A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe

This was a wonderful mix of historical fiction and fantasy. I loved seeing women in a scientific role in this story. This was filled with intrigue, mystery, and a search for the ever-elusive Philosopher’s Stone.

Thea is an assistant for her alchemist mother in France just before the revolution. On the verge of a breakthrough to create the Philosopher’s Stone, her mother goes quite mad and sends Thea to England to live with her father, someone she has never met. Distraught at this turn of events in her life, Thea decides to try to create the Philosopher’s Stone herself and cure her mother of her madness. As Thea gets closer to the cure, will she be able to avoid following in the footsteps of her mother?

Thea is the kind of character you can’t help but connect to. She’s headstrong, determined, and likable. There was a romance element that I didn’t care for in the second half of the book, but it didn’t detract too much from my overall enjoyment of the story.

The story itself was filled with wonderfully research historical details that kept me drawn to the story. I really enjoyed the setting in this one, and found myself wanting to read more about this time period as well as alchemy! This was definitely a twist-turny storyline that kept me wondering what was coming next! Overall, I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to what this author will come up with next!

To Read or Not To Read:

I would recommend A Golden Fury for readers that enjoy historical fiction with some fantasy elements!

Where to Find This Book:

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe is available at these sites!

Goodreads ~ Macmillian ~ Amazon ~ Kindle

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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.

Just the Facts:

A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe
Genre: YA Fantasy
Page Count: 352 pages
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Pub Date: October 13, 2020

Samantha Cohoe writes historically-inspired young adult fantasy. She was raised in San Luis Obispo, California, where she enjoyed an idyllic childhood of beach trips, omnivorous reading, and writing stories brimming with adverbs. She currently lives in Denver with her family and divides her time among teaching Latin, mothering, writing, reading, and deleting adverbs. A Golden Fury is her debut novel.

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