The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy (Dearly Beloathed, #1) by Brigitte Knightley 
Series: Dearly Beloathed #1
Published by Orbit Books on July 8, 2025
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.
The first in a slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy duology featuring a scholarly healer and a gentleman assassin, set in an exquisite fantasy world, perfect for fans of The Love Hypothesis and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.
Osric Mordaunt, member of the Fyren Order of assassins, is in dire need of healing. Naturally – such is the grim comedy of fate – the only healer who can help is Aurienne Fairhrim, preeminent scientist, bastion of moral good, and member of an enemy Order.
Aurienne is desperate for funding to heal the sick - so desperate that, when Osric bribes her to help him, she accepts, even if she detests him and everything he stands for.
A forced collaboration ensues: the brilliant Woman in STEM is coerced into working with the PhD in Murders, much to Aurienne's disgust. As Osric and Aurienne work together to heal his illness and investigate the mysterious reoccurrence of a deadly pox, they find themselves ardently denying their attraction, which only fuels the heat between them.
Romance tropes Enemies to lovers High interaction slow burn Hypercompetent idiots He falls first and harder Evisceration as a love language
I really liked these characters. I look forward to the next book.
I definitely appreciate the idea of a duology in a romantasy series. We will get more story without having to drag things out into three in order to get a conclusion. Although, with these two, I am pretty certain I will be sad when our time is up.
Aurienne Fairhrim is a strong-willed, intelligent woman. She is also an experienced haelan (healer) and actually one of the top haelan at Swanstone. She was highly recommended to Osric Mordaunt–actually he was told she was the only haelan who might be able to heal him. As a member of the Fyren, the order of assassins, Osric is quite familiar with the dead, he just isn’t excited about the idea of joining their ranks. And while he usually just kills targets, he isn’t against adding kidnapping to his list of sins since the haelan who swore to harm no one, doesn’t want to heal a man whose entire life is spent harming all.
But when Aurienne’s boss finds them at an impasse in their negotiations and Osric holding a sack he is trying to convince Aurienne into, she insists that Aurienne would be willing to heal Osric for 20 million, which is what they need to create a vaccination against the pox which is killing poor children. It seems they have applied to all the kingdoms and no one is interested in spending money to cure a pox that only seems to effect poor children. So she would have Aurienne heal the devil himself for enough funds to create their vaccine.
But Osric is loosing his magic to seith rot and Aurienne keeps telling him what is dead is dead and no one is able to recover dead nerves. Yet in Aurienne’s youth, she wrote a paper about ancient accounts of healing under the full moon, something she almost cost her internship for such frivolities. Except Osric is pretty desperate and is willing to dance under a full moon if that is what it takes so Aurienne and Osric make plans to meet up at different locations under the full moons in the hope that some ancient healer actually had a miracle cure.
THOUGHTS:
Just so you know, this enemies to lovers story only has enemies right now. Maybe in book 2, there will be more.
I really like the characters. Aurienne is a strong FMC, a hardcore professional who has dedicated herself to caring for others. She is focused on these sick and dying children and isn’t happy with being forced to heal a killer so he can go out and murder more people.
Osric is a hard-core killer but he also has an odd and wicked sense of humor. Both Osric and Aurienne love to snipe at each other and are determined to hold onto their dislike of the other and most of their time together happily ends with name calling and snide remarks.
This biggest problem that is keeping them from solely focusing on healing Osric is the fact that many powerful people are concerned about who the anonymous person (Osric) who donated all the money to Swanstone for healing the pox kids, and the more powerful people who are inquiring, the more concerning it becomes to Osric and Aurienne.
This is very much a slow burn story as it takes 90 percent of the story in order to get to a reluctant acknowledgement that there is something to admire about each other. Yet I did like that Aurienne held strong to her principals of doing no harm and she weighed any good points she found in Osric against the fact that he killed so many and his being a killer was always too strong a strike against him. There is a scene where Osric is pretending to a knight and Aurienne fantasies about meeting an Osric who is a champion for good and how she would absolutely fall for someone like that. Osric admires Aurienne’s strength of character, he just doesn’t want to admire Aurienne because she hates him so he was more pissed at himself for becoming a bit obsessed and protective of her.
One of my favorite parts is on one of their adventures, someone in the shadows keeps throwing out insults at them until they realize its the crickets. Later, we find that one managed to hitch a ride on Osric and now he has an insult cricket hiding in his house which he can’t find which just keeps shouting insults at him.
The only thing I didn’t like was odd spellings of words and thankfully, I read on my kindle so I could look up many of the $5 words sprinkled throughout the story.
Osric and Aurienne figure out the problem in the last few pages and I am looking forward to seeing how they settle things.
Favorite Scene:
Each seith user has their own deofols (or familiar) who can travel between people with messages. Aurienne’s hates Osric as much as she does.
Most deofols were nebulous creates of seith. Not so with Fairhrim’s. She had (rather impressively, it had to be said) rendered every whisker and hair on the thing.
The deofol floated past the corpse at Osric’s feet with a critical sort of sniff and said, “You’re the Fyren, then.”
Not only was Fairhrim’s seith control such that she could render whiskers; it was so powerful that her deofol had physical weight. Osric learned this when the creature leapt into his lap and found his bladder with all four paws in a single concussive blow.
“You pointy footed bugger,” gasped Osric.
“That’s a messy kill,” said the deofol, jutting its chin toward the body.
“My client wished to send a message,” said Osric.
“Was the message I don’t know where the jugular is and had to stab him twelve times to find it?” said the deofol.
So Fairhrim’s deofol was as irritating as she was. No surprises there.
“When I want a–cat-weasel’s opinion on my work, I’ll ask for it,” said Osric.
“I’m a genet,” said the cat-weasel. “An albino genet. Aurienne was right. You are stupid.”
“Insult me again and I’ll have your head.”
“You’d be in possession of at least twice the amount of brains then,” said the deofol. “Perhaps I should let you. It would be the charitable thing.”
