Behooved by M. Stevenson Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Pages: 352
Published by Bramble Romance on May 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
A charming slow-burn romantasy featuring a duty-bound noblewoman with a chronic illness, a prince who would rather be in a library than on a throne, and a magical ride through a world of cozy enchantment
*This beautiful paperback edition features sprayed edges.*
Bianca knows her duty comes before her heart. So when the threat of war looms, she agrees to marry the neighboring kingdom’s heir. But not all royal weddings are a fairytale, and Prince Aric, Bianca’s betrothed, is cold, aloof, and seems to hate her on sight.
To make matters worse, on their wedding night, an assassination attempt goes awry―leaving Aric magically transformed into a horse. Bianca does what any bride in this situation would do: she mounts her new husband and rides away to safety.
Sunset returns Aric to human form, but they soon discover the assassination attempt is part of a larger plot against the throne. Worse, Bianca has been framed for Aric’s murder, and she’s now saddled with a husband who is a horse by day and a frustratingly attractive man by night.
As an unexpected romance begins galloping away with their hearts, Bianca and Aric must rely on each other to unravel the curse and save the throne.
My Review:
Bianca Liliana of Damaria has been groomed by her parents to be a slave to her duty. Afflicted with a chronic, intermittently debilitating illness that not even the best healers can identify, Bianca has spent most of her life being told that she’s utterly useless for any role at all, and that the best she can hope for is to be married off, far away from home, before anyone discovers just how weak she is.
When the neighboring country of Gildenheim presents her parents with a treaty designed as an ultimatum, they are more than willing to sacrifice Bianca on the altar of keeping the peace. Bianca is willing to do her duty – after all, she’s been taught all her life that it’s all she’s good for, while her strong, capable, magical sister is MUCH more suited to being their parents’ heir to their family’s position on their country’s ruling council.
Bianca is packed off to Gildenheim in unseemly haste to do her duty to her country, fearing for her life at the hands of a warmongering young king who seems to have ascended to his throne rather suddenly after the recent and extremely suspicious death of his mother the queen.
It’s only AFTER the wedding, when they finally manage to have a private – and surprisingly civil – conversation that Bianca and Aric figure out that BOTH their countries are being manipulated by a villain hiding in the shadows.
Well, they’re half right.
Just at the point where they both start thinking they might have a handle on the mess, an assassin breaks into the as yet unused marital chamber to kill Aric. You’d think that a king would be able to defend himself but that’s not how things work. It’s up to Bianca to defend Aric, surprising everyone in the room including the assassin.
She’s surprised at herself for immediately leaping to his defense – once she figures out that he has none of his own. He’s surprised she could and the assassin is surprised she did. Then they’re all surprised when Bianca turns Aric into a big white horse and chaos ensues all around.
Bianca is not, definitely not, absolutely not, a mage of any sort or stripe. But her sister Tatiana is, so when Bianca, in a last-ditch effort to save her brand-spanking-new husband from an assassin, uses the experimental charm her sister gave her to save them both – a horse is the result.
Or rather, Aric AS a horse. In the confusion, the assassin’s confusion, their own confusion, the rapidly arriving guards’ confusion, Aric and Bianca escape together by leaping out the window and galloping down the road. Away. Out of the line of whatever fire might still be coming for them.
Which is the point where Behooved literally runs off to the races as Bianca and Aric start comparing notes about their current predicament as they do their best – and occasionally worst to both figure out and stay out of the way of the forces that are arrayed behind them, before them, and against them.
Even as they discover the advantages, as well as the disadvantages of traveling together as a horse and rider by day – and as a man and a woman during nights that just don’t seem to last nearly long enough.
Escape Rating A: I began this story with a whole heaping helping of mixed feelings, but by the end I was completely wowed by the way this slow-burn, sort-of-enemies to definitely lovers romantasy, filled to the brim with political skullduggery and truly epic betrayals redeemed itself from its predictable opening to the multiple, multiple heel turns of its fantastic ending.
Okay, that was a lot, wasn’t it?
The beginning was more than just a bit predictable. It was completely obvious that Bianca’s parents had been grooming her in an emotionally abusive fashion pretty much her whole entire life, and that they were absolutely clear about exactly how to push her ‘duty’ button because they had installed the damn thing themselves. They were evil and manipulative from the off, and the reader sees it clearly even though Bianca is willfully blind to their machinations because, honestly, they’ve programmed her that way.
So we know Bianca is walking straight into some kind of trap – it’s just a matter of waiting for the trap to spring so that we can finally get to the REAL story of Bianca’s romance and adventures and romantic adventures.
Because we’re seeing this story entirely from Bianca’s perspective we don’t see that Aric has been manipulated just as much – albeit from entirely different angles – as she has until they have the chance to start comparing notes. And even then they don’t trust each other because they’ve both been manipulated not to.
What made them such a fascinating couple was the way that they had each, in entirely different ways, been groomed to believe that they were useless and less than by the people who were supposed to raise them with love and care. In other words, his mother-the-queen and her conniving parents.
They’ve both been programmed to believe that they are not worthy and less than for things that are innate parts of themselves. Bianca for her chronic illness, and Aric for his shy, gentle, bookish nature. They work well together because they have both grown strong in the broken places that their own families have instilled within them.
(One of the readalikes for this is Wooing the Witch Queen, not that Bianca is a witch after all, but rather for the way that Aric’s and Fabian’s gentle, studious nerdiness worms its way into their much stronger partners’ hearts.)
The fun part of this story is the whole scenario – terrible jokes, salacious puns and all – about Bianca spending her days riding her husband the horse. (Pause here for groans and giggles).
If you’ve ever seen or even heard of the classic fantasy romance movie Ladyhawke, the scenario is instantly recognizable. In the movie, by day, she was a hawk. By night, he was a wolf. They do not get to be together as humans until the end, so not quite the same, but it’s hard to deny the similarity.
At least for Bianca and Aric, they’re only different species by day. They get to spend their nights together as humans, figuring out who they are and can be to each other once they get out of the mess they are currently in. Each believing they’re not worthy of the other, but doing their damndest to let the person they’ve fallen in love with go free.
Behooved combines a marvelously romantic romance (yes, I know I repeat myself), with a desperate, high-stakes adventure that earns its happy ending for not just the protagonists, but for their countries as well.
What really kicked it over the top for this reader was the way that, in the end, it rang clearly with the same vibe I received from Never Too Old to Save the World, that every single one of us, whether male or female, old or young, able-bodied or otherwise, should be able to experience the thrill of someone just like us being the hero of a fantastic adventure – and as often as possible at that.
