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Allen And Unwin

The Stolen Heir by Holly Black (Wicked Fairytales To Adore!)

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Being a huge fan of The Cruel Prince trilogy, my expectations were super high for The Stolen Heir.

And oh I am shouting, because this was so so so so good. I’m absolutely obsessed!! I adore Holly Black’s style of fairy tales and fairy worlds, and this was absolutely addictive, biting, wickedly magical, beautiful and powerful. I just felt so stuffed full of inspiration and excited magic when I was finished–I love this feeling!! I am absolutely pining for book 2, of course, and after the way this one ended–2024 is going to be a good year for books.

An important question is probably, “Can you read The Stolen Heir without reading The Cruel Prince series?” And yes! I think you can. It does have spoilers for TCP obviously because it’s set several years later. But this follows the POV of Wren, who was a minor character (and just a child) in TCP, and while her story is built off the events of TCP, she brings a brand new perspective and storyline.

Also let me just say I am OBSESSED with the dark fairy tale bent to this. How the folk were so vicious and monstrous and stunningly beautiful. How the games had that macabre bent. Wren has been through hell and considers herself a feral, guarded, sharp-toothed thing. She can’t possibly understand why anyone would like her, let alone help her, and distrusts Oak extremely. Gentleness under a feral exterior is one of my favourite types of characters to read about, so this just had me living.

“Stop waiting. Sink those pretty little teeth into something.”

“Perhaps it is Oak who is the fool, who caught a wolf and thought that by putting it in a gown and speaking to it as though it were a girl, it would become one.”

The story is full of the good old fairy tale tricks and twists too. I LOVED every single aspect of it, the schemes and “don’t trust anyone” vibes. There are new characters to adore and old ones to fall in love with all over again. Oak is such a complex character, you just keep finding out new layers to him as each scene progresses. Charmer with a dark side? YES.

Read it for:
♡ dark fairy tale vibes and folklore
♡ feral girl x charmer boy
♡ clever plots and twists
♡ beautiful prose
♡ mentions of old The Cruel Prince cast
♡ thoroughly addictive storyline

This story had me falling in love with dark fairy folktales all over again with it’s vivacious writing and stunningly layered characters and plot twists to explode your heart. Highly recommend!!

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for the review copy!

Return to the opulent world of Elfhame, filled with intrigue, betrayal, and dangerous desires, with this first book of a captivating new duology from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black.
Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.
Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, Lady Nore, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.
Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.

goodreads | dymocks | amazon | allen & unwin

published 03 Jan, 2023

the isle of the gods by amie kaufman (seafaring adventure of gods and magic)

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Gods, quests, seafaring adventures…The Isle Of The Gods delivers. This comes with a classic YA fantasy vibe that is both comfortable and familiar and easy to get lost in. Despite being over 400 pages, I flew through this one, and it does have the kind of ending that’s going to leave you hankering for a sequel.

One very interesting thing about it is definitely the world-building. It had this gaslamp historical fantasy vibe that felt reminiscent of our world (in the slang, the dollars, etc) but is still thoroughly a second-world fantasy. Like they have automobiles but also classic old-fashioned style ships. Enter lore and legends and magic systems with elemental spirits and slumbering gods, there is a lot to keep readers intrigued. I also admit my attention got snagged by the boys’ backstories–anyone else really interested in the prince’s school escapades with Keegan and Jude?! Because I would love a book on that.

“It’s not that I thought I’d live forever. I just didn’t expect this kind of advance notice about when I was going to die.”

We have quite a few of narrators, but I would definitely say Selly stole the show. She is your tough-as-bricks sailor girl who just wants to prove her mettle and also ditch life a lowlife deckhand and take her place at her father’s side. Then we have Leander, the sassy flirty prince who is not-so-keen on his destiny that includes a quest to the isle of gods. His old schoolmate (and total nerd) Keegan is an unintentional addition to the adventure. Then there’s Jude, a complicated teen who just wants to protect his family, but is forced to do the bidding of a gang lord. And Laskia, sister of the gang lord, who is helping her sister start a war.

Selly begrudgingly helps Leander on his quest to the gods, outwitting the terrorists who want him dead so they can start a war, there’s also so many chase scenes and fights and epic displays of magic. It also definitely delivers on the sailing and ships part, which was fun, and while they didn’t spend a lot of time with the gods, I was really intrigued when that part rolled around at the end. I think that’ll come out to play in a bigger way in the sequel.

If you’re after a YA fantasy with banter and seafaring journeys and stubborn magic with a tentative romance of yearning, this one is for you!

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for the review copy!

Magic, romance, and slumbering gods clash in the start of a riveting fantasy series spanning gangsters’ dens, forgotten temples, and the high seas from the New York Times bestselling author of the Illuminae Files and the Aurora Cycle.
Selly has saltwater in her veins. So when her father leaves her high and dry in the port of Kirkpool, she has no intention of riding out the winter at home while he sails to adventure in the north seas. But any plans to follow him are dashed when a handsome stranger with tell-tale magician’s marks on his arms commandeers her ship under cover of darkness: He is Prince Leander of Alinor, and he needs to cross the Crescent Sea without detection so he can complete a ritual on the sacred Isles of the Gods.
Selly has no desire to escort a spoiled prince anywhere, and no time for his entitled demands or his good looks. But what starts as a leisure cruise will lead to acts of treason and sheer terror on the high seas, bringing two countries to the brink of war, two strangers closer than they ever thought possible and two dangerous gods stirring from centuries of slumber…

goodreads | amazon | allen & unwin

published 2nd May 2023

a hunger of thorns by lili wilkinson – corrupt witchy magic and twisted forest underworlds

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If you’re looking for a book that embodies dark whimsy…A Hunger of Thorns is calling to you. It gave me huge vibes of “what if alice in wonderland was sapphic and full of witches and corrupt magic” and it delivers just that. This is a tale of fairy tales turned toxic, love turned obsession, desperate quests and unlikely allies. It lingers on the edge of horror tbh, and since I’m in a horror-mood, I really appreciated that angle.

The story is told by Maude who is a witch who has lost her magic…and she’s also lost her best friend to a mysterious shut-down power plant that is festering with corrupt magic. Maude and Odette’s relationship is complicated and bordering on toxic. Maude has been deeply in love with Odette ever since they were children, but Odette has grown up sharp-edged and crass. They haven’t been friends for a while when she goes missing, but that doesn’t stop Maude pledging to find her. Plus there are pieces missing in Maude’s memory and also in the history they’ve always been told about magic and witches. Throw in a complicated relationship with Maude’s long-dead mother (a twisted, possibly bad witch–or was she?) and two sapphic grandmothers who love Maude deeply but maybe are keeping things from her…and you have a plot threaded in mystery. Maude is also a very morally grey character, driven by a creepy obsessive love but who is also very loyal.

The world building was super interesting too, as it’s a similar-to-our-world-but-not-quite. It feels a bit like Britain/Ireland but it’s a world separate to our own.

The writing is super lyrical and reminded me of fairy tales, but again, with that twist of macabre whimsy. Egg moons and thrupenny biscuits and all the tea you could ask for (because doesn’t tea fix everything!!). When we end up deep in the toxic wasteland of the power plant, the descriptions grow wild and woolly just like the atmosphere and there is so much to explore. There are plenty of monsters to face–but physical and metaphorical.

Definitely a story to pick up if you like fairy tales on the darker side and sapphic witches and falling deep into worlds of twisted magic and wild, wild sentient forests. The sticklewood is here and it will get its hooks in you.

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for the review copy!

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic – and her best friend. Storytelling is her only gift that remains.
Odette always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone believes she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.
Maude is sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest –a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, nobody knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster…

goodreads | amazon | allen & unwin

published 18 Apr 2023

Sugar Town Queens by Malla Nunn – South African Contemporary Not To Be Missed!

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Talk about an absolutely amazing read! 😍

Sugar Town Queens is the kind of story that’s easy to fall in love with and hard to put down. It has such complex and fiercely loveable characters — which is what I crave in a good book. And if you’re looking for complicated messy family drama, with ugly secrets hidden, and regrets and love and tragic backstory all tumbling out: THIS is the book for you.

The story follows Amandla who lives in a makeshift town/slum called Sugar Town in South Africa. Her mother has a mental illness that Amandla has to manage, even though she’s only 15 and just trying to survive school and get by in their tiny one-room home. Also her mother is white and Amandla is brown (her Black father a mystery in her life) and Amandla is often ostracized at school for not being “Black enough” OR “white enough”. But life gets a whole lot more complicated when Amandla learns the truth: her mother is the disinherited daughter of an extremely rich and powerful white family, the Bollards. Amandla’s grandma wants to reconnect, but her grandfather is a huge bigot, and there are SO many dark family skeletons in the closet. You just !! Are not ready for what Amandla discovers. I ached for what she goes through; she has so many mixed feelings and hopes and hurt to absorb.

I adored Amandla. 😩🙌🏻 She has such a fantastic voice that leaps off the page, and she’s not ashamed of who she is or where she comes from, while also wanting to know the family secrets and dreaming of a better life for her and her mum. I also loved her friends, especially Lil Bit, who has a great sense of humour, and is just such a loyal and stubborn best friend. They also end up making friends with Sugar Town’s resident “princess”, named Goodness, who they used to think was stuck up but actually she’s amazing. There is also a smidge of romance for Amandla AND there’s a side queer romance which I loved!!

The book unpacks so many themes, and discusses poverty vs gross wealth with keen precision. There’s community love and pride in Amandla’s neighbourhood, as well as shifty people and danger. I found it really hard to forgive the Bollards though…like, the book handles the themes of second chances well while also refusing to let hate and bigotry get a free pass. And OH there are tense scenes and some massive plot twists.

The writing is engaging and captivating, and you will fall in love with Amandla’s voice as you tumble into this story of family drama, trauma, and redemption. I’m so so glad I got to read this one!

Thanks to Allen & Unwin for the review-copy! It’s out August 2021.

Fifteen-year-old Amandla’s mother has always been strange. For starters, she’s a white woman living in Sugar Town, one of South Africa’s infamous shanty towns. She won’t tell anyone, not even Amandla, about her past. And she has visions, including ones that promise the return of Amandla’s father as if he were a prince in a fairytale, but their hardscrabble life is no fairytale.
Amandla knows her father is long gone – since before Amandla was born – and she’s pretty sure he’s not a prince. He’s just another mystery and missing piece of her mother’s past, and one of the many reasons people in Sugar Town give them strange looks – that and the fact that Amandla is black and her mother is not.
Lately, her mother has been acting even more strangely, so when Amandla finds a mysterious address at the bottom of her mother’s purse along with a large amount of cash, she decides it’s finally time to get answers about her mother’s life. With her best friends by her side, Amandla is ready to take on the devil himself, and as she confronts devastating family secrets and pain that has lasted a generation, taking on the devil is exactly what she must do.

Goodreads | Allen & Unwin | Book Depository | Booktopia

 

The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk – An Exquisite Story of Ballet, Agony & Healing

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This book was just so excellent.

I was keen to start it because of the disability rep and ballerinas, but it only took a few chapters before I knew this would be a book to remember. The characters! The themes! The writing! I loved it all?!? It unpacked a lot of really difficult and messy themes, too, and gave us conversations that are really important and that I don’t see enough of in YA. Things like jealousy, losing your purpose in life, knowing when to stand up for yourself, making horrible friendship mistakes and yet finding a way forward. It had a huge theme of forgiveness. Not just forgiving others, but forgiving yourself. And honestly I got emotional in several parts. 🥺💛 You know when even a scene or a line of a book jumps out at you and you feel SEEN? That hit here. As an artist, I just connected a lot to Alina.

First we have to talk about the characters!! I LOVED them so much. Lately I haven’t been connecting to the characters in my recent reads, but I just fell into this book and adored everyone immediately. They’re all dimensional. Complex. Messy and loving and proud and funny and broken and beautiful. After Alina shatters her leg in a fall, she can never go up on pointe again. So her dream of a professional ballet career is over. She’s back to normal high-school and the “real world”. Her grief and rage is so so palpable. Like why her?!? She was so focused on ballet that literally nothing else mattered. Now ballet things trigger her grief, she’s wretchedly jealous of her old ballet friends. She gets angry and isolates herself and I felt for her down to my soul. We feel Alina’s excruciating pain and we wince with her as she hates the world and we melt with happiness as she starts to find friends. You go on such a journey with Alina as she tentatively tries out for the high school musical when she thought she’d never dance again.

I still loved ballet, but it didn’t love me back. All I could do was linger on, like a sad, rejected ghost, hurting people who didn’t deserve it.

And the secondary cast is AMAZING. I loved Jude, the absolute softest Soft Boi, who knits and does musicals and purposefully deconstructs toxic masculinity. Then there’s Ethan, his BFF, who is gay and a photographer and so lovely. And Margot!! Who is terrifying and sharp and stabby, and she and Alina collide when they most needed each other. And Colleen, Alina’s ex-BFF from ballet school, who she can’t bear to talk to but Colleen doesn’t give up on Alina 🥺 They were the only two girls of colour in the school too, so they went through a lot together.And I cannot forget Josie! Alina’s younger sister, a modern dancer, and they have this fractious relationship but the arc there is [chef’s kiss] relatable and so well done. Alina and Josie are also biracial Japanese and their parents are from Hawaii.

Friendship-group dynamics that are complex and beautiful but sometimes hurt? We gotcha.

A huge theme of the book is jealousy, and it’s a hard topic to tackle because jealous can make you into a nasty person. But it happens in real life a lot? And actually reading about Alina going through being broken by jealousy and learning to face her feelings was so good. It also talks about racism in ballet, how Alina accepted a lot of it in order not to “rock the boat” or risk being purposefully overlooked for a part. She wanted the top parts so she thought she had to accept a side-dish of racism — which she comes to realise is gross and unacceptable.

I just loved how the book gave us real-life messy issues full of strife and ugliness — and TALKED ABOUT THEM. Unpacked them. Talked about the difference between thinking horrible things and being a horrible person. Life isn’t fixed and tied up into a neat-little-bow in the book either, but it definitely tackled everything fantastically.

I could pretty much go on forever about how much I adored this book! It was so perfectly crafted, with characters who literally danced off the page and writing that swept you up and kept you hooked on every word. A beautiful and emotional story about being broken and being beautiful.

Maybe ballet was like beautiful dynamite. Stunning and dangerous at the same time, so you couldn’t love it simply. You had to figure out how to handle it. How to love the beautiful parts and defuse the dangerous ones.

Thanks Allen & Unwin for the review copy! Published May 2021.

A stunning and unique story about healing that offers a gentle hand to anyone who struggles with perfectionism, competition and an all-or-nothing mindset, as well as those who don’t understand ambition.Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but one terrifying fall shatters her leg – and her dreams of a ballet career along with it. After a summer spent healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and bingeing ballet videos on YouTube), she must trade her preprofessional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the musical. Rehearsals are nothing compared to Alina’s past life at the acclaimed Kira Dobrow Ballet School. But the stage does offer more than she expected – namely her castmate Jude. He’s annoyingly attractive, ridiculously optimistic and, worst of all, Alina just might be falling for him. However, finding a new normal means making peace with her past and acknowledging the racism she faced. Deep down, Alina still yearns for the world of ballet she left behind. But what does it mean to love something beautiful, yet broken? And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else?
Lyrical, romantic and peppered with humour, this debut novel explores the tenuousness of perfectionism, the possibilities of change and the importance of raising your voice.

Goodreads | Allen & Unwin | Book Depository | Booktopia

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black (#3.5) — Illustrated, Whimsical Perfection

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Being back in Holly Black’s Cruel Prince world was absolutely everything I needed right now.

I’ve always said I craved Cardan’s perspective for this series. We get slivers of his backstory, his making, so slowly that we are left gloriously starved for it. So being gifted a novella purely from his perspective? A TREAT. We thank the faerie queen so deeply. 😭

What To Expect…
This is a novella (I always wish novellas were longer 😪) and it’s several stories told by Cardan ranging from when he is small, right up till post-Queen of Nothing timeline. So no, don’t read this before The Cruel Prince trilogy! It’s also illustrated and must admit the art is just gorgeously stunning (done by Rovina Cai). They are just that little bit ethereal and whimsical and smoky and exactly how I pictured both Cardan and Jude. From their faces to their body language.

“Why didn’t you hate everyone?” he asks. “Everyone, all the time.”
“I hated you,” Jude reassures him, bringing her mouth to his.

Do you ever just read something and sigh because it’s so perfect…
This was exactly what I wanted (EXCEPT I NEED MORE) and had those snippets of Cardan in our world (him trying to interact with mortals is hilarious 😂) to some of his childhood backstory. More insight to how he became the feral, toothy beautiful little villain he was so proud to be…until he wasn’t proud. Until it wasn’t enough and he wanted more. It also had all the lines that made me soft-happy-sigh.

And Cardan was just in PEAK CARDAN MODE, so dramatic and very self-satisfied at how beautiful he is 😌 But also glimpses into his lonesome life and jealousy longing for love.

It also is told in a thoroughly whimsical style. It feels like the trilogy’s writing plus a fairy tale all in its own.

“It is a mere nothing. No need for dramatics.”
“I am nothing,” Cardan said, “if not dramatic.”

I throughly loved this…
Whimsical and lovely, full of anger and sharp edges. Just that little bit of indulgent “what happened after” feels that makes my  reader/fan heart so happy and satisfied. I’m so glad it exists. Gorgeous inside and out.

An illustrated addition to the New York Times bestselling Folk of Air trilogy, that started with The Cruel Prince, from award-winning author Holly Black.
An irresistible return to the captivating world of Elfhame.
Once upon a time, there was a boy with a wicked tongue.
Before he was a cruel prince or a wicked king, he was a faerie child with a heart of stone . #1 New York Times bestselling author, Holly Black reveals a deeper look into the dramatic life of Elfhame’s enigmatic high king, Cardan. This tale includes delicious details of life before The Cruel Prince, an adventure beyond The Queen of Nothing, and familiar moments from The Folk of the Air trilogy, told wholly from Cardan’s perspective.
This new installment in the Folk of the Air series is a return to the heart-racing romance, danger, humor, and drama that enchanted readers everywhere. Each chapter is paired with lavish and luminous full-color art, making this the perfect collector’s item to be enjoyed by both new audiences and old.

goodreads | publisher | book depository | booktopia

thank you to the publisher for the free copy