A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos

Ophelia runs a small museum and possesses an unusually strong ability to “read” an object’s history with her hands. She’s never had any interest in marriage, but when the Doyennes, the matriarchal heads of her extended family, arrange a marriage for her with a powerful foreigner, she is forced to accept her fate. She is sent with him and a chaperone to his home, where political machinations and scandals are a way of life, and the backstabbing can be literal as well as figurative. Can Ophelia trust anyone in this place — including her enigmatic fiancé?

With a delightfully labyrinthine plot and intricate world building, the nearly 500 pages of this book flew by for me. I’m a sucker for a good Beauty and the Beast-type story, and those elements are present here, though whether there will ever be romance for Ophelia and Thorn is still in question (Ophelia reads as asexual, at least so far, and it will be interesting to see where the author goes with that element of her character). It’s the first book in a projected quartet, so there are plenty of questions left unanswered at the end — we can only hope that the next volume arrives soon!

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library.)