Para's Proper Reviews: Ten Thousand Stitches by Olivia Atwater
Once again I run into a “it’s not you, it’s me” type book. As much as I enjoyed Half a Soul (I reread it just days ago, too), Ten Thousand Stitches was a struggle. It’s objectively reasonably fine with a lot to like, even if it does suffer from a serious identity crisis. Hell, it’s worth a rec just because the protagonist is a servant instead of another lady. But unfortunately, the plot hit way too many of my pet peeves and the longer I read, the more annoyed I was.
Effie is a housemaid with a desperate crush on a gentleman. Given that servants are seen more as furniture than people, it feels hopeless, until one day she runs into a faerie. She knows full well that faeries are nothing but trouble, but she still makes a bargain with Lord Blackthorn, an unusually well-intentioned faerie who promises to help Mr Benedict Ashbrooke notice her in exchange for ten thousand stitches embroidered onto his jacket.
Good things first: I love it when a historical romance book features a protagonist with an actual job. I love explorations of class even in lighter books. Half a Soul did it well, but Ten Thousand Stitches did it better – after all, Dora and Lord Sorcier might care deeply about those less fortunate then them, but Effie is a maid. This is her life. She doesn’t get to go home to a life of comfort. Her job sucks, her brother is ill, the housekeeper and the butler hate each other which is hard on lower ranked servants like Effie and her best friend Lydia, and the lady of the house treats her staff like dirt. No wonder she was desperate enough to ask a faerie for help.
But the faerie lord in question, Lord Blackthorn…that’s where the book started to fall apart for me. Given the typical faerie poor understanding of how people work, the whole plot hinges on constant misunderstandings, miscommunication, and deception, which was exhausting. A bunch of tropes that annoy me all in one place. He’s genuinely well-intentioned and fond of Effie, but whenever he tries to help, he inevitably makes everything worse. Over and over and over. I couldn’t.
The constant interference also meant that there were barely any interactions between her and Benedict, until I started being more sure that they clearly can’t be the endgame, which annoyed me even more. I mean, her crush was silly. But I did wonder how could it ever work and when the answer was “yeah, no, it can’t” it made everything until then feel pointless. And to top it off, she didn’t even spend much time embroidering (the bulk of it was done in one scene!), which was disappointing. You can’t introduce a plot point like that and then sideline it for most of the book.
The afterword then told me that this was meant to be a Cinderella retelling where she falls in love with the faerie godmother (or, well, godfather) instead of a bland prince who could never notice or love a maid, and it wouldn’t exactly make it better if I knew that beforehand, since Effie and Lord Blackthorn don’t exactly have much chemistry either and all the tropes mentioned above would have still annoyed me, but it would at least set the expectations properly. Which is everything when it comes to romance – make me feel like you’re messing around with me and I get angry.
There is a disconnect between the themes of worker solidarity, mistreatment, etc, and the whole setup of Regency romance. A whole lot of characters’ problems also never get better. Which was also a major theme of the first book – even though you can’t solve everything, trying to improve what little you can deeply matters – but Ten Thousand Stitches ended up way too depressing with it. The antagonists cannot learn better or experience significant consequences no matter what, the ladies get shafted by misogyny, and even if Effie and Lydia and the rest get their happy endings, it’s still pretty bleak.
I’ll still read the last book in the series (it’s sapphic!), but I don’t know. This one just felt like a mess, and the more I think about it, the messier it gets.
Enjoyment: 2/5
Execution: 3/5
Recommended to: fans of the fae, those looking for historical fantasy romance with working class protagonists
Not recommended to: those who hate it when the whole plot hinges on deception and misunderstandings, those looking for an uplifting romance book
Bingo squares: Prologues & Epilogues (HM), Romantasy, Judge a Book by Its Cover
Content warnings: abuse
More reviews on my blog, To Other Worlds.
Posted Feb 28, 2025, 8:57 PM UTC