The Raven’s Tale was everything the Poe nerd in me wanted. I cannot wait for this book to come out - hopefully it will inspire more people, especially young people, to study Poe.

Hopefully today's young people won’t have to threaten to complain to the department head to get their American Lit professor to include Poe in the curriculum the way I did. It worked and I have no regrets.

Thank you, and bravo, Ms. Winters, fellow Oregonian and Poe Nerd (Poevian? Poe-head? The Poe museum never responded to my tweet). This book made the lit geek in me very, very happy.

So much work went into creating this novel that it makes you wonder if Winters borrowed a raven haired muse herself.

“The Raven’s Tale” follows a young Edgar Allan Poe as he struggles with his writing and the pressures of his father when his muse comes to life and wants nothing more than to feast upon his writing and to be seen by the world only she is not a creature of beauty but rather the darkness and melancholy of his soul and she will not rest until her poet recognizes his worth.

I am a huge fan of anything regarding the infamous writer since there’s so much about his life that remains a mystery given the conflicting accounts after his death and the subject matter of some of his more famous works set him apart from your average writer and Cat Winters tapped into that mindset so perfectly I had to double check to see which lines belonged to each writer.

This story is the personification of adolescence and the constraints of society when your family wants you to go in one direction but your heart or in some cases your very soul pushes you into another and that became very real as Lenora refused to lurk in the shadows and pulled on the hand of Poe encouraging him to continue to write and explore his passions regardless of what others may think.

The blending of fantasy and reality through actual quotes, critiques and reviews blend this story together into something that gives us a glimpse into the past while subtly granting us whispers of what the future held for Poe and I loved every second.

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review!**