I’ve seen many fans of Maggie Stiefvater express hesitancy after reading the synopsis of her newest book, The Listeners. Not only is it her first book for adults, but the words “historical fiction” are being used in marketing, which doesn’t really “sound” like a Maggie Stiefvater book.
To those fans, I am here to say: FEAR NOT.
Katherine Arden is a master of atmosphere, and she has spared no hellish, haunting detail in writing the realities of WWI in The Warm Hands of Ghosts. As a work of historical fiction, it is excellent. If readers are hesitant about the supernatural themes of the book, I would say those elements are subdued and only require a bit of imagination and basic suspension of disbelief, versus an investment in complicated world-building.
Haunting and heartwarming, airy but earnest, Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds felt like a delicious hug of a book. If you’re familiar with magical realism, you’ll understand that you have to give yourself over to the quirks, and you’ll be surprisingly satisfied, though not everything will be explained.
In Alice Hoffman’s gentle and enchanting Nightbird, Twig and her mother have a secret, one that keeps them separate from the town, and separate from friends. That is until the Halls and their two young daughters move into the house down the road. They are Twig’s first neighbors ever, and – as it turns out – descendants of the woman who brought her family lasting turmoil generations before.
BOOK:30 