Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There has never been a more Marisa book in all of existence.
This book is so magical and mystical, and I adore it.
I deeply love how Tobias’s voice is characterized in this. A paragraph may run with a tangent that builds in emotional intensity as he considers how fairies feels emotions vs. how mortals feels emotions, and then all of sudden, the paragraph will just cut off as Tobias realizes why he’s obsessing about this and forces himself to stop being a “fool.”
On that note, too, I quite like how Bramble’s friendship with Tobias is written. She may not be human, but she loves Tobias very much in her own way, and their ride-or-die friendship is great.
Fabian was this scary-slick charming villain who sauntered onto the page, and Tesh did a great job of making me feel just as afraid of him as Tobias was. I was afraid of his possessiveness, especially because Fabian considers so many things to be his — the woods, Tobias, the beautiful young men who walk near his forest. Everything is his to claim, and that is terrifying.
The romance in here is incredibly sweet. Tobias’s longing for Henry Silver hovers between every line, and all his despair at the reasons this fondness is impossible. It heightened the tension when both of them are inevitably put in fairy danger.
Silver’s mother is an absolute gem, and the constellation of relationships between Tobias, Henry, and Mrs. Silver is my favorite aspect of this novella. There’s something so warm and cozy about how they all relate to each other. Everything that was so impossible earlier in the story becomes possible and becomes a family once all three of them have space in the story.
mgdoherty 