Rating: 8/10

This is the first thing I’ve read by Joanne Harris, but it won’t be the last. This is a great story about a mother’s love and sacrifice for her child.

Harris has been working on these retellings of the Child Ballads for a while. This one incorporates old English songs and Greek myth in the forms of both the Hades//Demeter/Persephone story and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I’m sure there are other things in there that I didn’t pick up on. I did get Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream vibes in places as well.

To be honest, fae stories are not my favourite thing to read, but I do come across one on the very odd occasion that I can get along with. Here, Harris balances out the selfish obliviousness of the fae (which I find is a common trait in fae stories, and why I generally dislike them) with the strength of a mother’s love for her daughter. As Fay searches for her lost daughter in the underworld, she learns the difficult sacrifices she must make in order to retrieve her. I thought the love and dedication Fay showed was touching and made the story compelling.

Another thing I found interesting about the story was the incorporation of different versions of different stories. We start with one version of a story of a fairy queen and end with a different version. I love how different rhymes and different elements of stories were brought up to show the mutability of story. It worked really well for me. I love that kind of thing anyway.

The imagery and descriptions were great here too, as was the writing. I picked this up on a whim after seeing Harris talking about writing, and I'm so glad I did. I will definitely read more of her work.

Blog: awonderfulbook.com | Instagram: katiemotenbooks | Twitter: katiemotenbooks