Lily

November 1, 2016

Gr 10 Up-Thirteen-year-old Lily is an unlikely pawn in this story that is part morality play and part fairy tale. When Lily has a vision of her father's death and later learns that his death has in fact come true, she feels a power inside. Lily and her mother leave their village for a large city where Lily is taken in by her worldly surroundings: the hustle and bustle of the streets, the raucous crowds, and garish lights. Swept up by the excitement in the air and pushed along by the maelstrom of people around her, the teen goes to see a traveling preacher. People in the streets say that Reverend Everyman is a healer, a prophet, a man of God. The reverend's traveling circus is more carnival than prayer meeting. Clowns with prison records and sketchy pasts enforce Everyman's will, and a tattooed girl is displayed in a cage and said to be possessed. Lily becomes part of the traveling show and naively believes the preacher will fix her curse, but he has his own insidious ideas. A classic struggle of good vs. evil pits witch Baba Yaga against the evil evangelist Everyman. A muddled, esoteric plot makes this a read for a narrow audience. The illustrations by Andersen, while provocative and artistic, are disturbing and otherworldly. VERDICT Large high school collections with generous budgets may choose to purchase. This novel is a better fit for a public library collection for mature teens.-Pamela Thompson, Col. John O. Ensor Middle School, El Paso, TX

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2016
A young girl gains the ability to see the death of anyone she touches in this debut "modern(ish)" fairy tale. Waking on her 13th birthday, Lily kisses her father good morning and is struck by a vision of how he will drown that very day. Frightened by this new talent, which seems to have come to her just as her body is beginning to change into that of a woman, Lily feels as if there is an "other girl" inside her, one whom Lily is determined to keep locked away. When Lily's father does indeed drown, her mother--an outsider who has never liked their strange little fishing village--whisks the girl away across the wooden footbridge that is the village's only connection to the outside world, a bridge whose other end is always shrouded in fog. Thus begins a rare caliber of story that should transport and submerge readers in a fantastic and fantastical adventure. Will Lily survive in the world beyond her village? Will she be able to rid herself of this new and terrible power to foresee death? Will she contain the "other girl" developing inside of her? Once started, Lily's mystical and often macabre journey is nearly impossible to stop reading, as she seeks answers and finds herself in surprising company, such as that of the Rev. Silas Everyman, "a miracle worker," and his traveling evangelical circus. Despite some seemingly familiar fairy-tale tropes--a witch named Baba Yaga lives in the woods and eats children, for example--little is as it first appears. Like many of the characters, Baba Yaga is more complex than she seems; is she hunting Lily or helping her? Not even Baba Yaga knows for sure. As Andersen has done for the book's beautifully bizarre yet detailed illustrations, Ford has filled his novel with customs and side stories--some no more than a sentence or two--that make the world feel real, wonderful, and horrifying simultaneously. And though in many ways it seems nothing like one, this novel is at heart a fairy tale in the grand, dark tradition of the best of such stories; the book speaks to the reader's deepest fears and highest hopes, told through the odyssey of a girl who is scared by what is happening around her and within her. In this moving and magical literary journey, a heroine grapples with a terrifying power.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.