A Heart to Hold

cw: threats of violence
rep: plus-size sapphic woc, non-binary li, sapphic side characters - set in a queernormative world

I'll be honest, I've probably given this an extra star because of the rep. When 99% of regency romances involve cishet white people, anything outside of that is a welcome and necessary novelty (it shouldn't be novel, but it's like people of colour just didn't exist in early 19th century).

A Heart to Hold tells the story of a potionmaker who falls in (insta)love for a brewer and their romantic pursuit of her with a bit of magic and fairytale thrown in. This book could've been a little longer and fleshed out, especially considering that some of the transitions were incredibly abrupt. Sometimes it felt like you were just dropped into a conversation instead of there being a natural progression to the scene. I think sometimes character decisions and motivations weren't fully understood because we didn't really spend much time with them outside of their budding courtship. Harmony also seemed to change her mind on marrying Apple very quickly and we never really got to see why from her pov, which is strange when it was a multi-pov book. There were also some issues with spelling/grammar but that's a minor problem.

I think I loved the world this was set in more than the characters and their romance, but there was definitely some potential here and I'd read another story by Sula Sullivan.