The Enemy’s Daughter

By Melissa Poett

Reviewed by Alison McCaffrey

Putting a new spin on an old tale, The Enemy’s Daughter is the debut romantasy YA novel from Irish-Canadian author Melissa Poett. Full of tension to the very last line, the opening sentence sets the tone and the pace: ‘If there’s a better way to wait for Farron Banks to be murdered, I haven’t found it.’

Immediately thrown in the deep end, we meet Isadora, daughter of the Saraf of the five clans, as she awaits her the clansman who kills the enemy leader of the Kingsland, Farron Banks. Relieved that her betrothal is to her friend (and supplier of somewhat-forbidden texts and literature about the old world), and anticipating the war Banks’s death will bring, Isadora sets out days later to help wounded clansmen on the frontlines. When she encounters a spy in the woods, she captures Tristan with plans to return home with him as her hostage. As the tables turn and Isadora is poisoned by Kingsland rescuers, she is swept away to enemy land and hurriedly married to Tristan in order to save her life using a secret magical connection. Determined to get home and reveal the secrets of the Kingsland that will defeat them once and for all, Isadora pushes against Tristan’s attempts to persuade her that everything she’s been told about both their lands has been lies. Fighting between her yearning to learn of the old-world remnants in the Kingsland, her longing to get home and save her people, and her building desire for Tristan, Isadora is faced with an impossible decision. But one she must make, for her own good and the good of all the remaining people of the Republic.

A post-apocalyptic world set in a near dystopian future is the stage for this reimagining of the timeless tale of Tristan and Isolde, but here the stakes feel higher and hit much closer to home. With a believable relationship building and crashing between Tristan and Isadora, The Enemy’s Daughter will have readers turning one more page, pushing through one more chapter, swooning and stressing to find out what happens next. Suitable for readers 12-years and up; there is more than an innocent kiss, but without explicit details.

Harper Fire 2025

Melissa Poett