The Art of Charming a Changeling is an endearing, enthralling fantasy-romance by Sylvie Cathrall (A Letter to the Luminous Deep), whose imagination takes readers through Folk and Fairy lands, into a painting, and back again.
Florrie Hyverfell loves her work as an art conservator. It's people she finds challenging. Constantly arranging her face, rehearsing conversations ahead of time, seeking out comforting textures, and managing her interactions with the world exhaust her. She feels fortunate to be hired by Prince Ardant at the Commonplace Palace Museum. The painting he cares the most about is The Resolute Portrait of Vibrant Lord Vernal Mauve Among the Ruins; but to her dismay, Florrie quickly determines it has been replaced by a Fairy forgery. Worse, the counterfeit painting is holding hostage a changeling, a minuscule, near-perfect copy version of Lord Vernal Mauve, who asks that she call him Vern.
Florrie feels a little overwhelmed. To save her job, and to help Vern escape from the beautiful but closed world of his painting, Florrie is compelled to find the original stolen painting. She must travel into Fairy lands, where Folk seldom travel. Meanwhile, there is the utter magnetism of Vern, and does he have tiny, impossibly adorable dimples?
The Art of Charming a Changeling offers an absorbing foray into an imaginative setting populated by art-focused princes, fanciful Fairies, and the occasional predatory duck. This whimsical fantasy of changeling art contains a sweet and cozy romance, a woman's journey of self-actualization within a society that undervalues her, and a quest. The first in a planned series, it will leave all sorts of readers hungry for more. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia