Toby has spent the six months since she escaped the pond holding down a dead-end job in a grocery store and avoiding all her old friends. Thinking her dead, Cliff married someone else, and though Sylvester got Luna and Rayselline back eventually, they both came back… different. Mentally, she’s still in a rut the world moved on while she was a fish. Toby has finally managed to break the enchantment and is now free, in body at least, if not mind. Now to chapter one, which takes place in 2009. When she finally catches up to Simon, he turns her into a fish – a koi, to be specific – and leaves her to languish for 14 years in a pond in San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden. Simon has abducted Sylvester’s wife Luna and daughter Rayselline. The kidnapper she’s chasing is Simon Torquill, twin brother of Sylvester Torquill, Duke of Shadowed Hills, Toby’s fae liege. For the last few years she’s crafted a human life for herself, complete with a human fiancé named Cliff and daughter, Gillian. Toby is a changeling, half-human (her dad) and half fae (on her mum’s side). Only, the kidnapper isn’t human and neither is she. The prologue takes place in 1995, where private investigator October ‘Toby’ Daye is on the trail of a potential kidnapper. On the other hand… well, when I’m reading, romance is the lifeblood which usually keeps me sustained with a book, and reading the first half of this series was like slowly starving to death. On the one hand, it’s all about the fae – my catnip – and is proclaimed to be interesting and well-written. I’ve gone back and forth for a LONG time on whether to read this series or not. As she steps back into fae society, dealing with a cast of characters not entirely good or evil, she realizes that more than her own life will be forfeited if she cannot find Evening’s killer. Unable to resist Evening’s dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby must resume her former position as knight errant and renew old alliances.

The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world has other ideas… After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the Faerie world, retreating to a “normal” life. October “Toby” Daye, a changeling who is half human and half fae, has been an outsider from birth.

October daye book 1