Æroreh (The Ealdspell Cycle #1) by Jesikah Sundin

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She wants to choose her happily ever after. He wants to remake his once upon a time. Only magic can re-spin their tales. Princess Æroreh Rosen was faerie blessed before her birth. To promote the New Dawn Era, the Queen coded her daughter with every feminine perfection. Beauty. Gentleness. Obedience. Musicality. Kindness. Grace. Good cheer. Hunger and lung sickness plague the Kingdom of Ealdspell. But Æroreh is plugged into The Dream, a program created by a sect of faeries to control the realms through illusions of beauty and contentment. All Æroreh has ever known is blissful servitude to a cursed system, and she believes her realm is prospering. Until a different faerie sect decides to wake her sleeping mind and set her true magic free. Meanwhile, Félip Batten MacKinley holds a dangerous secret. One made more threatening by the frostbite scar across his cheek. He’s spit on, beaten, and demonized by a community that values a pretty face over all else. With no easy future in sight, he accepts that he’ll die a burden to his foster parents, his true history erased. But a tempting offer from the faerie’s Fate Maker leads Félip to cross paths with the hauntingly beautiful Æroreh—a young woman who represents all he loathes. Yet only she has the power to awaken a new Dream. Æroreh is a gritty spin on the romantic tale of Sleeping Beauty and blends faerie magic and pagan ritual with high technology. For fans of Sarah J. Maas, Holly Black, fairy tales, and young adult dystopian fantasy. NAME PRONOUNCED like Aurora. EBOOK featured in the The Kingdom of Thorns & Dreams anthology (A limited edition of Sleeping Beauty retellings)

Young Adult • Fantasy/Mythic, Retelling, and Folklore