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Verdict: A witty, inventive Regency fantasy with a scene-stealing fae narrator and two starred trade reviews, held back by that same narrator keeping readers at arm’s length from the romance and a second half that loses momentum.
Best for: Readers who love comedy-of-manners voice and Austen pastiche, who are happy to watch a romance through a third party’s eyes, and who want magic, mystery and a ballroom in the same book.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door, filtered through the narrator)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.3/5 — a 3.39 Goodreads average across nearly 9,000 ratings, well below what the starred Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews would suggest)
Tropes: Cursed debutante, scandalous witch, grumpy-sunshine, slow burn, age gap, comedy of manners, alternate Regency, fae meddling, murder mystery, unreliable omniscient narrator.
Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall is the first book in the Mortal Follies series, a traditionally published historical sapphic romance with a fantasy twist from Del Rey, set in an alternate 1814 Bath full of gods, fae and sorcery — where a debutante whose ballgown dissolves mid-season turns to the one woman society says is a murderous witch.
It holds a 3.39 average across almost 9,000 Goodreads ratings, against starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and a place on Kirkus’s best romance list of 2023. That gap between the professionals and the readers is the most interesting thing about this book. Both sides of it are worth understanding before you start.
What Is Mortal Follies About?
Mortal Follies is a Regency comedy of manners and a fantasy romance in equal measure — balls, chaperones and marriage markets, plus curses, fae courts and divine interference. The alternate setting lets Hall keep the period’s social machinery while loosening some of its prejudices, and the mystery running through the plot gives the romance something to happen alongside.
Miss Maelys Mitchelmore is nineteen, in her first Season, warm, impulsive and very much in the market for a good match — until a curse starts taking her life apart in public. Lady Georgiana Landrake is the Duke of Annadale in her own right, rumoured to have killed her father and brothers to get the title, and entirely uninterested in Bath’s opinion of her. The defining choice is the narrator: the story is told in first person by Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of legend, exiled from Faerie and watching the whole affair for entertainment. Neither heroine gets her own point of view, which is either the book’s great joke or its great problem, depending on who you ask.
What Makes This Sapphic Regency Romantasy Work
- The narrator: Puck’s voice is the most-praised element in the reviews — around ten reviewers and blogs single him out as witty and original, and both starred trade reviews lean on him.
- The comedy: Publishers Weekly called it Jane Austen meets Greek mythology, and 70% of StoryGraph readers tag it funny. The set pieces are built for laughs and mostly get them.
- The supporting cast: Maelys’s friend Miss Lysistrata Bickle is a recurring favourite, and readers enjoy the wider ensemble more than in many romances.
- The worldbuilding: Gods, fae and Regency society coexist in a way readers find fresh, and 74% of StoryGraph readers tag the book adventurous.
- A grumpy-sunshine pairing with real friction: The sunny debutante and the forbidding witch-duke is a classic setup, and readers who connect with them praise the slow-burn chemistry.
Book Synopsis
Bath, 1814, and Miss Maelys Mitchelmore is having the kind of Season that ends up in the gossip sheets. It starts with her dress coming apart in the middle of a ball and gets steadily worse from there. Whatever is happening to her is not bad luck. It is a curse, it is escalating, and nobody in polite society has the faintest idea how to stop it.
Lady Georgiana Landrake might. She holds a dukedom that by every rule of inheritance should not be hers, she practises magic that respectable people pretend not to see, and the town has decided she murdered her family to get where she is. She is cold, abrupt and wholly unbothered by her reputation — the last person a debutante with marriage prospects should be seen with, and the only one who takes Maelys’s problem seriously.
Watching all of this, with the amused detachment of someone who has been alive for a very long time, is Robin Goodfellow: a fae exile with opinions about mortals, a grudge or two from home, and an interest in the outcome he is not entirely honest about. As Maelys and Georgiana try to find out who wants her ruined, the curse draws in gods, monsters and the other side of the hedge — and the bigger danger may be the one neither of them saw coming: falling for each other in full view of Bath.
My Review
The voice is the reason to read this, and it is a genuinely good one. Hall writes Puck as a bored, arch, ancient creature narrating mortal nonsense for his own entertainment, and the result is a Regency novel that is properly funny at the line level. The world helps: a Bath where gods and fae are part of the social furniture is a smart premise, and the book is full of inventive set pieces.
The supporting cast is the other quiet strength. Miss Bickle, in particular, walks off with every scene she is in, and the wider ensemble gives the book a social texture that a lot of historical romances skip. When the comedy, the mystery and the people are all working at once, it is easy to see why two trade outlets starred it.
Where it struggles is the romance, and the cause is the thing that makes it distinctive. The single most repeated reader complaint — raised by around eight reviewers, several of them DNFs — is that Puck’s narration keeps you outside both heroines’ heads, so the love story is reported rather than felt. One blogger described it as watching the romance through two panes of glass. The second complaint is structural: the central curse plot resolves at roughly the halfway mark, and about as many readers say the second half drags or repeats itself. Around that sit smaller notes — a book that feels long at 416 pages, humour that some find forced, leads who feel thin next to the narrator, and a handful of readers uncomfortable with Georgiana’s sharpness towards a nineteen-year-old Maelys.
One expectation to reset: the packaging sells a devilishly funny romantasy and the starred reviews call it pitch-perfect romance. Readers find a comic adventure first and a romance second, with heat that Kirkus itself called tame for Hall. If you came for the love story, calibrate; if you came for a witty fantasy of manners, you are exactly the reader it was written for.
My honest note: A brilliant narrator and a fun world that make it hard to feel the romance at the centre. If you need to be inside the heroines’ heads, this will frustrate you. If you want to be entertained by a very clever voice, it is a delight.
| Element | In Mortal Follies |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Maelys Mitchelmore & Lady Georgiana Landrake — cursed debutante and the witch-duke, grumpy-sunshine slow burn |
| Core tropes | Cursed heroine, scandalous witch, grumpy-sunshine, slow burn, age gap, comedy of manners, fae meddling |
| Setting | An alternate Bath in 1814, where gods, fae and sorcery are part of society |
| Heat level | 3/5 — open door, non-graphic, seen through the narrator |
| Series | The Mortal Follies book 1 — complete romance and a happy ending; book 2 follows a different, male/male couple |
| Content notes | Animal sacrifice and animal death, murder by stabbing, drowning and burning, transphobia challenged in the text, homophobia, slavery and racism discussed, threatened sexual assault, magical illness (author-listed and crowd-reported on StoryGraph) |
How Spicy Is Mortal Follies?
A 3/5. romance.io places it in its middle steam band with open-door scenes, and readers agree on the shape: the sex is on the page but not graphic, because it is narrated by Puck, who deliberately skips the physical detail. Kirkus called the intimate content relatively tame for Hall, and the Smut Report described it as moderate and slow burn. Readers split on whether that works — one found the scenes sexy, others called them vague, and at least one blogger found intimacy observed by a third party uncomfortable.
That observed quality is the one thing worth knowing in advance. No reviewer I found flags kink content. If you want Regency sapphic romance at a similar open-door level with the heroines telling their own story, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics and The Perks of Loving a Wallflower sit in the same band.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read for voice and wit above all, you enjoy Austen pastiche and comedy of manners, you like fantasy mixed into your historical romance, and you are happy to experience a love story from the outside.
You may want to skip it if: you need to be inside the heroines’ heads to feel a romance, a plot that peaks at the halfway mark will lose you, you want sustained explicit heat, or an age gap with a sharp-tongued older love interest makes you uneasy.
In short: a dazzling narrator and a fun magical Bath, with a romance that most readers watch rather than feel.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)
The story of this book’s reception is a gap between the critics and the readers. On the trade side it did about as well as a romance can: starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, a place on Kirkus’s best romance novels of 2023, positive notices from Booklist and NPR, and a LibraryReads Hall of Fame listing. On the reader side it sits at 3.39 across close to 9,000 Goodreads ratings, with three stars the single most common rating, 3.53 across more than 5,300 StoryGraph reviews, and 4.0 from 644 Amazon ratings. I found no Reddit thread or BookTok trend driving it; the readers are coming through Hall’s existing audience from Boyfriend Material and through the trade coverage. The audiobook, from Random House Audio, is narrated by Nneka Okoye and runs 11 hours 50 minutes, and the listener feedback on her performance is uniformly warm — several reviewers say her Puck adds to the comedy.
Prefer audio? Listen to Mortal Follies on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Puck, first and most often — “witty” is the recurring word, and roughly ten reviewers single the narrator out. Then the humour and the Austen-flavoured voice, which around eight readers praise. The supporting cast, especially Miss Bickle, has its own fans. A smaller group praises the slow-burn chemistry between the leads, and at least one reader rated it higher on a reread, crediting the structure and the ending.
What readers argue about and complain about: Distance, above everything. About eight reviewers say the omniscient fae narrator keeps them from connecting with Maelys and Georgiana, and that the romance suffers for it — the same device other readers call the best thing in the book, which makes this the clearest taste-dependent split I have seen this month. The second theme is structure: roughly eight readers say the main curse plot wraps up around the midpoint and the second half drags, repeats or feels episodic. Third, length — about five readers found 416 pages padded. Smaller recurring notes: humour that tips into trying too hard, leads who feel flat beside the narrator, and a few readers uncomfortable with the age gap and Georgiana’s harshness. None of the starred trade reviews mentions the distance or the pacing, which is exactly where the readers’ three-star ratings come from.
The series question everyone should ask first: book one stands on its own. The romance completes and ends happily, with no cliffhanger. The sequel, Confounding Oaths, came out in August 2024 and rates slightly higher at 3.61 on Goodreads — but it follows a male/male couple, with the same narrator, so sapphic readers should treat this as a standalone. No third book has been announced.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mortal Follies a sapphic romance?
Yes. The central romance is between Miss Maelys Mitchelmore and Lady Georgiana Landrake, and it ends happily. Be aware that the narrator is a male fae character, and the sequel follows a male/male couple.
How spicy is Mortal Follies?
A 3/5. There are open-door scenes, but they are narrated by Puck, who deliberately avoids graphic detail. Kirkus called the intimate content relatively tame for Alexis Hall.
Does Mortal Follies end on a cliffhanger?
No. The romance and the curse plot both resolve, and the book ends with a happy ending for the two heroines. The wider series continues with a different couple.
Is Confounding Oaths about the same couple?
No. The sequel, published in August 2024, follows a male/male romance between Maelys’s cousin John Caesar and Captain Orestes James. Puck narrates again.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes — narrated by Nneka Okoye for Random House Audio, running 11 hours 50 minutes. Listener reviews consistently praise her performance, especially as Puck.
If You Loved Mortal Follies, Read These Next
If the Regency wit was the draw, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics gives you a sharp society romance told from inside the heroines’ heads. For balls, seasons and courtship with a lighter touch, Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend is the closest match on mood. And if it was magic in a Regency setting you wanted more of, Her Spell That Binds Me moves the witchcraft into a college for aristocratic witching families, with far more heat.
For more like this, browse our list of sapphic books like Bridgerton or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Mortal Follies is a book whose narrator is both its triumph and its limit. Puck is a terrific comic creation, the magical Bath is inventive, and the supporting cast is a pleasure. It is also a romance seen from a distance, a plot that peaks halfway through, and a book that feels longer than it needs to be. Whether that trade works depends on what you read romance for — if voice and comedy matter more to you than intimacy, this is a very good time. Check Mortal Follies on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Mortal Follies ranks as a critically starred, reader-divided sapphic Regency romantasy — witty, inventive and carried by its fae narrator, held back by that narrator’s distance and a sagging second half, and best approached for the comedy of manners rather than the romance.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ 3.39 average across 8,947 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Starred by Kirkus and Publishers Weekly
- ✓ 3.53 on StoryGraph from 5,321 reviews
- ✓ Three stars the most common Goodreads rating
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Grumpy-sunshine setup with real friction
- ✓ Slow burn praised by a minority
- ✓ Complete, happy resolution
- ✓ Seen from outside through the narrator
Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Miss Bickle a breakout favourite
- ✓ Georgiana a striking, prickly lead
- ✓ Ensemble richer than most romances
- ✓ Leads feel thin beside Puck
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Puck’s voice the most-praised element
- ✓ 70% of StoryGraph readers tag it funny
- ✓ Austen pastiche lands for many
- ✓ Humour reads as forced for some
Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Curse stakes escalate effectively
- ✓ Georgiana’s history gives weight
- ✓ Found friendship carries warmth
- ✓ Distance blunts the big moments
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Open door on romance.io
- ✓ Kirkus calls it tame for Hall
- ✓ Non-graphic, narrator-filtered scenes
- ✓ Observed intimacy unsettles some readers
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Romance completes with a happy ending
- ✓ No cliffhanger
- ✓ Rereader praised the closing structure
- ✓ Main plot peaks at the halfway mark
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Okoye audiobook widely praised
- ✓ Jokes reward a second pass
- ✓ Sequel returns to the same world
- ✓ 416 pages and a saggy middle
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