Nettle & Bone has to be one of the few books in the last year that I have come across that felt original, horrifyingly beautiful, and creative. While, I have moved passed my phase of "fairytales" and "retellings"...this one just stood out to me. I loved the premise/idea that the book had to offer and I didn't hesitate to delve in.

Where this novel held most traction was in the last 120-150 pages or so. The beginning started off strong in the first 20 pages and then became quite slow and dull in the middle to finally give us that fantasy horror element and fairytale like adventure towards the end. If the author would have expanded on the three challenges that Marra needed to accomplish to defeat the evil prince, and woven that into the story rather than gloss over it in 30 pages, then I feel like this would have been a really solid read. I wanted more oomph and it was quite lacking.

I would also say expand on those horror elements more. This is supposed to be a dark twisted fairytale about how prince's aren't really charming, fairy godmothers are wicked, and things can come back to haunt you. And when we were given that, in those small doses, they were outstanding...we just needed more!

We are also given a diverse cast of characters that are easily loveable and quite humorous at times. We have the dust-wife, a chicken possessed by a demon, a bone dog, a disgraced knight, a fairy godmother, and of course our main character Marra the princess. I have to say this book had to have had the best cast of characters I have read in awhile, and I could have read more about each of them. I feel like the author could create a book behind each of these characters - especially the dust-wife and the knight.

I enjoyed this, I think many others would absolutely love it, so definitely check it out!