Quick Note: If you haven’t read Villains & Virtues yet, you might come across some slight spoilers here. Bound to Fall is a standalone spinoff of V&V, and discussion of it includes character death from the main trilogy.
Whoa, I haven’t posted in quite some time! Almost the entirety of summer, in fact, which is significantly shorter here in Vermont than it was in Georgia since we’ve ushered in August with nights in the 40s. But I’ve meant to get into blogging again, and what better way than to do a little cover reveal for Bound to Fall!
You’ve probably already seen the artwork, but the text makes it official, I guess! The artist is of course the one and only Angeo Art, and I just love how she depicted the two main characters. Celeste is trauma-riddled, and Reeve is well meaning but dumb as rocks, and I just think that, together, they make a perfect pair.
In all honesty, I got a serious block while I was writing because, once I got these two together, it was just…easy? And I thought, no, it should certainly be more complicated and angsty than that! But it just wasn’t, and that’s a nice breath of fresh air. So, if you want a simple and sweet love story, this might be right for you. (I mean, it’s simple and sweet underneath the PTSD and overzealous religiosity and the evil entity trying to wreck everyone and everything in town.)
Here are some of the other tropes you can look forward to in Bound to Fall:
Also, I can’t believe I didn’t post this earlier, but E. C. O’Connor made me another amazing map for this book! It takes a close look at the village of Briarwyke and presents it like a postcard. It’s ridiculously adorable and fills my heart with so much glee!
I’ve had so much fun with this book, but I’ve had a lot of anxiety in producing it too. Plenty of readers don’t like Amma, and to be clear, that’s okay! But soft heroines tend to get a lot of hate solely for being feminine/weak (I put these things together because to too many, they’re the same thing), and if you hated Amma then oh my god are you going to fucking loathe Celeste! I’ve come to decide that I don’t care if people hate her because I love her enough for everyone, but it still gives me pause to send her out into the world.
Because here’s the thing: you might hate soft heroines, and regardless of the reason, it’s perfectly fine if you choose to not read them! And it’s even fine to leave a review that says so! But just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. Trust me, there are enough cranky badasses out there that you’ll never read through them all. So maybe just let those of us who have been steamrolled our whole lives and came out totally squished on the other side have a protagonist we can identify with?
And, a little note, I’m really not trying to do femininity and kindness a disservice here. These are real issues that real humans go through and they deserve to be depicted on the page. Plus, strength can come in a lot of forms, and character growth should take the whole book, so it’s wild to me that the same people who think soft heroines are inherently misogynistic don’t seem capable of valuing the stark strengths these same characters have.
Okay, rant over! I almost don’t need to finish that blog post I’ve been drafting forever on soft heroines now! And hey, here’s the blurb.
Bound to Fall coming August 2023
Celeste Delacroix’s sister is dead. This is unfortunate…sort of. But it’s also an opportunity to return to the realm of Eiren and begin anew, if noxscura will allow her.
Cursed with dark magic, living virtuously has always eluded Celeste, but she’s determined to right the wrongs she wrought in the sleepy village of Briarwyke and maybe even find her ever after, happiness unrequired and, as she sees it, undeserved. But darkness accompanies Celeste as keenly as clumsiness and shame, and when she accidentally releases a new evil on Briarwyke, she must find a divine source of magic to destroy it.
Sir Reeve, Holy Knight of Valcord, is one such divine source—not to mention incredibly handsome—and as luck would have it, already intent on vanquishing the evil that plagues Briarwyke. Unfortunately, he believes that evil to be a noxscura-wielding witch who has desecrated his faith’s temple: Celeste herself. Abyss-bent on fulfilling his destiny, Reeve’s virtue and beliefs have never wavered because the world is simple, after all—there are those who are good, and those who are evil, and evil must be destroyed.
But what happens when a perceived evil requests assistance in defeating an even greater threat? Can Celeste and Reeve band together to save Briarwyke, or will their contempt for one another be their downfall?
akcaggiano.com 
Tons of badass female main-lead books, not enough soft females. It gets a bit boring. So excited for the release!
LikeLiked by 1 person