How Does It Feel? belongs to a subgenre of fantasy that readers often call romantasy: The hallmarks of the genre include meet-cutes, such as when Callie literally drops in on Mendax; a story told from the female protagonist’s perspective; and forbidden and/or interspecies love, seen here between Fae and human. The romantasy retells a classic fairy tale or presents a story with classic fantasy creatures. In this novel, the author introduces fairy lore, setting the stage for these tropes to develop in the series itself while also incorporating a high level of fantasy, from beasts to portals. Callie’s story begins as a potential romance—big-city scientist moves to small town to study the local wildlife and nearly sparks a romance with Cliff Richards, the game warden. However, she soon falls into a literal fairy tale when she enters Prince Mendax’s Unseelie realm, thus complicating both the traditional romance and fantasy genres, respectively.

Callie’s fascination with all creatures winged begins when she experiences a fairy sighting as a child. Though dismissed by the adults as a hallucination induced by fungi, Callie knows better. She protects the “helpless fairy” from the crow who attacks it (26).