Just lovely from beginning to end. I really need more people to read this! It’s just such a nice little story.
The main character is Biddy, a seventeen year old young woman who washed up on the shores of a magical island as a baby and was taken in by the magician, Rowan, and his rabbit familiar Hutchincroft. She can’t do magic herself, but she is raised to love it and want to protect it. And though she loves living on the magical island of Hy-Brasil, which no one can find (basically), she longs to see the outside world, and chafes at being told that she can’t. These conflicting desires within her lead to the events of the rest of the book, which also has to do not only with finding out where Biddy came from, but also why magic has stopped coming into the world.
I loved this from page one. Something about the tone of the writing just caught me right away. And the book just got better from there. I loved Biddy and Rowan and Hutchincroft, and others that would be spoilers. The story had just the right amount of stakes, and the atmosphere was impeccable. I will be reading this one again, for sure, and reading it has only solidified my decision to read everything this author ever writes. Really need to track down a copy of her debut. And get to the second book in her duology. I wonder what she will write next!