This fantasy has fairytale resonances, although it doesn’t follow a specific tale as far as I can tell. It was an easy enough read, but also easy to put down without feeling the need to continue. The story’s told in third person, past tense from Marra’s viewpoint. Sometimes, like her, I found myself wondering what I was doing there.

Given that Marra was supposed to be 30, she seemed far younger. I could accept some amount of unworldliness after half her life in a convent, but she struck me as more slow on the uptake than that. (It didn’t help that a lot of her internal thoughts stated or restated what had already explicitly obvious).

The book starts with a dark tone, then evolves into something else. It’s mainly… a road trip with a handful of contrasting characters. Mood varied and felt inconsistent. I felt the story couldn’t decide whether it was a fairytale or a buddy adventure with snark, bickering and banter. (Fair enough, I occasionally chuckled at the interactions). If it was more of a fairytale, I could probably overlook odd logic (like Marra at the age of 30 becoming replacement wife in order to provide a much-needed heir?) but as it was, the random-seeming plot drivers put me off.

I read this thinking I hadn’t previously read anything by the author. But on coming to write this review, I notice I read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking last year and also The Seventh Bride the year before that. My thoughts for those two books were similar to here. A protagonist who acts younger than we’d expect, who follows the plot rather than moving it, and a story without many “Ah! So that’s how it all comes together!” moments. As before, this would maybe appeal to younger readers than myself.