Does it really matter if your cage is solid gold when you aren’t allowed to leave it? A cage is a cage, no matter how gilded.

Gild

The fae abandoned this world to us. And the ones with power rule.

Gold.

Gold floors, gold walls, gold furniture, gold clothes. In Highbell, in the castle built into the frozen mountains, everything is made of gold.

Even me.

King Midas rescued me. Dug me out of the slums and placed me on a pedestal. I’m called his precious. His favored. I’m the woman he Gold-Touched to show everyone that I belong to him. To show how powerful he is. He gave me protection, and I gave him my heart. And even though I don’t leave the confines of the palace, I’m safe.

Until war comes to the kingdom and a deal is struck.

Suddenly, my trust is broken. My love is challenged. And I realize that everything I thought I knew about Midas might be wrong.

Because these bars I’m kept in, no matter how gilded, are still just a cage. But the monsters on the other side might make me wish I’d never left.

I’ve been trying to get more into fantasy romance, and Gild was a fantastic way for me to break into the genre.

Auren is gold-touched—the favored saddle of King Midas gilded to be the same gold that runs through his castle and makes up the cage she spends her days in. The golden cage protects her though, just like Midas. He rescued her from a horrible life and placed her on a pedestal, and she gave him her love and trust. It seemed like a fair deal at the time. However, when war comes to the kingdom, her entire existence is challenged. She starts to realize that a cage is still a cage, even if it’s a beautiful one, and everything she thought she knew about Midas is wrong.

Gild was slow in the beginning, and I thought about DNFing it a few times before the first big plot point/twist, but once I got past it, the plot really started to pick up, and I was hooked. The writing style is amazing. It’s a lot more modern than I expect fantasy to be, and there are some truly beautiful lines. The world-building is also great. There is a good balance of explanation of the world and plot, and the world-building is spread throughout so there aren’t large chunks of info-dumping.

The book does explore some tough subjects, especially with everything Auren went through in her past and goes through during the course of the book. I’ve seen a lot of reviews that said she was annoyingly weak, but when you consider the fact that she is clearly dealing with Stockholm Syndrome, I think her characterization is very realistic.

Once the plot started, I didn’t want to put Gild down, and almost immediately wanted to pick up the sequel. I’m very interested to see where the rest of the series goes.