The Whispering Bookworm: On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: The Boat on the Lake of Regret by Christy Matheson

The Boat on the Lake of Regret

By Christy Matheson

He has one last chance to be a fairy tale hero.

But she didn’t agree to be the damsel in distress.

When her longtime boyfriend unexpectedly slides a ring on her finger, Hannah is whisked from her everyday bedroom to a medieval ball. Hannah knew that Dylan would do anything to prove to her parents that he’s husband material, including going into the Fae world—but she never agreed to go through the Veil herself.

Now one of three princess sisters, Hannah is paired with now-Prince Dylan. But, homesick and blindsided, she pretends the Veil has wiped him from her memory.

As her prince scrambles in vain to be the right kind of hero, Hannah ignores her instincts and follows her new sisters onto a mysterious boat—which promptly sails them into a land of giants, magical traps, and enchanted pianos…and away from Dylan.

Read now to journey back to medieval Ireland, complete with the Fae and mythological monsters, in this fairy tale adventure and sweet "it was always you" romance.

Publication Date: July 15th, 2025

Series: The Castle in Kilkenny: Fairy Tales Book #6

Publisher: Buttercup Books

Pages: 210

Genre: Historical Fantasy / Fairytale Retelling

Excerpt

At the ball:

My head knows that marrying someone you meet at a ball is unlikely to work out long-term, but also…it feels exciting. This is like every Disney movie ever, right? The ball and the prince and the true love, and I’m wearing the best clothes and everyone is smiling at me, and the princes want to make a good impression. On me!

The thing is, I met Dylan when I was four years old and my family moved down the street from his. For the next ten years, while my Dad did his residency programs, Dylan and I were inseparable. We learned to read laying on our tummies by the same big book, we pretended to be heroes climbing up and down the fire escapes, we volunteered for park clean-up days and shared the same rubbish bag. He first asked me to marry him when we were six years old (I said yes) and we’ve checked in about it every year on my birthday. There was no falling in love. There was no wow factor.

But this—this is wow.

Then our guests begin their entrance procession, and the wow goes through the roof—so does the noise. First, their drummers enter and our drummers enter their rhythm, making the Great Hall tattoo a pulsing heartbeat of stone. Then come two men with some variation of uilleann pipes, which keen a bright and uncanny melody and tight harmony, skirling into the smoky air around us and echoing into the distant ceiling. The music throbs through my belly and catches in my chest, and I am either obliterated into dust motes or transformed into a giant. My skin feels too small to hold everything inside me.

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Christy Matheson

Characters you connect with. Adventure. Love. Family… And endings that are more than a sugar rush.

When Christy Matheson is not throwing ordinary characters into fairy tales, she is busy raising five children. (Very busy.) She writes character-driven historical fiction with and without fantasy elements, and her “fresh, smart, and totally charming” stories have won multiple awards.

Christy is also an embroidery artist, classically trained pianist, and sews all of her own clothes. She lives in Oregon, on a country property that fondly reminds her of a Regency estate (except with a swing set instead of faux Greek ruins), with her husband, five children, three Shelties, one bunny, and an improbable quantity of art supplies.

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