ŷ������

6 stars. easily.

this book ends on page 335 actually! crazy how the last 33 pages are completely blank. i stayed up til 3am to finish this and my eyes are swollen from sobbing. i’m still ugly crying as i type this. i’m unwell. feeling hollow, feeling numb.

i can’t bring myself to write a proper review, so let me just say this book was beautifully written and end this review with some of my fav quotes. though i do have over 100 highlights bc this was simply a masterpiece.

okay edit: now that it’s the next day and i’ve cried it all out, i just wanna expand on my initial review a little bit. firstly, LOVE a sentient house. i’m always so delighted when i find a book that features one. secondly, love love love the cast of characters. i’m always a sucker for found family and i really enjoyed this one. third, i love eliasz. i cannot talk about him without starting to tear up but just know i love him and thought he was such a good character. the romance subplot was immaculate. fourth, i also loved liska. it’s always so refreshing when the fmc is soft yet strong. i want more fmcs like that. the journey she went on to come into her own and learn to accept herself was so wonderful. lastly, the setting was so perfect. so atmospheric and it sucked me in with the magical prose. it felt like a dark fairytale.

“You are not a monster, Liska Radost. You are sunlight, and you breathe life into everything you touch.��

“‘If I look like a monster,�� he says roughly, “then no one will be surprised when I do monstrous things.’��

“if the world has not prepared a place for you, you must take up a hammer and chisel and carve one out for yourself.��

“‘I must tell you, my dear fox,�� says the Leszy, “that you deserve someone far better than me. And yet—�� His fingers brush the tip of her ear, linger there. “And yet, and yet and 𝘺𝘦𝘵, I am a selfish creature, and I do not want to let you go.’��

“‘Do not go back to that village, Liska.�� He holds her gaze, steadfast. “Stay here with me. Stay, and you can have all the power and magic you desire. Stay, and you can be anyone you want.’��

“He is a demon, and he has done monstrous things, but he makes her feel whole. Perhaps that, more than anything, is what got them here—a boy who loves too little and a girl who loves too much, two threads tangled on the loom of history.��

“Of women, he’s heard it said: “She will be the end of me,�� or “She will be my undoing.�� None of that is true for Liska Radost. She is not the end of anything, but the beginning of everything. He has been dead a long time, and she is his resurrection.��

“In nature, everything balances itself. There can be no winter without summer, no shadow without the sun. You are my soul, Liska Radost. I lived seven hundred years to find you.��

“For that brief splinter of time, the Driada feels like a different world entirely—a transient place where the dark stands still, waiting for the light to arrive.��