Wings Once Cursed & Bound, by Piper J. Drake, follows Peeraphan Rahttana, also known as Punch, a woman hiding her identity as a kinnaree, a mythical Thai bird princess. When she’s tricked into wearing the cursed red dancing shoes of legend, a vampire named Bennett sweeps her into a world of supernatural beings while they try to figure out how to save her from the curse. As she and Bennett grow closer and Peeraphan finds herself appreciating the chance not to have to hide her identity, she ultimately must face the truth of what she is and whether she is willing to do what it takes to keep her newfound freedom.

This book has a lot of promising aspects, but ultimately falls short in a lot of ways.

I did really enjoy the worldbuilding aspect of it. The interactions of different supernatural beings from all over the world was super interesting and wasn’t really something that I had seen in urban fantasy before. While I do think the worldbuilding could have been done a little better, I do also recognize that this book works on a very compressed timeframe, taking place over the course of a day, and that those details might not have been realistic to explain.

The Darke Consortium, the organization that Bennett is part of and which deals with magical artifacts, was definitely intriguing; each of the members that we see are unique in their magic and in personality. This book is planned to be the first in a series, and I assume that missions for the Consortium would make up the bulk of the stories covered. I would be interested to see where the series goes; there’s a lot of scope within the world Drake has created that there are many different ideas to be explored, and I think that it could only improve from this first book.

I think the biggest of this book’s problems was that it was trying to expand a plotline into a full novel that simply did not have enough going on. Taking place over only 24 hours and without any real subplot beyond the poorly-executed romance, the book drags despite being only 300 pages long. The story of the magic shoes was quite simplistic and simply did not give the novel enough substance to work with.

The whisper-thin plot might have been okay if the characters were more interesting, but unfortunately I could not tell you a single defining trait of either Peeraphan or Bennett, our two protagonists. They quite literally have no personalities, beyond Bennett having a shred of the typical adult romantasy “alpha male” archetype. Their backstories are virtually non-existent, and there is no sign of character development. The latter is excusable due to the compressed timeline of the book—I’m not expecting full character arcs over 24 hours—but literally anything to make me care about these characters would have been appreciated. Additionally, their romance arc is far too insta-love-y for my taste; there is no development or anything, but they are still completely obsessed with each other by the end.

Overall, though this book was quite promising in its setup and worldbuilding, its execution left a lot to be desired. I think it probably could have been more successful if it was shorter in length or focused more on character; this very easily could have been a solid coming-of-age story for Peeraphan, but splitting her page time with Bennett and not actually developing that aspect of the book beyond a single chapter simply makes this book full of missed potential. I would still recommend giving it a shot if you’re looking for a quick read in an interesting urban fantasy setup, Despite this book being a hot mess, it was still kind of a vibe, and I really do think that this series has potential. Ultimately, however, I can’t give this installment any higher than a 3/5.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me a free eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.