Adult, ARC review, book review

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (ARC Review)

Title: The Knight and the Moth
Author: Rachel Gillig
Type: Fiction
Genre: Adult, Romantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Date published: May 20, 2025

A complimentary digital copy was kindly provided by Hachette Book Group Canada in exchange for an honest review.

Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.

⤖ My Review ⬻

I absolutely loved Rachel Gillig’s The Knight and the Moth and need the next Stonewater Kingdom book as soon as possible. It hasn’t been announced yet and I’m getting quite antsy… This book swept me up right from the start and didn’t let go until the very last page. The atmosphere, the characters, the romance—it all worked beautifully together for me.

Going into the book, I had already read Gillig’s other books One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns, so I was expecting that style of storytelling again. I was happy to find that the writing in The Knight and the Moth felt much more approachable for me though! The other books, beautiful stories both, were written in a way that kept me at arm’s length somehow. Sometimes I had to re-read passages to really get at the meaning. The Knight and the Moth, however, pulled me right in with the style of prose, the atmosphere being described, and some of the first pieces of dialogue. With this book, everything just clicked from the first.

I absolutely adored all of the characters and how they were described, how they spoke, how they interacted with each other and their surroundings, etc. etc. I still think about them now, weeks after having read the last page. I would like to spend more time with them! With the next installment, I would also like to learn more about the world in which The Knight and the Moth is set—something about it has me very curious.

The romance was not what I had expected but I enjoyed it even more than the romance plots in Gillig’s other books (which I did enjoy)! Perhaps something to do with the different writing style again? I’m also a sucker for pining. Give me all the pining! The Knight and the Moth was a great read for me (one of my top books of 2025 for sure) and I hope to be able to read about what happens next very, very soon.

⤖ Places to Purchase the Book ⬻

⤖ Let's Chat ⬻

Thank you for reading my review! Have you read this book? What did you think? And if you haven’t read it yet, do you plan to? Let me know in the comments!

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