The Grace of Wild Things
An inventive and fantastical reimagining of Anne of Green Gables—with magic and witches!—that explores found family, loss, and the power of a girl's imagination, from the acclaimed author of The Language of Ghosts and The School Between Winter and Fairyland. Perfect for readers who loved The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Serafina and the Black Cloak.
"A magical, witchy, and thoroughly successful homage to a classic." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Grace has never been good at anything except magic—not that anyone believes her.
While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.
But the witch is that bad—she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them.
But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.
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Community Reviews
You can totally see how this is the same author as the one who wrote the Emily Wilde books, which I read first.
(And so my review will refer to these ; but no spoilers here at all, I promise).
The writing is very whimsical and beautiful and fun and most importantly, as for the Emily Wilde trilogy, fitting to the story and Grace's character, which I adore; it's my favorite thing about these books :')
The same matter of fact-ness is there too, as Grace - like Emily - views every situation through her own particular way of thinking (that can be opposed to those commonly accepted and encouraged from certain people around them). Particularly, Grace's character revolves around stories, fairy tales, poetry, and her own imagination (whereas I would say Emily's would be around scientific research, Faerie and, of course, their tales.)
In this one the author went full force on the whimsy and relied on, and celebrated, the wonder of children's imagination. It made me emotional and made the beautiful writing hit even harder !
I didn't realise this was a retelling of Anne of Green Gables, which I did not read, so I don't have any precise thoughts on how it compares to the original story. Though from what I could gather, the themes are very similar if not exactly the same, and imo this book did a great job at exploring them.
Lastly I'll say this book goes into the (very?) niche genre of fantasy books that I will always enjoy and will call:
"Books that revolve around - and/or explore - fairy tales and stories, so much so that the (main) character(s) do too and their story ends up feeling like a fairy tale, or simply being one".
Okay thank u for bearing through this review, it took me forever and maybe is not that clear because i'm sleep deprived and i can't make it better than that rn :3 and i'm done now thank uuuu
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