In Love and War Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A 20,000-word Fae Isles companion novella that finally shows the battlefield meeting series readers had been speculating about for four books — sharp, funny and explicit — held back by the fact that almost none of it lands if you have not read the main series first.

Best for: Readers already deep in the Fae Isles who want the Naxi and Thysandra origin in full, and who are happy to spend an evening on payoff rather than on a new story.

Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io rates it explicit open door)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.83 Goodreads average with 36% of ratings sitting at three stars or lower)

Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, grumpy-sunshine, battlefield romance, cat-and-mouse chase, forced proximity, bargains and bindings, opposites attract, prequel novella, dual POV, happy-for-now ending.

In Love and War is Lisette Marshall’s self-published book 4.5 in the Fae Isles series — a 91-page, roughly 20,000-word sapphic fantasy romance novella set on and around the blood-soaked ground of the Last Battle, where Naxi, a half-demon half-nymph working for the rebels, and Thysandra, the fae commander sworn to the other side, meet as opponents and turn a two-day engagement into something neither of them files under war.

It holds a 3.83 average across 683 Goodreads ratings and 4.0 across 248 on Amazon, and the distribution is the thing worth looking at: 29% five stars, 33% four, and then a heavy 30% block at three. That is not a book people dislike. It is a book that works completely for one audience and only partly for another, and which audience you are in is decided before you open it. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is In Love and War About?

This is romantasy in its companion-novella form: a short, self-contained episode inside a larger fantasy-romance series, written for readers who already know the world and want a gap filled. The Fae Isles books run on court politics, war between fae factions and slow-built romance across full-length novels; a 20,000-word entry cannot carry any of that machinery, so it does the opposite — it strips the world down to two people, one field and two days. The trade-off is exactly what you would expect. Nothing is explained, because the main series already explained it.

Naxi is introduced through appetite rather than lack — a demon who feeds on fae, waiting in a tree for her next victim, cheerful in a way that reads as menace when you understand what she is. Thysandra arrives assuming she is the dangerous one in the clearing: a fae commander with a reputation to defend and a war to win, who has spent the series being read by other characters as an obstacle. The novella runs dual POV, and that is where the value sits — two people simultaneously misjudging each other while the reader watches both sets of calculations at once.

What Makes This Sapphic Fantasy Romance Novella Work

• The banter: Named more often than anything else in the reviews. The dialogue does the seduction, and readers quote lines from it rather than describing scenes — a reliable sign the wit is the draw.
• The opposition: Naxi is sunshine with teeth and Thysandra is a grumpy war commander, so the enemies-to-lovers engine has real fuel from the first page instead of the manufactured hostility short romances usually settle for.
• The reframe: The main series refers to a brutal two-day battle between these two. The novella reveals what that battle actually consisted of, and readers describe going back to reread earlier books differently afterwards.
• The heat: romance.io bands it at 4/5 explicit open door, and for a 91-page book the spice arrives quickly and is not the fade-to-black that novella length often forces.
• The interiority: Dual POV in a short form is a risk, and reviewers consistently say it paid — the “why they are like this” question the series left open gets answered from inside both heads.

Book Synopsis

The Last Battle is under way, and Naxi has found the most comfortable seat on it — a tree above the fighting, where she can wait for something fae to wander close enough to be useful. She is half demon and half nymph, she has been owed a debt of blood since her family was destroyed, and she has spent a long time being the thing everyone on both sides distrusts. Being underestimated is the whole of her method.

Thysandra is not there to be useful to anyone. She is a fae commander with a war to hold together and a position that has never once been secure, and when she finds a demon lounging above her battlefield she reacts the way a soldier reacts to a threat she can name. What she gets instead is a conversation. When Naxi runs, Thysandra gives chase, and the pursuit takes them both far enough from their own armies that the war stops being the thing either of them is fighting.

What follows is two days of wits, bargains and increasingly dishonest negotiation, in which every advantage one of them takes costs her something she did not intend to give away. Naxi wants information and an exit. Thysandra wants a captive and a story she can bring back. Neither of them is prepared for how much of themselves the other can read, and neither can afford to be the first to admit that the fight has stopped being a fight. The question the novella is actually asking is what two people do when the only honest thing available to them is the one thing they both have to lie about.

My Review

The premise is the best thing here and it is genuinely clever. Marshall took a throwaway line from her own series — two characters who once fought each other for two days — and built the novella around the joke that the battle was not a battle. That is a structural gag, and it works because the main series planted it years of reading ago without meaning to be funny. Readers who got the reveal describe an actual out-loud reaction, which is not something a 91-page book usually earns.

The second strength is the voice. Naxi is written with a cheerfulness that stays slightly wrong throughout, and Thysandra’s narration is dry in a way that keeps undercutting her own competence. Put them in a two-hander and the dialogue does almost all the work; the plot is a chase, the setting is a field and a forest, and none of that matters because the pleasure is watching two people who are very good at reading others fail to read each other. Short romance usually thins characters to fit the page count. This one narrows the focus instead, which is a different decision and a better one.

Where it struggles is not a craft complaint, and it is worth being precise about that, because the dominant criticism in the reviews is not that the writing is bad — it is that the book does not exist independently. Reviewers who came in cold say so bluntly: the world-building is absent, the stakes are references to events they have not read, and the emotional weight of the meeting is borrowed entirely from books they have not opened. Thirty per cent of all ratings sit at three stars, and the three-star reviews are remarkably consistent in shape: pleasant, very short, not much happened. One reader who loved With Wing and Claw called this one a slog. Another put it at 5.5 out of 10 and used the word underwhelming about the backstory itself.

There is also the length question, which the marketing does not hide but which buyers keep raising anyway. Twenty thousand words is two hours. It ends on a happy-for-now rather than an HEA by design, because Naxi and Thysandra’s arc concludes inside the main series rather than here. If you came looking for a complete romance, you have bought a chapter. If you came for the missing chapter, you have bought exactly the right thing. The gap between those two readers is the entire explanation for a 3.83 average on a book whose fans are this loud.

So calibrate on entry point, not on quality. Read books one to four and this is a five-star bonus. Start here and it is a competent, quick, slightly weightless enemies-to-lovers short with no context attached — and the reviews saying so are not wrong, they are just answering a different question.

My honest note: One of the few novellas where the score genuinely measures the reader rather than the book. If you are inside the Fae Isles this is a gift; if you are outside it, start with With Wing and Claw and come back.

Element	In In Love and War
Central relationship	Naxi & Thysandra — half-demon rebel and fae war commander, enemies-to-lovers
Core tropes	Enemies-to-lovers, grumpy-sunshine, battlefield romance, cat-and-mouse chase, forced proximity, bargains
Setting	The Fae Isles during the Last Battle — a battlefield, and the forest both women flee into
Heat level	4/5 — explicit open door
Series	Fae Isles book 4.5 — a companion novella; ends on a happy-for-now, with the couple’s arc completed in the main series
Content notes	Explicit sexual content, battlefield violence and on-page death, demonic feeding, references to genocide of the heroine’s family, captivity and coercive bargaining

How Spicy Is In Love and War?

romance.io bands it at 4 out of 5 and labels it explicit open door, which for a 91-page novella means the spice is a substantial share of the page count rather than a single late scene. Readers corroborate it enthusiastically and often in emoji — the running joke across the reviews is that the two-day battle the main series keeps referencing was not spent fighting, and reviewers treat the heat as the punchline rather than as an interruption to the plot.

The one thing worth flagging in advance is the bargaining. A good deal of the seduction runs through coerced or semi-coerced deals between two people who are formally enemies, and one of them feeds on the other’s species; if negotiated consent under duress is a line for you, that is where this book sits. No reviewer flags anything beyond that, and nobody describes the book as dark. For the same band, With Wing and Claw is the obvious next stop from the same series, and Goddess of the Sea sits at the same 4/5 explicit open door in a different mythology.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you have read at least the first four Fae Isles books, you have wondered what actually happened between Naxi and Thysandra, you want banter-led enemies-to-lovers with real explicit content, and a two-hour read is a feature rather than a complaint.

You may want to skip it if: you have never read Lisette Marshall, you need world-building explained rather than assumed, you want a full romance arc with an HEA on the page, or you resent paying novella prices for a companion piece.

In short: a genuinely delightful bonus for series readers and a weightless snack for everyone else — the book has not changed, only your entry point has.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no viral moment behind this book. It has 683 Goodreads ratings and 72 written reviews after nearly two years, no trade coverage, no Reddit thread of any size, and no audiobook — Libro.fm does not stock it, and neither does any other retailer I could find, which for a self-published novella is unsurprising but worth knowing if audio is how you read. What it does have is a steady inflow from the main series: readers finish book four, learn there is a 4.5, and buy it the same evening. Almost every enthusiastic review says some version of “finally.”

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The banter comes up first and most often, usually quoted rather than described. The reveal is second — several reviewers say they will never read the two-day-battle references in the main series the same way again, and one says she is going to be dying every time she rereads it. Third is the pairing itself: sunshine demon against grumpy fae commander is described as polar opposites done properly, and readers who had been shipping them across four books report the payoff matched the wait. The spice is fourth and vocal. The minority view worth flagging runs against the main complaint: a handful of readers insist it works fine cold — one called it a quick and easy read that stands on its own and said she would continue with the series — so the standalone objection is not unanimous, just dominant.

What readers argue about and complain about: Series dependence, above everything. The mechanism is specific: the novella spends none of its 20,000 words establishing the world, so a newcomer meets political stakes, a war and two reputations entirely by reference, and the emotional payoff is a callback to scenes she has not read. One two-star review states it flatly — the world-building was not present, the story was not captivating enough to continue with the series, definitely not a standalone. Second: length. Ninety-one pages, and a substantial share of them explicit, leaves little room for anything to develop, which is why the three-star block is so large and so uniform — nice, short, thin. Third, and smaller but real: a minority of series readers found the backstory itself anticlimactic, with one calling it underwhelming and a little boring at 5.5 out of 10, and another saying it dragged despite loving With Wing and Claw. The genuine split is between readers who wanted an origin story and readers who wanted a romance; the book is confidently the former.

The series question everyone should ask first: This is book 4.5, and it is not an entry point. It ends on a happy-for-now rather than a cliffhanger because the couple’s relationship develops in the background of books one to four and then gets its full-length resolution in book five, With Wing and Claw — so nothing is left dangling here, the story is simply being told out of order. If you are choosing between the two Marshall titles, the novel is the better book on the numbers: 3.93 on Goodreads against this novella’s 3.83, and it reads standalone in a way this does not. Read the main series first and treat In Love and War as the appendix it was written to be.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is In Love and War a standalone?

No. It is Fae Isles book 4.5 and it assumes you have read the earlier books — the world, the war and both reputations arrive by reference rather than explanation. The most consistent complaint in the reviews comes from readers who started here.

How spicy is In Love and War?

A 4/5. romance.io bands it explicit open door, and for a 91-page novella that means the spice occupies a meaningful share of the page count rather than one late scene.

Does In Love and War have a happy ending?

It ends on a happy-for-now rather than an HEA, and that is by design. Naxi and Thysandra’s arc is completed in book five, With Wing and Claw, not here.

How long is In Love and War?

Ninety-one pages, roughly 20,000 words — about a two-hour read. Marshall describes it as a companion novella rather than a full entry in the series.

Is there an In Love and War audiobook?

Not as of August 2026. Libro.fm does not stock it and no audio edition is listed elsewhere, which is common for self-published novellas.

Is In Love and War on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes. It is currently borrowable with a Kindle Unlimited membership, which makes it a low-risk way to read a companion novella you are unsure about.

If You Loved In Love and War, Read These Next

Start with With Wing and Claw, which is the same author, the same world and the full-length book this novella is a footnote to — same 4/5 heat band, far more room. Goddess of the Sea matches the explicit open-door band and the mortal-versus-immortal power gap in a different mythology. And The Curse of the Goddess runs the same enemies-to-lovers engine at a hotter setting and at full novel length, if the shortness is what disappointed you. More in enemies-to-lovers lesbian romance and across all our book reviews.

The Bottom Line

In Love and War sets out to answer a question the Fae Isles series raised and never explained, and it does that completely: the banter is the best in Marshall’s catalogue, the two leads are sharply opposed in a way the short form actually flatters, and the reveal reframes four books’ worth of offhand references. What it does not do is stand alone, run long enough for anything to develop, or finish the romance it starts — a third of all ratings sit at three stars for exactly those reasons. If you have read the series it is a two-hour gift and worth every page; if you have not, it will read as a pleasant fragment. Check In Love and War on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, In Love and War ranks as a high-quality companion novella — witty, explicit and genuinely satisfying as a missing chapter, constrained by total dependence on the series around it, and best approached for the origin story rather than for a romance that resolves.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

• ✓ 3.83 average across 683 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ Banter and the reveal near-universally praised
• ✓ 4.03 on romance.io
• ✓ 30% of all ratings sit at three stars

Romance ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ Enemies-to-lovers with real prior hostility
• ✓ Sunshine demon against grumpy fae commander
• ✓ Chemistry carried by dialogue, not proximity
• ✓ 20,000 words compress the whole turn

Characters ★★★★☆ 3.8/5

• ✓ Dual POV answers the “why are they like this” question
• ✓ Naxi’s cheerfulness stays convincingly wrong
• ✓ Thysandra finally narrated from inside
• ✓ No room for anyone else in the cast

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.9/5

• ✓ Least-criticised element in the reviews
• ✓ Reviewers quote lines rather than summarise
• ✓ Dry wit sustained across both POVs
• ✓ Nothing here for a reader who wants prose to linger

Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

• ✓ Series readers report an out-loud reaction
• ✓ Reframes four books of offhand references
• ✓ Family-genocide backstory finally given weight
• ✓ Newcomers consistently describe it as flat

Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ romance.io bands it 4/5 explicit open door
• ✓ Spice is a large share of 91 pages
• ✓ Readers treat the heat as the punchline
• ✓ Consent runs through coerced bargaining

Ending ★★★★☆ 3.5/5

• ✓ Happy-for-now, and clearly signposted as such
• ✓ No cliffhanger — nothing is left dangling
• ✓ Arc resolves in book five instead
• ✓ Not a complete romance on its own terms

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.7/5

• ✓ Two hours makes a reread cheap
• ✓ Changes how the main series reads afterwards
• ✓ Banter rewards a second pass
• ✓ No audiobook exists for a second format

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More sapphic fae romance: our Sapphic Fae Romance guide sorts 63 adult fae books by courts, bargains, dark or cozy mood, heat and ending. New to the terms? Read What Is Fae Romance?