Hello, everyone! Today I am reviewing The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel, which will be published on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. I enjoyed Siegel’s debut last year, but there were enough things holding me back from loving it that I almost passed on this book. I’m so glad I didn’t! Read on to find out why, and be sure to check out my review of Siegel’s debut, Solomon’s Crown, too.

A passionate tale of plague, fire, and forbidden love in seventeenth-century London from the acclaimed author of Solomon’s Crown.

1666. It is a year after plague has devastated England. Young widow Cecilia Thorowgood is a prisoner, trapped and isolated within the cavernous London townhouse of her older sister. At the mercy of a legion of doctors who fail to cure her grief with their impatient scalpels, Cecilia shows no signs of improvement. Soon, her sister makes a decision borne of she hires a new physician, someone known for more unusual methods. But he is a foreigner. A Jew. And despite his attempts to save Cecilia, he knows he cannot quell the storm of grief that rages within her. There is no easy cure for melancholy.

David Mendes fled Portugal to seek a new life in London, where he could practice his faith openly and leave the past behind. Still reeling from the loss of his beloved friend, struggling with his religion and his past, David finds himself in this foreign land, free and safe, but incapable of happiness—caring not even for himself, but only for his ailing father.

The security he has found in London threatens to disappear when he meets Cecilia, and he finds himself torn between his duty to medicine and the beating of his own heart. He is the only one who can see her pain; the glimmers of light she emits, even in her gloom, are enough to make him believe once more in love.

Facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, David and Cecilia must endure prejudice, heartbreak, and calamity before they can be together. A Great Fire is coming—and with the city in flames around them, love has never felt so impossible.

***Thank you to Dell for providing a copy of The Phoenix Bride via NetGalley. My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***

I loved The Phoenix Bride from the moment I picked it up. The beautiful, lyrical writing sucked me in and just would not let go. I sped through the story in two sittings because I was completely engrossed in the characters and their world. I was so emotional at several different points, and the way the story delivered a hopeful message despite the difficulties faced by the characters really spoke to me.

Love is like that sometimes. We call it a burning, liken it to embers and flames, but often it is something less consuming. Like moon phases, waxing and waning, even disappearing entirely.

The world-building in The Phoenix Bride was fantastic. I enjoyed traipsing around London with the characters. There were so many small details, like visiting a 17th-century coffee shop and information on musical instruments of the time, that just helped bring everything to life in an organic way. I also appreciated getting to learn more about medicine during this time period and loved how it was weaved throughout the story. There was just so much to experience, from disasters like the plague and the London fire to lovely walks in the park, and Siegel described it all brilliantly.

We all have empty rooms in our hearts. Better to fill them, surely, than to lock their doors, and hope they are forgotten.

The character work was the real star of The Phoenix Bride, though. Siegel did a marvelous job of making me care about Cecilia and David. I liked the dual POV because it allowed the reader to get to know them both so well, while also providing space to introduce a great cast of supporting characters for them both. Even the characters that had relatively little page time felt realistic and fleshed out.

Life continues, as it always will; it doesn’t matter how much has been destroyed.

Both Cecilia and David were struggling with grief in The Phoenix Bride. They lived as a shell of their former selves, largely disconnected from others. The progression of their relationship was slow burn and fraught with peril given their differences in status and David being a Jew and a foreigner. I liked how the structure of the story allowed their relationship room to breathe. It illustrated how connecting with someone who understands your pain can be transformative while also showing that the spark of healing must be nurtured by each individual if it is to grow. The story could have easily relied on the relationship being the cure to their grief, and I am glad it did not.

But there is joy in our release from that suffering, is there not? Joy in recovery?

My only complaint about The Phoenix Bride is that I would have loved to see an epilogue. By the end, the couple still had some massive roadblocks to their happily ever after, and I really wanted to see how they might overcome them. I’m still satisfied knowing that they decided to prioritize their relationship in the end. It just felt like a bit of a cop out for the author to avoid showing us how they accomplished it.

Fate is fickle. It is a coward, and it takes as much as it gives. But I needn’t be the same. I can be different. I can be brave.

Finally, I can’t finish this review without saying how wonderful it was to read a story where the bi male lead ended up with someone with a different gender from his own. The Phoenix Bride was wonderfully queer, and I really appreciated seeing that type of representation because so often a bi man ends up with another man in the end. I always enjoy seeing stories where that is not the case.

There was just so much to love in The Phoenix Bride. The writing, setting, character development, and mental health and queer representation were all phenomenal. With all of these factors in mind, I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars!

Have you read The Phoenix Bride? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments!