Fearful

by Lauren Roberts
Fearful cover
Good Books rating 4.4
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Hardback • £14.99
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  • ID: 508
  • Added: 2025-09-13
  • Updated: 2025-09-13
  • Formats: 27
  • Reviews: 2
Reviews
goodreads.com · Unknown · 2025-09-18
good 4.00

Fearful: A Powerless Story is a companion novella in Lauren Roberts’ Powerless Trilogy, offering a haunting perspective centered on Mara. It explores themes of love, mortality, power, and revenge with a darker, bittersweet tone, adding depth to the events of Fearless. The novella is praised for its rich emotional depth and meaningful expansion of the trilogy, though its length may frustrate newcomers.

Fearful: A Powerless Story is a companion novella in Lauren Roberts’ Powerless Trilogy, offering a haunting perspective centered on Mara. This novella explores the themes of love, mortality, power, and revenge with a darker, bittersweet tone, adding depth to the events of Fearless. The story is concise yet lyrical, with a tagline that captures its sharp, poetic, and tragic tone. The characters, including Mara and Kitt Azer, are well-developed, and the worldbuilding revisits Ilya with the same social hierarchies and moral complexity as the main books. The novella is praised for its rich emotional depth and meaningful expansion of the trilogy, though its length may frustrate newcomers and it assumes knowledge of the main trilogy.

Quick quotes

    Love too grand, it kills

    rich emotional depth, darker counterpoint to Fearless, meaningful expansion of the trilogy

    novella length may frustrate newcomers; assumes knowledge of main trilogy; smaller critical reception so far.

barnesandnoble.com · Unknown · 2025-09-18
intriguing 4.80

The reviewer enjoyed Fearful, finding the exploration of Death and the afterlife intriguing, despite some unanswered questions about Mara's backstory. They appreciated the focus on Kitt's character and the emotional depth in the writing, though the ending left them confused and wanting more.

The reviewer has a history with Lauren Roberts' books and was excited to dive into Fearful, a novella that retells events from a different perspective. They found the concept of Mara, the personification of Death, and her interactions with Kitt, the doomed king, to be compelling. The exploration of themes like life, death, and the afterlife was particularly interesting, though the lack of explanation about Mara's past was frustrating. The reviewer appreciated the focus on Kitt, who was a secondary character in previous books, and the emotional depth conveyed through the writing, especially as Kitt's condition worsened. However, the ending was unsatisfying and left many questions unanswered. Despite this, the reviewer highly recommends the book and hopes for a follow-up to provide more closure.

Quick quotes

    Lauren Roberts enjoys torturing her readers. All but a few characters end up with horrible endings and this book leaves so many unanswered questions.

    I did like how Fearful focused on Kitt, who was always like a third wheel in the Paedyn-Kai storyline.

    I thought the writing was extremely good. Towards the end of the book, as Kitt approaches Death and starts suffering memory loss as a side effect of the Plague, the writing really helps show his mind and emotions.

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