Published May 25, 2010 by Hodder Children's Books.
In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash's capacity for love--and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can …
In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Their friendship, as delicate as a new bloom, reawakens Ash's capacity for love--and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing and empowering, Ash beautifully unfolds the connections between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.
first read this when i was like 9-10. just finished reading it at 19 and its still one of my favs.
Content warning A few light spoilers.
I loved this book, and it is something that I really wish had been available to me when I was younger; I needed something like this, especially as I was struggling to understand myself.
I'm torn on the lack of labels, but it bothers me less because it's a WLW novel. We know that the characters are queer, even if we don't know that they're lesbians or bisexuals (though, it feels like Ash would definitely be bisexual with the inclusion of the relationship to Sidhean) Either way, that's one of the few things I had minor issues with but can definitely overlook because of the ending (it's not erasing the WLW aspect by Ash or Kaisa finding their way to a bloke later on). In a strange way, I'm also torn on liking that.
What I really want is more of Sidhean. I want to understand his motivations more and see more of the relationship between him and Ash's mother in order to understand why it is that she cursed him; I want to know more, especially as it is an event that impacted Ash. It'd be nice if she found that out, too.
This a quiet and powerful Cinderella retelling with a focus on the MC's interior world rather than the exact details of the vaguely antiquated setting. It's a fairy tale steeped in fairy tales, discussing strange bargains of dubious origin as the MC first is connected to her departed mother then seeks escape from her abusive stepmother via fairy tales. It portrays the MC's two romantic options of a sort in a way that makes them obviously two different paths, two different ways the rest of her life could go, not just two people she cares for. Even the possible pairing which looks straight at a glance feels queer in the way that two bi people dating is unquestionably queer even if it looks straight to an outsider. The sapphic pairing made me want to scream for them to kiss already, I'm not kidding about this being a slow burn all …
I'm a sucker for basically anything pitched as "[story you know], but with lesbians." Still, I'm usually skeptical of Cinderella retellings--how many more ways can Cinderella be retold? But this book has an enchanting (pun intended) mix of the scary sort of fairy tales, the warm and fuzzy sort of fairy tales, and tension between the real and fairy worlds that makes it feel genuinely unique. I adored Kaisa as a character, and the romantic tension between her and Ash was woven as elegantly as a medieval tapestry. That, plus the casual inclusion of other queer women in the storytelling, made this a favorite among the many, many fairy tale retellings I've read over the years.
Queer rewriting of Cinderella, that unfortunately takes far too long to get going.
Retelling of the Cinderella fairytale with a "twist." Great concept, not so great in execution. I really wanted more of the fairy part of the fairytale, and it was a massive letdown when Ash's time in Fairy was explained away by "and then she woke up," or something to that effect. All in all, an easy read, but mostly just left me with a meh feeling.
3.5
