A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe #bookreview #YA #fantasy #historical
Title: A Golden Fury
Author: Samantha Cohoe
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Publication Date: October 13, 2020
Page Count: 344
My rating: 4 stars
About the book:
In her debut novel A Golden Fury, Samantha Cohoe weaves a story of magic and danger, where the curse of the Philosopher’s Stone will haunt you long after the final page.
Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.
While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of a revolution looming, Thea is sent to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.
But there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.
A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe is a young adult historical fantasy standalone novel. The story in this one takes place in the 18th century, 1792 starting in Normandy, France then onto London with the characters dealing in alchemy.
Seventeen year old Thea Hope wants to become a legendary alchemist and has been studying alchemy under the instruction of her own mother. The ladies have been working on creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone and Thea knows that they are getting close. However, Thea’s mother proceeds with the experiments without her and is cast into a world of madness.
Thea is then sent to London to live with her father, a father who she has never known and who does not know her. Thea’s father is a professor at Oxford and Thea soon learns that there are alchemists there that will do anything to get their hands on her mother’s notes and the stone but Thea quickly learns that the stone is under a curse and is the cause of her mother’s insanity.
When I first saw A Golden Fury I debated back and forth on whether I wanted to pick it up or not with my pickiness when it comes to fantasy reads. More often than not I find things that keep me from enjoying the books, mostly with slow pacing, not enough action or reminding me of other books. This time however I actually found myself enjoying this one with it’s mix of all involved, being historical and taking on alchemy and tossing in some romance to the mix as well. I liked the protagonist in this one and was engaged with the action so I’m coming to the conclusion I’m more a standalone fantasy reader than series it seems.
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
Find this book online:
Goodreads / Amazon**
About the author:
I’ve already got this on my tbr so I’m glad you liked this Carrie.
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Thanks Kim, hope you like it too.🙂
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Glad this worked out for you Carrie. Maybe going in without too high of an expectation makes it a pleasant surprise.
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Thanks Carla! You may be right, it seems the ones I question the most are the ones I end up liking instead of ones I thought would be awesome.
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