This unassuming beautiful little tale came up from behind and bit me on the ass. This short impactful little novella explores love and beauty and evil and identity in a way that is fresh and wholly original yet it has a feel of an old children’s fairy tale passed down from generation to generation. It is about facing your past, excepting your mistakes, and moving on.

I love stories that draw me in with their mood, and this one did that and so much more. This book reminds me of all the beautiful things in nature. It reminds me of green and growing things on the forest floor, of sunlight glimmering off of a drop of water on a leaf, of misty mornings, of wild plants in the deep forgotten parts of the forest, of the orange and red and yellow autumn leaves that fall to the forest floor during the colder parts of the year, and of the gnarled roots of trees long since felled be either time or human hands. Drawing from British and Celtic folklore and mythology, this is a loose retelling of Green man of Green hollow Wood with a smattering of fairy and other mythology sprinkled in.

It follows Tobias a being magically tethered to the forest but who is one day uprooted from his comfortable life in his cottage with his pet cat Pearl and the dryads of the forest he is guardian over; when he meets Henry Silver the landlord of Green hollow Hall, the land Tobias lives on, and a man obsessed with local folklore and mythology. Silver happily spends his days with Tobias telling him of the Wild man of green hollow and other myths he has discovered through his research and the two become fast friends and soon even more. Tobias and Silver grow closer and closer and Silver becomes ever more curious. But Tobias has secrets to he would like to keep buried. Soon though, this all comes to a head when, during the summer equinox, the dark sleeping old things of the forest awake and chaos and trouble ensue.

There is so many things about this tale I loved and nothing that I didn’t. Filled with atmospheric glimmering prose, a touching story, diverse lgbtq characters, forest magic, old gods, and so much more, put this on your to read lists now. You won’t regret it! Out in June. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishers for my Digital Review Copy for review.