You Spoke My Name

by M.J. Sparrow

She's not a normal princess.
He's not your typical prince.
Can they work together to save the realm and everything they love?

Evelyn Muldivich was not your average princess. Normal princesses like her twin sister Jocelyn were beautiful, sculpted, and loved by all. Evelyn made people cower in fear with her melted skin, hollow cheek, blurry eye, and muted voice.

Every night she dreamed of the day the acid mist attacked Faern, taking her childhood away. Every day she woke up the exhausted and tired of people looking at her like a freak, a bitter reminder of the horrors they faced.

Until a dragon arrived carrying a peculiar prince, Eskandar Mehri, who understood her sign language better than her own family, and looked at her with curiosity and challenge rather than outright pity.

Could this prince heal her heart after so many years of pain? Could her dreams hold a clue to defeating the mist and the attacker behind them?

Evelyn and Eskandar must work together alonside their siblings to uncover the truth behind an ancient legend and catch a killer stalking the castle halls during the princesses’ twenty-first birthday ball before everyone in the land is forced underground forever.

166 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2025

About the author

M. J. Sparrow lives in Nashville, TN, with her adoring husband and two cats. She spends her days getting lost in thought, muttering about her next book, while playing video games, reading, painting, walking, and working in the ever-changing world of technology.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has everything I want in a romantasy novel.
Evelyn, a princess and identical twin faces her twenty-first birthday and a ball where princes from neighboring kingdoms will come to meet, greet and potentially ask for her hand in marriage.
And all she wants is a beautiful, hand-carved desk.
Scarred from a skin-melting mist that still haunts their kingdom, she communicates primarily through sign language, and it is no surprise when the love interest, Prince Eskandar, arrives that he is one of the few who, thanks to a deaf little brother, can speak with her with voice or hands or both.
They have lovely see-passed-the-scars relationship, where mutual vulnerability brings them together.
This story has that fairytale quality that makes it natural for a few days to be the right amount time to fall in love, save a kingdom and build confidence in characters.
And my favorite part - the dragons. While they aren't the star of the show, these dragons are ridable like horses with the personality of loyalty puppies, but still teeth and scales dragons.
I would recommend this just for the portrayal of the dragons.
For me, this has it all. Representation, powerful women, a little spice and dragons.

[Erin Penn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairy tale in the sweet everything is going to be happily ever after (HEA) tradition, not Grimm's. There is representation with sign language (the HEA impact on the end does reduce the value of this - and it is for muteness, not deafness), family (not found but strong and supportive), solutions to problems (that are simple, just one layer and it is fixed, even when complicated). A silly king, a saint of a queen, dragons. Shallow and sweet, this romantasy is a great beach read and good for the sixteen and older crowd. (Maybe even younger, but please read before sharing with underage.) There is some sex, but very consensual and it's important for the growth of the characters who all are 21 and older.

Men wave swords but rarely use them. Women solve problems, scientific and political.

All the horror and hardships that impact the characters are basically BEFORE-TIMES in the book. They are living with the physical scars, but thanks to family support, these characters don't have Trauma (capital T) so popular nowadays.

A fun read and a great bridge book between YA and adult faire for a teenager. A pleasant, light read for adults too.