Elena Ward

Hi! I'm Elena, and I have a problem. The problem is that I own somewhere in the region of 2,000 books, I live in a flat that was not designed to hold 2,000 books, and I am still — still! — buying more. My partner has stopped commenting on the new packages. I think we've reached an understanding.

I started Elena's Endless Shelves in 2019 after spending years scribbling reviews in the margins of Goodreads and realising I had too many feelings about fantasy fiction to contain in the stars-and-a-paragraph format. This blog is where the overflow goes: long, enthusiastic, occasionally barely-coherent deep dives into the books that have made me laugh, cry, stay up until 3am, and — more than once — throw across the room in the best possible way.

My reading tastes run toward epic fantasy, dark romantasy, portal worlds, and anything involving morally grey protagonists who are trying their best (and failing spectacularly). I have a weakness for slow-burn enemies-to-lovers, found family dynamics, and any magic system that has clearly been thought through to an unreasonable degree.

When I'm not reading (which is, statistically, not that often), I work as a librarian in Edinburgh, which means my colleagues have enabled my problem to a frankly irresponsible degree. I also drink too much tea and have strong opinions about cover art.