DRC Review: A Bride of Fallen Stars by Victoria McCombs
- Story Eater
- 20 hours ago
- 3 min read
Release date: 24 March 2026
Rating. 4.5/5
Synopsis: Hidden passageways, secret meetings at midnight, five courts, a glass dance, and a tender-hearted mortal king in search of a wife, A BRIDE OF FALLEN STARS begins the BROKEN CONSTELLATIONS DUET. Perfect for fans of Once Upon a Broken Heart or closed-door romance that feels like a fairytale.
Cora and Adele were meant to inherit the heavens together, ruling as twin stars. But on the night of their ascension, Adele shatters the bond between them and steals the sky for herself.
In doing so, she unknowingly unleashes an ancient beast her sister had kept hidden in her veins. Once a bloodthirsty king, the creature takes a mortal host as it claws its way back to power.
Cora has fourteen nights to find him among the five mortal courts before he grows strong enough that the stars go dark forever. To do this, she aligns herself with the mortal king her sister once loved—posing as his Fallen Bride—for the duration of the Festival of Fourteen Nights, a season of masks and music honoring the beast’s fall centuries ago. They will search between dances and dinners, in secret passageways and glassy lakes, to find an ancient evil before the skies fall.
This year’s Festival of Fourteen Nights promises to be a ruinously romantic one. We hope you can attend.
Review
I do not like YA books. For a small part, I've grown well past them; for the most part, they're not YA. On one hand, they can be overly simplistic, dull, and entirely vapid. On the other hand, they're full of inappropriate adult content. While I read adult books that contain mature themes, I will not pick up or knowingly endorse a YA book with adult content. McCombs' books are some of the few in the YA genre that I can stand to pick up—and actually enjoy. The plots are intricately woven, the characters complex, and they always come with a fantastic mystery and a smidge of googly-eyed swoon. I can also recommend them to parents of the target audience without worrying their readers will be either morally bankrupted or intellectually deflated.
I own—in print, mind—nearly all of McCombs' currently published books save one. How I have managed to own the great multitude of them (I believe there are 13 currently out) and have only read a whopping 3, well, who's kidding anyone, I have too many books and not enough time; and my eyes are bigger than my bookshelf. Now that I've read a third McCombs book and am as impressed with it as I was with the Fae Dynasty series, I'm definitely going to bump the other multitude of them up on my TBR. A Bride of Fallen Stars kept my attention in a vice, and I'm seriously considering abandoning my necessary reads to at least just take a peek at another McCombs book. If you're not reading these, and you like YA, you really should be.
A Bride of Fallen Stars transports readers to a courtly world with a dark backstory reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda series mixed with a dash of Harry Potter (not the academia part) and a folding-in of the Grishaverse. I barely glanced at the synopsis before diving in (which added to the abundance of surprises), and I was hooked from the beginning. I had hoped for more of the twisty writing I loved in McCombs' Fae Dynasty duology, and I was not disappointed. Nothing in this world is what it seems, and many of the characters turn out to be something other than who they present at face value.
Though the story has dark undertones, I'd categorize it as Noblebright. The ultimate message won't leave one bereft of hope, and the character relationships have endearing aspects despite some of them rooted in conflict. I loved Cora and Darius, and cannot wait until the next book for the conclusion. I really have to stop diving into series before they're finished. I always end up hating the wait and can't stand the unanswered questions and unsatisfied curiosity.
My thanks to the author for the DRC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.