I received a complimentary copy of Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore from Feiwel & Friends through Netgalley. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Dark and Deepest Red was released on January 14th!

In 1518 Strasbourg, a mysterious affliction causes the women to dance uncontrollably, some until they die. Lala and her aunt fall under suspicion because of their dark skin and otherness. Lala is scared that charges of witchcraft will ruin their lives and the life of her aunt's assistant Alifair. Lala has begun a relationship with Alifair, but if anyone found out he was born with a woman's name, it could have dire consequences.
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Five centuries later, a descendant of Lala's family, Emil, discovers that his friend and romantic interest Rosella is dancing uncontrollably because of a pair of red shoes. The shoes were made by her grandparents and now they won't come off her feet. They force her into some dangerous situations, but Emil is there to help her. Together, they will try to free Rosella from the shoes.
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Dark and Deepest Red was a difficult read for me. Since I was reading an ARC, I don't know if my main issue was addressed before publishing. Lala's 1518 storyline was told in present tense and Emil and Rosella's current day storyline was told in past tense. It wasn't until about a third of the way through that I realized this was what had confused me so much. Also, I never got invested in Emil and Rosella. I did enjoy Lala and Alifair's storyline and the trans representation. I kind of wish this book had just stuck to 1518 though.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. This review is excerpted from a longer version that can be found at https://hufflepuffprof.wixsite.com/karareads/home/witchy-wednesday-dark-and-deepest-red

In 1518, women of Strasbourg, France fall under the spell of a magic dance where they simply cannot stop. Hysteria and suspicion run rampant and Lala and her family find themselves the target of the city's anger. Although they have nothing to do with the dancing plague, Lala's family does have a secret and their very survival depends on keeping in.
Five centuries later, Rosella and Emil, classmates and former friends, get drawn together in a new dancing fever. Rosella cannot take off red shoes made in her family's atelier. Emil's family was blamed in 1518 for the Strasbourg dance epidemic. Rosella and Emil must face the truths about their heritages and their identities in order for Rosella to survive her red dancing shoes.
I don't have a preexisting connection to the fairy tale Dark and Deepest Red retells (Hans Christian Anderson's The Red Slippers) but Anna-Marie McLemore takes this chilling story and crafts a heart-breaking and uplifting tale of generations, inheritance, and courage. Told from Lala, Emil, and Rosella's perspectives, each shines with unique voices, victories, fears, and apprehensions. Though Lala is charged with witchcraft, she is not. I chose this book for "Witchy Wednesday" because the three protagonists all have magic in their own right. Additionally, McLemore wrote an utterly fantastic and accurate depiction of early modern gender hierarchies, persecution, and alterity.
As the modern day protagonists, Emil and Rosella struggle with their familial legacies and feelings of being outsiders. Rosella's families shoes have magical powers and when she crafts her own pair, the magic seems more nefarious that benevolent. Emil's magic is both his scientific mind and the ability to transform. These three protagonists (as well as other supporting characters) are complicated, showing the depths of love and distrust humans can have for one another.
As a historian, Dark and Deepest Red is everything I could want in a historical magical realist novel. From Lala's first pages, it is evident that McLemore carefully and conscientiously researched Romani and queer histories of the early modern period. Often these voices (queer, marginalized and oppressed communities) are silenced within archives. We know that there were Alifairs and Lalas yet finding them is more difficult than locating the Strasbourg elite who persecute them. It is my hope that teen and young adult readers will be inspired by this book to take classes on early modern history, queer history, and other topical classes.
McLemore balances the historical and fantastical in nuanced and sympathetic ways. The mystery of the dancing plague (Strasbourg's and Rosella's) will certainly be a draw for readers, but I hope they also appreciate the magic McLemore imbues each of their characters. To be loving, loyal, resilient, and determined is its own kind of power.

Content Warnings: transphobia, ethnic discrimination, and usage of slurs

wow, what a read. Anna-Marie McLemore skillfully weaves a story told over two separate timelines, set 500 years apart. At first, it was tad bit confusing, but then as you keep reading it works together wonderfully.

Also, all McLemore's books hit me right in the feels and Dark and Deepest Red was no exception. You MUST read the author's note for an extra hit in the feels. Anyway, I rarely read books that leave me so affirmed and hopeful about queer history. And yet, that is where Dark and Deepest Red leads us - accepting our own identities and triumphing over cruelty and bigotry.

This title was archived before I was able to download/read it. I am unable to review it due to these circumstances.

it was such a fun read! Take a journey back and forth in time and follow Lavinia from 1500s France as well as modern day Rosella as they navigate some rather bizarre circumstances. This beautifully written novel is based in part in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Red Shoes” and an actual dancing plague that hit Strasbourg, Alsace (now France) in 1518 as well as a number of other villages along the Rhine and Moselles rivers. This is a gorgeous LGBTQ+ novel about hysteria, falling in love, prejudice and magic. I highly recommend it.

I really enjoyed this beautiful story. It is told in alternating perspectives between 1518 and the present with a few different POVS. While I found the prose gorgeous, I don't think it's the right fit for a reluctant YA reader. The book is a little bit hard to get into and I found the chapters often too short to really feel like I was with a character before being whisked away. I felt like the pacing really came together in the back half of the book though. Also McLemore has truly done a wonderful job of giving us a book with stunning LGBTQ+ representation.

I don't know that this was McLemore's strongest offering, as I enjoyed her other books more, but still a great retelling.

This is my first contact with McLemore, and it was fun. It's a good book with a good romance. That's it!

Anna-Marie McLemore’s latest novel, Dark and Deepest Red, is equal parts magical and horrifying as the novel shifts between two timelines where young women are caught in a never-ending dance, unable to stop. In 1518 Strasbourg, France, a fever takes hold of the residents. First it is a small group of women, fallen under a spell that compels them to dance. As the frenzy continues, some of these women begin to dance themselves to death. With each passing day, more are brought under the spell, losing themselves while their families become desperate for a cure. Lala and her aunt have done their best to blend into this small town, have hoped they have hidden their Romani heritage deep enough in order to escape persecution. But as the townspeople grow more desperate to put a stop to the sickness and find someone to blame, suspicions turn to those who’ve never quite fit in.

Five centuries later, “the glimmer” has once again fallen over the town of Briar Meadows. This strange phenomenon overcomes the town every year, bringing about both innocuous and life-changing magic. This year pairs of red shoes begin turning up, casting a kind of love magic on their wearers. For Rosella Oliva, donning these red shoes has unforeseen consequences. They take hold of her, refusing to let go, forcing her dance and putting her life in danger. The only person who might help is Emil, a boy who has done his best to tuck away the parts of himself that others in his town once whispered about. He’s closed himself off from his own history, like the story of his ancestors once being blamed for a dancing plague. But in order to help Rosella, Emil will have to reach across centuries to find the truth of what happen to those before him.

Dark and Deepest Red explores various marginalized identities and how these have influence the way characters move about the world. McLemore’s stories are always unapologetically brown and queer and this one is no exception. McLemore has a knack for forcing their characters to see beyond the surface, to splay themselves open and prod all those little things they keep hidden from the world. Much like the dancing plague, these characters have been forced into a kind of dance where they must deny a part of themselves. I loved how McLemore uses these biases and turns them on their head, allowing their characters to turn powerlessness into a moments of cunning and strength. The story is a reminder than even one small act of defiance can have a ripple effect, how one small act may not be small at all, but may have ramifications that transcend time.

Plenty of parallels can be drawn from the two timelines in Dark and Deepest Red. Lala has learned to make herself more gadjo, non-Romani, tucking parts of herself away and folding herself into the circle of young women in town who are looked upon with envy rather than suspicion. Her aunt and her have explained away their brown skin with rumors of Italian nobility. Their proximity to whiteness has become their only defense against the prejudice shown to their people throughout the region. But there is always danger in their very existence, as it is for the trans boy they took in years ago. Alifair’s almost mysterious appearance from the woods has never been fully explained, but Lala and her aunt made him family when he had none. Lala knows that while loving Alifair may always have been inevitable, her love for him might also be his downfall. Scenes between these two range from beautiful to heartbreaking and I’m always in awe of McLemore’s ability to write love stories that both devastate and uplift.

Rosella, like Lala, has discovered that in order to keep the people of Briar Meadows from treating her family as less than (at least more than they already do), she has to make herself more like the girls around her. She may not be able to hide her brown skin, but she can dress like them and talk like them. The only other person who ever understood what it was like to be othered in this town was Emil, but that was years ago when they were both children and understood their place in the world a little less. For Emil, keeping himself from his people’s history has been a way for him to protect himself. Rosella has always been a reminder of the things he was only beginning to realize as a child, that the town he called home was only ever going to look down at his family and their culture if he shared too much. I loved that their story isn’t just about each other, but about who they are individually in relation to their ethnic identities.

Anna-Marie McLemore’s Dark and Deepest Red fused magic and terror into an enthralling tale that will leave you breathless with its piercing truths.

If you are a fan of magical realism, fairy tale retellings, and historical fiction this book will tick all your boxes. Anna-Marie McLemore spins another beautiful, lush fairy tale that goes so much deeper than the original tale. The story is told from three different POVs, which I did struggle with at times, especially in the beginning. As a reader, I felt like was dropped in right in the middle of the story and it was not totally clear to me that I was reading not only different POVs, but different timelines and places as well. Once I got past my initial confusing though, I really enjoyed this book. The love stories were compelling, but even more so was the story of bonds between families and how those who are marginalized can become family for each other. I also loved that there was a clear message that fear is often what holds us back and acknowledging those fears head on can be freeing and empowering.
Summary:
One POV takes place in 1500s France and follows the story of a girl, Lala, and her family who are Romani and accused of witchcraft after a fever breaks out in their town causing many young women to dance uncontrollably. The other two POVs are modern and follow two high-schoolers, Emil and Rosella. Every year in the fall there town has something called "the glimmer" which hovers over the reservoir and causes unusual things to happen. Emil is a scientist with little interest in his family's Romani history or "the glimmer" until he begins to have dreams about Lala and her trials. Rosella's family is famous for their beautifully designed shoes, especially the red ones which seem to help people be more bold when they wear them. Rosella decides she wants to wear a pair during the glimmer this year, but once she puts them on she finds can't take them and they force her to dance, echoing the women in 1500s France. Emil and Rosella must come to terms with their own roles and history in order to stop the shoes.

Anna-Marie McLemore always has beautifully written magical realism and this was no exception. Their writing can be hit or miss for me sometimes, all magical realism is like that for me personally but I really ended up enjoying this book. I felt that the beginning of the book was really confusing because there are different timelines and we switch between different character perspectives within each timeline so it took me a while to sort everything out in my head and understand what was happening. I always love the romances that this author includes in their stories, I think that was one of my favorite parts, especially in the storyline set in the past. It is just a magical and beautiful story and it was a little confusing at times but I still just had a good time reading it.

If you love magical realism, you will definitely love this book. McClemore spins a beautiful dark tale about a girl, Lavinia and her family who creates the most beautiful red shoes in the land. red shoes that are coveted by those able to purchase them as well those who can only admire them from afar. But when those wearing the beautiful red shoes become so obsessed with dancing, some dancing to their deaths; the fear of witchcraft arises. Forcing the family to flee for their lives.
Many centuries later, the beautiful red shoes appear again, sealing themselves to a beautiful girl named Rosella Oliva. Sending her into a crazed dancing whirlwind. The beautiful red shoes erratically draw her towards a boy. Emil, knows the story of the red shoes, he knows the story of dancing to your death. His family has lived through the nightmare of being blamed for witchcraft. This is a beautiful story that weaves the magic and reality of the red shoes in a richly dark story line that will capture you from the beginning.and never let you go until teh end.

This is one of those combination books, part historical fiction, part modern magical realism, with three POVs. It would have been nicer if there'd only been two, but oh well.

In the history part, we're in 15th century Strasbourg at the start of their mysterious dancing madness. No one knows what started it, or why/how it ended and Strasbourg was not the only city afflicted. What we do know is that marginalized people are always blamed for the odd and inexpiable, and this case was no different. Living it through the eyes of one such person makes the terror all the more real.

In the modern part, Emil is a science-minded descendant of one of the people in Strasbourg and because his family is Romani, they're still marginalized. He's decided not to learn about his family's past to help him (and them) fit in better. He has known Rosella since childhood; she's another science fan trying to fit in, although her family is Latino. Their town has an annual haze that brings something magical (like cats) - this year, it's just red shoes. Rosella creates her own out of old scraps from shoes her grandparents had made, and then she seems to channel the same affliction as the people in Strasbourg all those years ago.

Having that mix of history and modern isn't new, nor is applying a magical cause to one of those mysteries. What makes this different and worth reading are the hints of what Romani life and culture were/are like - if only there'd been more.

eARC provided by publisher.

This book was one of my favorites of 2019! In the 1500s a town is taken over with a dancing plague. In modern times Rosella and Emil learn more about the fever of the past, their families, and themselves. The love stories are so pure and moving, I cried at least 4 times. The setting is magical, I felt like I was there! Basically you need to read this book!!!

This book. I had no preconceived notions about it before reading it, no idea what to expect. It is magical and beautiful and powerful and absolutely heartbreaking in the best way.

These words brought the tears - " It was about women turning their own fears into their sharpest blades."

The events happening in 1518 mirror events in present-day, which emphasizes how much work we still need to do as a society. There are so many important lessons in this book. I love stories about strong girls learning to embrace their strength and power. I don't have the words to describe all the things it made me feel - except that you must read it.

Summary:
With Anna-Marie McLemore's signature lush prose, Dark and Deepest Red pairs the forbidding magic of a fairy tale with a modern story of passion and betrayal.

Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves.

Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s history better than anyone: Emil, whose family was blamed for the fever five hundred years ago.

But there’s more to what happened in 1518 than even Emil knows, and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes.

My expectations were high going to this and it exceeded all of them. I'm gonna run out of superlative adjectives to describe it because it was perfect.

Emil and Rosella exist in present day in Briar Meadow, where a glimmer appears every fall and brings with it magical oddities. This year, it's a pair of red shoes to everyone in town, the very same red shoes that Rosella's family is famous for creating across the generations. The shoes bring strength and courage, each a little different for every person. In 1518 in Strasbourg, the story follows Lala and those she loves as the Dancing Plague sweeps the town.

The Dancing Plague is probably my favorite plague, so to see there was a book about it thrilled me. The historical bits and pieces she wove in are perfect. Where she diverged on the historical notes were the best choices as it made for a thrilling story. The combination of the timelines, the POVs, and the blending of this historical event tied together with a retelling of Anderson's tale was breathtaking and perfect.

Everything worked in this novel, especially the pacing. I was never bored and the shorter chapters made it fly by. I loved all the characters, not just our POV characters. The ending was perfect and wonderful, and as the author mentioned on Twitter, I think they did succeeded in out-gaying all their other stories.

The different feminist themes in this book gave me life. There are so many ways of having strength here, of finding new strengths, using them in different ways, and how they're all valid and important.

This book made me so happy, and I can't wait for everyone else to read it.

I couldn't keep track of the story because of the numerous points of view. There were too many characters to remember and the story moved too quickly through time and space. Pacing was poor and more complicated than it needed to be.

If one is looking for beautiful, thoughtful, magical YA novels with an inclusive and LGBTQ+ focus, look no further than Anna-Marie McLemore! They continue to delight with Dark and Deepest Red, a retelling of both the classic fairy tale The Red Shoes and real historical events from hundreds of years ago. McLemore seamlessly moves the narrative between two teens living in a slightly enchanted modern town and a young Roma woman trying to pass in society with her aunt and a trans boy in Strasbourg in 1518, the same year a mysterious dancing mania overcame hundreds of residents. The two stories blend together and inform each other in ways that will break and mend your heart. This is a story about building acceptance, community, and self-love. It is about honoring your past, your heritage, and your place in the world.

I should preface this by saying that "The Red Shoes" is one of my all-time favorite fairy tales, so I approached this with some trepidation but also high expectations. Wow! Did Anna-Marie McLemore deliver! I shouldn't have worried because McLemore ALWAYS delivers and this was such a wonderful re-telling of such a dark twisted tale. To sum it up it is absolutely magical, and beautiful, and disturbing, and just everything that a book should be. I cannot recommend this enough and cannot wait to get it on the shelves at the library!

This was really hard to get into, and I mean really hard. The pace was incredibly slow. When something interesting would happen, I'd get excited, and then hit another lull. It was rough going. I really liked the historical parts, the showcasing of a transgender character in the past, and the fact that this was about the Romani people, which you rarely find in a novel. But man, I really just could not get into the characters. I was not interested in what happened to any of them, until almost the end. It was a long drag. I give her points for an interesting ending, idea, and diverse novel, but poor execution, and I normally love her stuff...

I feel like I always appreciate McLemore's work, but from a sort of distance. Her use of language is quite lovely, but it seems as if the language itself keeps me from truly growing attached to the characters, as if the denseness of each sentence puts up a barrier to my getting into their heads and keeps them from getting into my heart. This was, however, a fascinating marriage of two older stories, with a lot of different experiential perspectives, and I appreciated the unexpected ending.