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At first Of Metal and Wishes had me thinking Beauty and the Beast; only wait a beat and it’s Phantom of the Opera. I enjoyed this despite the female lead not being the most sympathetic at first. She was too ‘woe is me’. 16 year-old Wen is struggling with the changes that have come and the roles she’s been assigned from her mother’s daughter to doctor’s assistant, none of it’s what she had planned for herself.

As she adjusts, more change comes with the Noor, perceived less and treated thus, their presence make her adjustment all the more difficult. In the midst of that, we have a presence, this mythic entity righting the wrongs and easing burdens of those who’d ask (‘twas very ‘dramatic’.) And then to complicate matters for her even further, there’s a weasily skeeze (all right, one or two fellows of that sort) in this one too.

Truth time: it’s not that difficult to piece things together, to see who was who and what they would become for each other; but I enjoyed it all the same. Mainly because it’s fast paced and for another things got pretty interesting in terms of the connections being made. First, there’s her Belle to his Beast, though the start of their tale is conventional, it progressed less so: there’s crash into hello thing that takes places, plus bruised egos, and expectations that were too either high (or low) based on each their preconceptions, but I liked that; I liked them. AND just as a connection starts there, another yet picks up: Who the ghost is is key here BUT it’s who the rest of them are in relation to the same that’s makes all this more than just a girl falling for the guy who’s her total opposite (though that’s there too).

Favorite bits: FIRST, them learning more of each other; the notions they had shifting a little and then shifting some more until being chucked completely, because what they though the other was, isn’t the case at all. SECOND, that they were all really different: her seeing him and his together and their ways being so foreign to her own... it added a touch of something more here.

Also, Book, why'd you end like that?!

Thank you, Edelweiss!