Title: The Little Grey Girl
Author: Celine Kiernan
Series: The Wild Magic Trilogy #2
Publication Date: February 12th 2019
Synopsis: "The queen and her raggedy witches have fled, but the kingdom is not yet healed. The castle is haunted by memories of its brutal past. The ghosts are angry, and one of them in particular possesses a magic which may be too much for even Mup and Mam to handle."
My thoughts: This was a very interesting follow-up to the first book of the Wild Magic Trilogy, Begone the Raggedy Witches. In that book, I enjoyed Mup's courage and belief in her mother, and the magic of the setting was really interesting. The side-characters were also fascinating. All of that carries on in The Little Grey Girl, just even more acutely. Occasionally Mup is courageous and firm in her belief in good and bad to the point that I found her kind of irritating. There is some intense sadness and a little bit of scary content in this one, though I acknowledge that was present to a certain extent in the last book, too.
The adults in this book are near-useless at times, despite being strong in themselves usually. This means that Mup and Crow have to save the day alone, and honestly it seemed like they wouldn't be able to do that at times. I found myself getting frustrated with the adults for their reactions to things, and I think Kiernan was showing how children can often understand what is going on in a situation even more acutely than adults sometimes. It was written very well, I just had trouble absorbing all of the misery and rage being thrown around at times.
The world wasn't explored as much in this book, but I think that was okay, as you needed to have your full attention on the little grey girl (of the title) for the most part. She is...an intense character. That's all I'll say. Despite my difficulties with a lot of the emotion getting thrown around, I did really enjoy the ending. It felt like an acknowledgement of a lot of the pain we witness in the world now. It really wrapped up the story well, and made me intrigued to know where Kiernan will be going in the next book. I also really loved the character development of Crow - there is some real talk about grief in this book, and it was well done.
I do recommend reading this if you have read the first book - it's small, but it packs a punch.
{I received a review copy of this book from Walker Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!!!}
A favourite line from the book: 'Only a real friend could hug you when you were sad, without expecting your tears to stop just to please them.'
You would like this book if: You enjoy children's books that don't talk down to the reader; you like books that don't shy away from topics like grief.
Tea to drink while reading this book: Probably just tears. Yup. The many tears you may weep.
Rating: 7.5/10
If you'd like to keep up to date with what I'm reading, follow me on Goodreads here!
0 whisperings:
Post a Comment