WtAFW: Uncommonly Verdant: An Arborous & Amorous Fairy Tale by Daria Vernon

 

As soon as I heard about UNCOMMONLY VERDANT, I knew I had to read it as one of my What the Actual Fuck Wednesday reads. Woman gets down and dirty with a plant man, with sus culty shenanigans? NEED. Disclaimer: I'm friends with the author but I paid for this book with my own hard-owned money and this is my honest review.

The book starts out pretty sad. Althea, the heroine, wakes up to find out that she was killed by the cultists in her town. They have decided that the portwine birthmark on her face signifies that she will be the destruction of their village, so they stabbed her in the heart and left her as a sacrifice for the forest guardian of the wood surrounding the village.

Silvanus, however, soon realizes that Althea did nothing wrong. Which is why he brought her back to life, stitching the wound over her heart closed and making it bloom with flowers. At first she's horrified by him and by her new state, but she quickly warms to the situation. After all, the forest is beautiful and Silvanus is a gentle soul.*

*Except when he isn't. >:D

I'm happy to crown this a WtAFW success! A lot of these monsterica and niche erotica books aren't well written and are marketed more for the whimsy than they are for the quality of their writing. That is not the case with UNCOMMONLY, which is uncommonly well-written, with beautiful prose in places, and a surprisingly touching relationship for a book that is-- *stifles giggle*-- 69 pages in length.

This is one of the few books where I wish it was actually longer. I would have loved a full-length novel with these characters, showing Althea in the village, her sacrifice, and then maybe more of a courtship between her and Silvanus (who is a total gentleman monster and consent king(TM)). When he says that her birthmark is like a cherry tree after the rain? SWOON. And when he makes her little heart flower bloom with phlox because that's her favorite? DOUBLE SWOON. For what it is, it's wonderful. I'm definitely going to have to check out more of this author's work because this was great.**

**Even though there's no tree-dicks or tree-fucking.

3.5 out of 5 stars