I was expecting a human perspective on a relationship with some sort of forest entity. Instead, I got a forest entity's perspective on a human, which was a very pleasant surprise. Tobias' narration is slow, atmospheric, and deeply rooted - the forest is a part of him and he of the forest, and that bleeds out of the prose. Very much my vessel of beverage, despite the romance plot (not bad, just not usually my thing - though as far as that goes, the romance itself is treated with a fairly light touch).

There's a bit of tropeyness in here - though I haven't read much in the way of "there was only one bed" stuff myself, I've read of it often enough to half-wince at the reference when it came up - but some might consider that a selling point, and I'd personally be willing to forgive a lot more in the way of tropey rough edges given the fact that it also gave me a paragraph on the clean smell of rot and the healing power of decay. Hands-down the best book I've ever read in terms of foresty atmospheric prose alone.

Selling points: gay romance, cute cat (nothing bad happens to her!), folklore, foresty narration.

Warnings: generally slow pacing, and the romance is light enough that if that's your reason for reading this it may come up wanting. The slow atmospheric foresty-ness of this whole book is enough of its substance that whether you like or dislike that sort of thing should be the biggest factor in deciding whether to read it.