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There was a twist that I sort of saw coming, because duh, but also didn't, because the threads of this story were so lazily tied together during the denouement that a light breeze could have blown them apart. Like taking a bite of fruit with a rotten core, the atmosphere is in turns gorgeous and enticing, then shocking and disgusting, and back again. I need the story to be grounded with a sense of direction regardless of how sinuous the trail may be. It's something I wrote about in the Elf Books That Like 10 People Have Read To Conclusion and I personally appreciate that Reid is willing to go places like that.I’m not seeing very many stories at all with women who are embracing their femininity and who are also strong women. She wears pink silk dresses, has long hair, does the cooking and cleaning for her family, is her father’s youngest and most obedient daughter, and her most prized possession is the charm bracelet she inherited from her mother. But when her little world expands one night at the ballet, she finally finds a way to bite off more than she's been fed. Following the plain-face, too-dutiful, third-daughter of the last living Wizard in this land, we're swallowed whole by a story of loveless existences and the power in escapes. I don’t want to get spoilery, but Marlinchin has bulimia and severe body dysmorphia as a result of the trauma she faced and continues to face.

Still, I can appreciate that Reid has crafted a deeply twisted, deeply frightening, and deeply compelling dark fairy tale that is packed to the brim with meaning. Marlinchen's father Zmiy is profligate with his hatreds; nearly anyone involved in or related to the city is likely to be the subject of his ire. It has just now come to my attention that this is a retelling of the Grimm fairytale The Juniper Tree, so the whole "reads like a fairytale" thing makes a lot of sense now.Pointedly, there is depictions of (childhood) sexual assault and trauma (both post experience and seen through flashback), body horror, gore, bulimia, animal death, violence, and more. A brutal, classical style fairytale that will have you rooting for the main protagonist, a defiant and compassionate young woman who desires to be free from the bonds of her life. The plot was completely vulgar at points and I put the book down several times, completely nauseated by the content. They grappled with what it meant to have turned against each other, blamed each other and tried/or not tried to protect each other from the abuse.

Undine (Marlinchen's older sister) was always despicted as beautiful and mean, Rose (the middle sister) was always clever and cold/distant, Marlinchen's father was mean and cruel, and Sevas (which I liked a lot, despite his lack of character development) was reduced as being beautiful and enamored by Marlinchen. Due to the trigger warnings, I honestly wouldn't really think it appropriate in a curriculum setting where it has to be read. But what I admire most about this book is how cleverly Ava uses fairytale conventions to underscore the horrors her protagonists experience: stories root themselves deeply and begin to sprout thorns the more and more they're repeated. The protagonist is very aware of what genre of story she's in, and what that might mean for her and those around her.

As the last true witches living in a city shifting from magic to industry, Marlinchen and her two sisters are little more than tourist traps as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. While at night, she and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city's amenities and revel in its thrills, particularly the recently established ballet theatre, where Marlinchen meets a dancer who quickly captures her heart. Fairytales and their retellings so often gloss over the nastiness, surprisingly so when many of the stories upon which they're based contain murders, cannibalism, gruesome transformations and more. Marlinchen is a witch, youngest of three daughters to a cursed wizard, living out her days in a city transforming from magic to industry. Most of the negative reviews I’ve seen have centered around this content and the fact that people don’t seem to realize this is a horror novel before they start it.

I think a lot of this has to do with the writing style, which I generally found to be beautiful, immersive and effective in creating a sense of a dreadful fairy tale with lots of interesting/charming little details, especially about the stories that Marlinchen loves. For those who like their fantasies heaped with indulgent servings of sordid, this is the perfect October read (if you’re planning on picking this up, I cannot implore you enough to look up the CWs and heed them). The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. She's 23 years old, but her innocence, immaturity and lack of knowledge of everything around her made she seems more like a 15-year-old teenager who knows nothing of the world.Every sentence in this novel is striking, with imagery and prose that threatened to devour me whole. As for the matter of how Reid handled the dark content/if it was “too much,” I get that everyone is going to feel differently about this - as I’ve made clear, my feeling was mainly that I wanted more depth and exploration of what was present. UPDATE II: This YouTuber by the username of Reads with Rachel has decided to use her channel as a bully pulpit and use my review for her own ends, without even disguising my identity, as despite her hypocritical disclaimer that nobody should come to my review to speak on her behalf, there have been people who have come FROM HER CHANNEL AND NAMING HER AS THE SOURCE to attack me.