a golden fury – samantha cohoe | arc review + blog tour + giveaway (US)

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe
Standalone
Published October 13th 2020 by Wednesday Books
Age Range: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Synopsis:

Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.

While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of the French Revolution looming, Thea is sent to Oxford for her safety, to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists. 

But in Oxford, there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.

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Thank you TBR and Beyond Tours for choosing me as one of the participants in the tour. If you’re interested in the other tour stops, check out the schedule.

trigger and content warnings:

• assault, self-harm, mental illness, madness

Samantha Cohoe’s writing style was simplistic and easy to read. It took me less than a day to fly through the entire book. Though the pacing is slow, the characters and overarching plot gripped me. I feel like I need to read more books that has alchemy at its center because A Golden Fury kept me entertained and intrigued.

A Golden Fury is about finding what one wants and discovering their own abilities. Thea went through a whole ordeal. Her mother went mad after almost-creating the Philosopher’s Stone. The boy that Thea had something with was sent away. Her biological father didn’t know about her existence until the day she landed up at his doorstep. Nothing was going well for her.

“She discovered that I wished to belong to myself, instead of her,” I said. “And she found that unacceptable.”

Other than her mother, Thea’s the only other person who knows about and believes the curse of the Philosopher’s Stone. Despite knowing about the sacrifice that she had to make, Thea willingly did it so others could be free of the consequences. This showed how brave and selfless she is. However, she has her desires. To be set apart from her beautiful, famous alchemist mother and become her own person. So as to prove herself worthy, she had decided to create the Philosopher’s Stone and cure her mother from the curse.

The setting was interesting. It’s set pre-French Revolution when the threat of war is palpable enough for Thea to be sent away for safety. Although some of the characters do talk about it, the upcoming war mainly sits in the background without adding much else to the story. Maybe this threat could have added more to the stakes of creating the Philosopher’s Stone or propel a larger narrative. As for the romance, there was close to none.

Overall, A Golden Fury is a great debut novel filled with alchemy and friendship.

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author information

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

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giveaway (US only)

One finished copy of A Golden Fury. US only! This giveaway ends on October 20^th.

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