In the urban fantasy genre, you never know what you are going to get. You might get a book with a solid plot and a great hero or heroine that could be a potential good series, or you could get a romance fluff novel with supernatural trappings. Unfortunately for me, Wicked Enchantment by Anya Bast is the latter rather than the former. It is a romance novel set in the realm of the fae (remarkably like the setup in Laurell K Hamilton's novel only not a well developed). It has a few good ideas which are drowned out by the unnecessary sex scenes and the overly sappy plot.
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Like so many other urban fantasy books in Wicked Enchantment the fae have been outed. Their numbers are few (due to a disease in this particular novel) , and like Laurell K Hamilton's novels there are two fae courts that consist of the nobility or the most magicked of the fae. There is the beautiful court of illusion the Seelie court and the court of darkness the Unseelie court. The one difference in Anya Bast's novels the fae have been contained in one area, they are effectively quarantined in one geographic area. Restricted by a magical barrier, those in cannot get out and those out cannot get in.
As the novel begins, Gabriel, who is half incubus, decides he wants to switch courts. He currently resides in the Unseelie court but wants to petition to live in the Seelie court and he is certainly beautiful enough to get accepted. The Queen of the Seelie court allows him to live in the Rose tower (where the Seelie nobles live) for a week while she decides whether he can stay. She selects one of her favorites of the court, Aislinn, to act as a guide to Gabriel. Aislinn is just getting over a bad relationship and really wants nothing to do with the gorgeous Gabriel, can you see where this going? Anyways there is a bit of real plot here too, like why does Gabriel suddenly want to jump courts? Does he have ulterior motives? And Aislinn has a secret that she hides from the Queen and the Seelie court. To find out what it is you will have to read the novel.
This novel has several downfalls for me. First of all it is too much like Laurell K Hamilton's Meredith Gentry novels, and to me those are better. It has too much of a romance novel feel, there are sex scenes which are sort of graphic in random places in the plot. They didn't add anything to the plot. The plot dragged in places especially towards the end. By the end of the novel, I got to where I didn't care what happened to the characters. I also felt that Anya Bast didn't really do a good job with the characterization. There were no interesting or intriguing characters. I didn't connect with any of the characters nor like any of them. They were all flat one-dimensional characters and they don't really change or grow in novel.
There are evidently at least three books in this series but I believe I will stop with this one. I didn't really care for Wicked Enchantment. If you are looking for a supernatural romance novel you might like it, but if you are looking for a good fantasy novel then give this one a pass.