Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis [Review]

Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy #1) by Stephanie Burgis
Format: paperback
Source: purchased
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: July 25, 2025

Queens of Villainy
1. Wooing the Witch Queen - Paperback | Kindle
2. Enchanting the Fae Queen

Stephanie Burgis
| Website | Amazon |

Synopsis (Goodreads):

In a Gaslamp-lit world where hags and ogres lurk in thick pine forests, three magical queens form an uneasy alliance to protect their lands from invasion…and love turns their world upside down.

Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.

When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…

Little does Saskia know that the "wizard" she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he's in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

Thoughts on Wooing the Witch Queen: Oh my goodness. Felix was the world's biggest sweetheart and his kindness hadn't been soured in the slightest by his guardian's abuse of him over the years. He's just a big, moral hunk of a man who happened to have untapped skills and a lot of perfectly timed luck (or the hand of a goddess guiding him). He escapes his guardian with the intent of throwing himself on Saskia's mercy and instead ends up with a job cataloging the beautiful, intimidating queen's library.

Despite his lack of practical skills when it comes to magic, Felix is smart and he kind of loves the job he's been set to. And Saskia makes him go a little mentally mushy whenever she's around. He knows there can't be anything between them since he's the Archduke she's determined to bring down (which swings back around to his terrible guardian and the proclamations that have been made in Felix's name), but it isn't long before his heart wholly belongs to her.

Which brings us to Saskia. She's not one for social niceties or, well, social much of anything. She really only wants to be left alone with her experiments. But necessity had her overthrowing her evil uncle and now she has a kingdom that needs to be ruled. She never expected to LIKE the dark wizard she hired to catalog her library (because dark wizards are generally massive jerkfaces), but "Fabian" is oddly captivating.

A gorgeous, dangerous world, allies with secrets of their own, monsters who have more heart than most of the individuals in charge, an Archduke with untapped depths, and a dark queen who has more than a little baggage to deal with (and who knows a good man when she meets him). *thumbs up* on so many levels!