Garden of Thorns and Light

July 15, 2020
Amethyst is a growing teen. The question is, what is she growing into? Something is wrong with Amethyst: Her skin is sprouting spiky green thorns, and webs of roots are developing under her skin. Besides this, Amethyst has a fear of being attacked again. Ten years ago, Amethyst was mesmerized by tiny, floating lights that whispered her name, and she followed them into the midnight woods, where a monster attempted to kidnap her. When she regained consciousness, she learned her mother had vanished. Now her father and therapist give her an ultimatum to deal with her intense anxiety: Spend a summer with her estranged grandmother or be committed to an inpatient facility. Deciding on time with Gran, Amethyst is welcomed to town by the handsome and charming Ben, who helps her dig up information on her mother. Their search results in Amethyst's meeting the mysterious and dangerous fairy Absynth, her mother's twin sister who lives in the woods nearby. After learning that she too has fairy blood, Amethyst has to make a decision: stay fully human and let her love for Ben blossom or become a full fairy, leaving her human life behind forever. Though some of her decisions seem rushed, Amethyst grows in ways that will be familiar and comforting to readers, and both worlds, fairy and human, are fully developed. Human characters are white; fairies have varying skin tones. This supernatural page-turner with twists will leave readers wishing they had fairy wings. (Paranormal. 12-18)

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Starred review from October 15, 2020
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* When Amethyst was six, a monster covered with thorns tried to drag her into the woods. Ten years later, she is timid, prone to nightmares, and a target for derision and bullying. That her mother disappeared that night adds guilt to her burden. She is sent to her grandmother's, only to find that the monster is in the forest behind the house. Yet, it isn't really a monster. The creature is Absynthe, her mother's twin, who accepted the Change and became a fairy, unlike Amethyst's mother. Amethyst is drawn into Absynthe's stories and promises even as she is drawn to Ben, a young man with a love for landscaping and a troubled past. Her two worlds pull against each other, and Amethyst has to accept her choices, leading to a bittersweet and wrenching conclusion. Her first-person narrative is richly articulate in expressing her emotions and perceptions. The drama is leavened with humor, usually through her clumsy chain reactions of disaster or her pointed, acerbic comments to herself. She is no stranger to introspection, and the reader experiences her pain and her regret as she parses her experiences. The narrative is gripping and well paced with a variety of twists to draw in the reader. This is a refreshing and engrossing fantasy novel, a cut above the rest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)