garments he is not thrilled about.  As she spends more time with Kit, she slowly peels back the layers of his unhappiness and a tentative friendship begins to blossom and eventually turn into something more.  As their relationship develops, so does their desire to fix what is broken in their country and help the Prince Regent see the light.

This was cute, but Kit and Niamh were a little too "woe as me" at times.   Both of them willing to sacrifice themselves at every turn "because it is their duty" and was a bit overdone throughout the book, especially since they were both fairly hypocritical about it.  I feel like the author had a real opportunity to talk about social issues here but only just touched the surface of the very real historic issues and the very real current issues with class, privilege, and race/heritage.  The social issues were glossed over for the sake of the other plot elements of which I felt there were too many.

I thought the audio narrator did a wonderful job with the narration of the book.  She did different voices and accents for the various characters which was important seeing as how their was civil unrest based on class and heritage/race.  I believe in this case this was a take on the disdain the English had for the Irish which was a very real issue.

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