Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: September 19, 2023
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy
A spellbinding YA fantasy from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Purdie, where fairy tales come to life with dark, deadly twists.
“Tell me again, Grandmère, the story of how I die.”
The
Midnight Forest. The Fanged Creature. Two fortune-telling cards that
spell an untimely death for 17-year-old Clara. Despite the ever-present
warning from her fortune-teller grandmother, Clara embarks on a
dangerous journey into the deadly Forest Grimm to procure a magical
book—Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes—with the power to reverse the curse on her village and save her mother.
Years
ago, when the villagers whispered their deepest desires to the book,
its pages revealed how to obtain them. All was well until someone used
the book for an evil purpose—to kill another person. Afterward, the
branches of the Forest Grimm snatched the book away, the well water in
Grimm’s Hollow turned rancid, and the crops died from disease. The
villagers tried to make amends with the forest, but every time someone
crossed its border, they never returned.
Now, left with no
alternative, Clara and her close friend, Axel—who is fated never to be
with her—have set their minds to defying fate and daring to accomplish
what no one else has been able to before. But the forest—alive with
dark, deadly twists on some of our most well-known fairy tales—has a
mind of its own.
The Forest Grim, by Kathryn Purdue, is the first installment in the authors The Forest Grimm series which is said to be a duology, and the authors homage to her lifelong obsession with fairy tales and folklore. Despite the ever-present
warning from her fortune-teller grandmother, 16-year-old Clara Thurn embarks on a
dangerous journey into the deadly Forest Grimm to procure a magical
book—Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes—with the power to reverse the curse on her village and save her mother.
Years ago, when the villagers whispered their deepest desires to the
book, its pages revealed how to obtain them. All was well until someone
used the book for an evil purpose—to kill another person. Afterward, the
branches of the Forest Grimm snatched the book away, the well water in
Grimm’s Hollow turned rancid, and the crops died from disease. The
villagers tried to make amends with the forest, but every time someone
crossed its border, they never returned.
Now, left with no alternative, Clara and her close friend, Axel—who is
fated never to be with her—have set their minds to defying fate and
daring to accomplish what no one else has been able to before. But the
forest—alive with dark, deadly twists on some of our most well-known
fairy tales—has a mind of its own. As Clara and Axel investigate the Forest, interesting twists happen. Like a girl who was supposed to be marrying Axel now calling herself Cinderella. Like Henrietta, Clara's best friend, running off on a tangent after losing her own sister to the forest.
Then there's twins Hansel and Gretel who are cannibals. And, a woman who has long hair, lives in a castle, and calls herself Rapunzel. There's also a character who is said to be Sleeping Beauty, while Clara herself wears a red cape similiar to Little Red Riding Hood. Nearly the entire book is set in a cursed forest; stuff moves around and
there are creepy cottages and towers with even creepier folks living in
them. Throw in a pretty intimidating wolf running around chasing after
folks in the woods, and you have a really dark story with a pretty curious ending after Clara has to make a choice about her path forward.
*Thoughts*
This wasn't a bad story by any means. I liked the determination of Clara to ignore previous warnings about how she is supposed to die. Clara's attitude seemed to be, well, if I am going to go, then I am going to go and try to find my mother and others before fate takes me. Clara's friendship with Henni is a bit odd in that it is said that Henni is a bit on the childish side. Clara's relationship with Axel was more than expected since they had already spent so much time together before he was supposed to marry another girl. The book ends on a cliffhanger ending which will once again send Clara on yet another mission. Will be patiently waiting for The Deadly Grimm.
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SEVEN YEARS LATER
I am haunted by
my mother. I hear her voice ringing on the wind that chases the ravens
from our sheep pasture, her stifled cries in the creaking of the pulley
over our dry well. Her laughter glances off jagged flickers of dry
lightning. Her rage gathers in low peals of rolling thunder.
The
storms are only mockery. Their rainfall scarcely touches the earth
anymore, and when it does, all I hear in its patter are my mother’s
footsteps treading away from me, beckoning me to follow.
I am
haunted by my mother … if hauntings weren’t a mystery of the dead, but
rather an echo of the living. And she must be living. I will her to be.
She isn’t dead, only missing—lost within the Forest Grimm. Three years
have passed since she embarked on a journey there, soon after the magic
of the forest had turned on our village, and she never returned.
Strips
of fabric and ribbon in every color dangle from a large hazel at the
edge of the forest. The Tree of the Lost. Mother wasn’t the only
villager to go missing. Sixty-six others—the Lost Ones, as we call
them—were also never seen nor heard from again after venturing into the
forest. Each had their own reasons for wandering away since the onset of
the curse, though most of those motives remain a mystery. The only
known link between them is the state of despair they were in before
leaving Grimm’s Hollow.
As for Mother, she should have known she
wouldn’t return home. The Midnight Forest card had warned her long ago
not to make a forbidden choice. But she left in search of Father, and
she didn’t know he wasn’t Lost, not in that way. She entered the Forest
Grimm soon after his disappearance, and she became the first Lost One.
The
tokens on the hazel quiver in the summer breeze, stirring the ends of
my sable hair. Mother’s hair is the same warm shade of darkest brown,
but her cloth strip has been dyed rose red. Grandmère chose that color
because it’s Mother’s favorite, and I spun the yarn myself from our
flock’s finest wool.
I lift my hand to touch it, squinting
against the morning sunlight that pierces the tight weave. Three years
have passed since I first knotted it to this tree, and in that time the
elements have frayed its edges and worn the cloth threadbare.
What if Mother is also this ragged and bone-thin?
I will come for you, I promise. Soon.
And by soon I mean today.
“Ten minutes until the lottery!” the village clockmaker calls.
My
heart lurches like a cuckoo bird springing on the hour. I hitch my
skirt to my calves and dart through the gathering crowd in the meadow.
Monthly Devotion Day always draws out villagers like myself who haven’t
given up hope that our Lost Ones are still alive. It also attracts those
who enjoy the spectacle of the lottery and the danger that follows it.
The focus of Devotion Day has always been the lottery and its
culmination.
I reach the lottery table, where two glass-blown
goblets perch side by side, one amber and the other moss green. Each
holds scraps of folded paper with names of villagers scrawled upon them.
Today is the day I’ll be chosen—finally permitted—to enter the forest to search for the Lost Ones. Again.
Again, because my name is in the moss-green goblet, discarded with
others that were already chosen this year, plucked from the amber goblet
on previous Devotion Days. My turn came several months ago, when I was
finally old enough to take part in the lottery after coming of age at
sixteen.
Claiming my chance to enter the forest through the
sanction of the lottery was all I could do to save Mother from her
foretold early death. It still remains my only hope. Despite the
resolution I made seven years ago to make a wish on the Book of
Fortunes, that choice has been taken from me.
Two years before I
turned sixteen, the Forest Grimm cursed the village, and the book went
missing. And soon we discovered why: someone had committed murder, and
to complicate matters, they’d used their one wish on Sortes Fortunae to make it happen.
The
murderer’s identity still remains unknown. All we can be sure of is
that on the day the victim’s body was discovered, the Book of Fortunes
vanished.
Just as mysteriously as it had first appeared in
Grimm’s Hollow, the book disappeared from the pavilion where the
villagers kept it in this very meadow. Many believe that a large willow
uprooted itself and stole the book away with weeping branches. However
it happened, the willow also went missing, and a trail of root-like
footprints remained, leading to and from the pavilion.
Without
the book—without a wish that so many others were able to obtain before
me—I hoped the forest would compensate with kindness when my name was
drawn in the lottery. But it didn’t grant me any favors. To be fair, it
never welcomes anyone chosen from the amber goblet. None of us make it
more than a few yards inside the forest before we’re spit back out
again. I certainly didn’t.
So far this ritual is just as cursed as our village.
But
today will be different. Today I’m determined to succeed. I’ve made a
detailed map of the forest, gleaned from the knowledge of what the
villagers remember from days before the curse when they could come and
go freely. And I won’t wait another month for the lottery year to end,
when the names will be reshuffled, to test my luck with it.
All I have to do is be chosen again. And for that I have a strategy.
I’m
alone at the table, but I glance over my shoulder to make sure no
villagers are watching. Those who are missing Lost Ones like I am are
busy presenting gifts at the carved altar, just shy of the trailhead.
One foot beyond it is the stark line of ashes that marks the forest
border, and no one so much as lets a bootlace slip past it.
The
forest doesn’t allow anyone to enter anymore, not unless they’re
destined to become Lost—and no one willfully chooses that. Our offerings
are given in hopes to pacify the forest to yield to our attempt on
every Devotion Day.
Ingrid Struppin, who lost her husband, drags
her patched skirt away from the line and sets a bowl of porridge on the
altar. Gretchen Ottel, who lost her brother, bends her willowy frame to
rest a bouquet of wildflowers beside it, then sneezes. She claps a hand
over her mouth and stares ahead wide-eyed. That sneeze surely crossed
the line, but thankfully the forest doesn’t stir.
“Gesundheit,”
Hans Muller tells her, steadying a cup of ale by Gretchen’s
wildflowers—weak ale if it’s anything like the jug I bartered a skein of
yarn for five days ago. Once the cup is placed, he scampers back from
the line of ashes. As he removes his straw hat and bows his head, he
murmurs something. I think it’s the name of his Lost mother, Rilla.
The
villagers’ offerings are more meager than they once were, but they’re
the best anyone can afford nowadays. The curse that fell upon us three
years ago takes a harder toll with every passing month. This meadow is
proof. No flowers bloom here anymore. The parched wild grass is too
choked by thorny drought-tolerant weeds.
As futile as Devotion
Day always is, our desperation to save the Lost Ones drives us to play
out this ritual month after month. No one, including me, knows what else
to do to regain the forest’s good graces, cross its border, and be
permitted to make the dangerous journey to recover the Lost.
And
finding the Lost is only half the task. The lottery winner is also
expected to obtain the Book of Fortunes, wherever it’s hidden in the
Forest Grimm. If the woods allow it to be retrieved, we believe the
curse will be lifted. The land will be healed, and the Lost will find
their way back home.
This much we’ve learned from a riddle that the book left behind. Not all of Sortes Fortunae
went missing. A single page remained in the pavilion on a pedestal, and
on that page were the following green-inked, magicked words:
A murderous wish
An end of peace
The curse is wrought
My blessings cease.
Falling water
Lost words found
A selfless wish
The curse unbound.
The
first half of the riddle explained what set the curse in motion—a wish
on the book that resulted in murder—and the last half revealed how to
break the curse. The riddle also gave the only clue to how to find the
book: near “falling water.” A waterfall seems the obvious conclusion,
but if it were that simple, the Lost Ones would have already found the
book and returned home. None have.
No matter the difficulty, I vow to find Sortes Fortunae.
It feels just as much my destiny as the one Grandmère foretold for me.
The Fanged Creature card may have spelled my untimely death, but I won’t
let it happen before I save my mother from her death. Ending the
curse and saving her—they’re both intertwined. I need the book to make a
wish to rescue her from the forest, as well as her fate.
When
I’m sure no one has eyes on me, I refocus on my task. Quick as a falcon,
I pluck a handful of folded papers from my apron pocket, cast them into
the amber goblet, and rush away.
Seconds later, a youthful
baritone voice calls from a few yards behind me, “Where are you running
off to, Clara?” I know he’s smiling from the teasing lilt of his tone.
“I can’t remember a time you missed the lottery, even when you weren’t
old enough to enter.”
I fight an eye roll as I slowly spin to
face Axel. Of course he had to rub in our age difference, as if the two
years between us mean he’s gleaned that much more experience in the
lottery. He’s only ever had his name drawn once, same as me.
Every
year more than thirty villagers place their names in the amber goblet,
of their own free will, but only one name is drawn monthly, when the
dark of the moon has passed and then waxed to a crescent. A sign of good
luck for travelers. The people of Grimm’s Hollow cling to any
superstition that might help bring back the Lost Ones and break the
curse on our village.
I haven’t answered Axel yet. I’m still
scavenging my brain for an excuse as he walks toward me with that easy
swagger of his, confident yet unaffected. Like everything else about
him, it exudes a natural charm he’s oblivious to, which makes the
village girls bat their lashes in such a flutter you’d think they’d
developed tics.
They’d need to bat him over the head with a
cudgel to get him to notice. He’s only ever had eyes for one girl, and
she’s Lost just like my mother.
“Well?” He leans his weight on
one leg, hands stuffed in his homespun trouser pockets. His casual air
carries over to the rest of his appearance. The sleeves of his shirt are
rolled back to reveal corded tawny arms, and his spruce-blue vest is
unbuttoned, flapping in the breeze like bed linens on a clothesline. He
chews on the end of a long piece of straw that glints as golden as his
perfectly imperfect tousled hair. “What’s the rush?”
I fold my arms at his smirk. “I forgot my hat. If I’m chosen today, I’ll need it.”
“You never wear a hat. Not here, not anywhere.” His river-blue eyes lower to my nose. “All those freckles say the same.”
I shrug. “Today they begged for shade.”
Silent laughter ripples across his broad shoulders. “C’mon, Clara. I saw you throw something into the amber goblet just now.”
Heat surges into my cheeks. “It was only clover for good luck.”
“Clover isn’t white.”
“It is when it’s in bloom.”
His
smile deepens, and he nods, humoring me. He pulls the straw from his
mouth, dips his head nearer, and whispers conspiratorially, “How many
papers were in your hand, hmm? How many times did you enter your name?”
I
whirl to bolt, but he catches my arm and turns me back around. He’s a
full head taller than I am, and standing this close, I have to tilt up
my face to meet his gaze. I do so begrudgingly.
“Do you really think I’ll snitch on you?” He gives my arm a playful rattle. “You know me better than that.”
I
suppose I do. When my father was alive, Axel used to help him during
the lambing season. I helped Father too, as often as Mother and
Grandmère could spare me.
