Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

From the backcover:

The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie's survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations. Or, in the case of October "Toby" Daye, rejecting it completely. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating into a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, Faerie has other ideas.

The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose, one of the secret regents of the San Francisco Bay Area, pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby is forced to resume her old position as knight errant to the Duke of Shadowed Hills and begin renewing old alliances that may prove her only hope of solving the mystery...before the curse catches up with her.

Rosemary and Rue is the first in the October Daye novels. October “Toby” Daye is the main character. It starts with the her reflecting on her job, and her husband and children. I was surprised, because I can’t remember the last time I read something where an urban fantasy protagonist had a husband or children to worry about. More, she had a normal child and husband, people with no magic or any worrisome powers of their; people she could not share the parts of her life that dealt with magic and the fae.

She lost them in first few pages. She loses quite a few years of her life as well. I thought this part of the story; how and why she lost it all and how she reacted to it heart wrenching. In the middle of that, a dying countess curses October with finding the murder or die trying.

Rosemary and Rue is fast paced and full of action, just what I like best. There is a hint of romance, but not much of it, and I suspect it will be many more books before the romance flowers into something tangible. October spends a lot of time being injured; her magic is weaker than a lot of the other characters and she has to be careful how she spends it.

I can’t decide what part I liked best, there are so many good parts. Probably the scene that stands out in my mind is when she came back to her lord, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills. She expected he would hate her and he doesn’t and her relief and homecoming are fantastic. So is the duke’s daughter; she is the only who reacted as October expected and I expected the girl will be more of a major character in future books. In fact, I anticipate in some future book October and the daughter will fight to the death. It won’t be the next one, I don’t think, but somewhere down the line.

Grade: A-