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Book Review: The Graces by Laure Eve

cover for The Graces by Laure Eve

The Graces by Laure Eve (  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Amulet Books, 2016

ISBN-13 : 978-1419721236

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

The narrator of The Graces is new to town, and ready to shed her old identity, including her name. The centers of attention at her school are the Graces, seventeen-year-old twins Thalia and Fenrin, and their younger sister, Summer. The Grace family has been entwined in the town’s history for generations, and there are rumors of witchcraft that surround them. They are a close-knit family that rarely let anyone into their circle, but, renaming herself River, she finds herself welcomed in. River herself is very closed off and rarely volunteers information about her life or family– she is always thinking about whether she has said or done the “right thing” to be accepted by the Graces, who she believes have a magical key to helping her solve her problems.

River, Summer, and a group of girls from school attempt to cast a love spell, which River secretly focuses on Fenrin. Developing a close friendship with Summer, who is her own age, River also attempts to create situations that will give her and Fenrin the opportunity for close contact, but these are always interrupted, and finally end in tragedy.

It’s easy to read the first part of this book and see the narrator as merely anxious, needy, and maybe a little manipulative, a wishful thinker swept up by a glamorous and mysterious family. The second part gives us a look under the surface of it all, and there’s where it starts getting disturbing, as there are some very unsettling powers that come to the fore.

There is a lot of suspension of disbelief required to buy into this book, but Eve keeps things erratic enough, with her unreliable narrator, and enough gaps between the real and unreal to keep a reader going. A couple of things are real flaws, though. The book uses a trope I loathe, of the “always absent but overprotective parents,” and the plot had some big holes in it that made the actions of certain characters very confusing, and led to an ending that was only partly satisfactory (there is a sequel, so hopefully some of that will be resolved in it). None of the characters are especially likable, but there’s enough intrigue and “fairy tale” atmosphere to appeal to a certain kind of teenage girl. Recommended.

 

 

 

Posted on September 22, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

cover for The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave  (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Little, Brown, and Company, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0316529259

Available: Hardcover, CD,  Audible audiobook, Kindle edition

 

Sometimes there is a very fine line between historical fiction and horror, and that is the case with Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies, a story more chilling than the remote fishing village where it takes place. In 1617, a freak storm at sea killed nearly every man in the village, leaving the women, mostly widows, to take on many of the men’s previous roles, such as fishing, to prevent their starvation and ensure their survival during a long, cold season where the ground was so frozen they couldn’t even dig graves for their husbands. When a commissioner chosen for his skill as a witch hunter arrived, he was assigned to root out the indigenous people, the Sami, who the Christian governor, or lensmann, believed were sorcerers. However, his attempts to govern the women in the village were not entirely successful, and the women who refused to give up their independence were accused and convicted of causing the storm that killed their husbands through witchcraft, then burned.

Past the initial horrific event of the storm, this is a compelling story of women trying to stay alive and survive their grief, most working together even when there are divisions due to personality and beliefs. Those divisions become a chasm too far to cross when a minister, and then the commissioner, arrive to re-establish cultural and religious norms.

Maren, a capable young woman navigating the increasing conflict between her mother and her Sami sister-in-law, and Ursa, the commissioner’s timid, young wife, are the point of view characters, and their awkward relationship is important to both the plot and character development. Ursa is in the difficult position of wanting to belong and help the women who have been helping her, especially Maren, while her husband is tearing the community apart, Maren and Ursa have developed affection for each other, despite Ursa’s complicity in her husband’s horrifying persecution and execution of .Maren’s friend Kirsten and Maren herself. The hysterical accusation and brutal descriptions of torture and execution, as brief as they are, is unbelievably difficult to read as we see and feel it through Ursa’s and Maren’s individual experiences. The description of the village women encouraging a woman about to burn to breathe in the smoke so she’ll suffocate to death before she burns is heartbreaking.

According to Hargrave, historically. fifty-two women were convicted and burned to death in these witch trials. Today women may not be facing accusations of illegally using witchcraft to maliciously attack the men in control, but the sense of dread I felt in reading The Mercies suggests that there is an agenda out there premised on controlling women’s actions, thoughts, and feelings, hasn’t gone away.

 

Contains: sexual assault, torture, violence, domestic abuse, murder, miscarriage, sexual situations, references to genocide, graphic descriptions of public execution.

Posted on September 19, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

cover of The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson  ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-374-53855-2

Available: Kindle, Paperback

 

 

The old witch Iskra knows the secrets of the bayou where Miranda runs her Alumacraft under the cypress trees in the murky, humid gloom. It’s an ugly, decaying place filled with lurking dangers, brutal violence, and the tragic history of its inhabitants. Miranda is linked to Iskra through the murder of her father and a ritual involving a web-fingered baby. In order to find her father’s bones, reunite Littlefish and his clairvoyant sister, and save her own life, Miranda must read the signs that are leading her into a mortal combat against evil forces. Her challenge involves the local constable, a crazy preacher, a dwarf, and a dead wife’s mistakes. No one is safe in The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson.

 

Davidson ratchets up the tension from the very first chapter and maintains it throughout as Miranda tries to stay one step ahead of her enemies and encounters drug dealers, murderers, and even supernatural forces. These forces have their origin in Russian myths to which Davidson adds a Southern Gothic spin. This makes for a setting that is as terrifying to the younger characters as nightmarish horror stories and yet is so realistically detailed that the reader can feel the saw grass and smell the rotting bodies. It is that very combination that makes the witchcraft believable and turns the events into the stuff of imagination. To Davidson’s credit, it is often difficult to tell where the line is between the two.

 

The plot of The Boatman’s Daughter moves at breakneck speed. Davidson’s characters might spend a few seconds thinking and planning, but the action never stops. The characters are mythological or fairytale figures in terms of good and evil, but they are always truly human which makes the evildoers all the more frightening and the heroine even more amazing. The rich descriptions and Davidson’s talent for keeping the reader entertained with a multi-layered and complicated plot make this an outstanding read that will make you dream of a film version while still being certain nothing can beat the book. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on July 24, 2020 by , Reply
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