Mortal Skin
Mortal Skin
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
I first saw the Folk when I was a little boy. When they started appearing in my garden, with their unnatural, cruel beauty and honeyed words and veiled taunts. I grew up with big green eyes watching me from the forest. Whispers from the trees. Shimmering skin darting between the bushes. Black creatures always lurking in the shadows. While they were here, I thought nothing of them. It wasn't until they were gone that I realise it wasn't... normal. But it isn't until I'm twenty-one, when my life is in ruins, that they come back to take me away. They say I'm not fully mortal. They say I should be among them. The Unseelie Ruler wants me on her land for reasons no one will explain to me, but it's her aloof, painfully beautiful son who captures my attention and refuses to let go. The cold, black-eyed assassin prince who strikes fear into the hearts of all Folk. Who I've been warned about, repeatedly. Who watches me always. I don't trust the Folk, so I ignore their fearful advice to stay away from him. I ignore all of them except him, despite everything telling me that he can't be trusted--that he's just as bad as the rest of them, that he's playing games with me, the clueless mortal held here against his will. But I want him. Mortal Skin is the first in a mm fae romance trilogy about a dark fae assassin prince and a mortal who is thrown into the cruel world of the Folk.
Featured Series
3 primary booksFolk is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2022 with contributions by Lily Mayne.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book had a ton of elements I love in a fantasy novel. I'm very much into Faerie and it was great to read Mayne's take on it while enjoying that they kept a lot of classic elements and “rules”. This was a book I didn't want to put down and went through the over 300 pages in a single day.
While I absolutely adored this book and am excited to go to the next in the series, I was left with a lot of questions. This book ends on a pretty devastating cliffhanger but the few issues I had with this book came before that. Like almost all MM books, there is a lack of communication here between the male leads that results in a lot of misunderstandings. Here, we use can use the excuse of magic that is considered canon in Faerie lore - Folk/Fae cannot lie, cannot defy vows or promises, and use wordplay to skirt around both. However, the one point in the book where I wanted to throttle Ash was when Lonan tells him he's been all Ash's animal companions over the years. This is a huge bombshell Mayne drops towards the end of the book before the big climax but Ash just... accepts it. And then they have sex. Well, Ash, you should have asked a lot more questions. This means that Lonan has seen you grow up as a Fae literally your same age. So when you were 10 he was 10 and was creeping as a moth outside your window? And you have no further questions? You've known Lonan for, maybe, 6 whole months but he's known you nearly your entire life and you have nothing more to say? Bizarre and stupid. As the book went on but before this reveal, I was hoping the cat and wolf were different than Lonan, but maybe "working" for him. Their actions just didn't match up and Lonan's excuse that "it's easier to act differently" as those animals didn't make total sense with what we read throughout the book. For being told over and over again not to trust literally anyone, he puts his trust in Lonan very easily and you have to keep in mind that all this takes place in a single season. I guess Ash isn't the sharpest crayon in the box.
Despite that, Ash as a character is pretty complex but I just feel that he was a bit too accepting and complacent. I empathize more with Lonan, even after the ending. He was as helpless as Ash because of the power his mother holds over the entire Unseelie court. Ash was the one who didn't ask the right questions or any at all and kept his own council.
Also, where's Coam? Who does he work for? Why was he so giving with Ash, sex or no? I hope we learn more about his motivations in the next book.
Besides all that, still absolutely loved this and can't wait to go through the series, and I plan to read more of Mayne's other work.