A very well-written portrait of a misfit among misfits. Delicately written with beautiful imagery, it's hard not to get drawn in to the world of Feathertide; perfect for when you want to escape. The story follows a girl born with feathers on her back, to a mother who has to keep her hidden away from the world she craves to know. It was wonderful getting to know the characters and following their lives and choices, with moments of great joy and others of great sadness and despair. Beth Cartwright is a very talented writer, this is the first of what I feel will be many successful books!

Join Marea in an enchanting journey to find the secret behind her unique feathery appearance in the book `Feathertide'. Beth Cartwright's vivid description makes a fairytale come alive. A page turning story for book lovers.

Marea was born in a whorehouse, and is raised by her mother and the other prostitutes, hidden away from the world. Marea is not like her mother, or the other women. Marea is covered in feathers, like a bird.

The book describes a world where some people are different, a world full of magic and fantasy. We follow Marea through her sheltered childhood until, at 18, she leaves for the City of Murmurs, to try and find her father. This is where the magic really begins.

The book’s main story line seems to be around relationships, specifically Marea’s relationships with her mother, her father, Sybil (who takes her in when she arrives in the City of Murmers), with Elver and Leo. But mainly, it is Marea’s relationship with herself and her uniqueness due to her feathers.

The book is filled with such emotional and evocative writing. There is a Victorian feel to the timing of the book, but with a mystical atmosphere, which makes it so much more beautiful. There is no fast-paced plot or unexpected twists, this book is a wonderfully written modern day fairy-tale. A fairy-tale filled with mermaids and feathered people, of magical mist that helps you heal from grief.

A lovely book describing a lovely world, I would be very interested in reading more in a series.

Once upon a time, a girl was born with feathers the colour of sunset. For years she was kept sheltered from the world, and was torn between her longing to fly free with the birds she felt a kinship with, and the fear of the cruelty of those who scorn difference. Until her desire, her need for answers takes her to the mysterious city of water, a place of sirens, wishing doors and enchanted mist, where she finds that her journey to find her long lost father is also a journey to find herself.
A gorgeous, stately moving fairytale about learning to accept yourself, to love, to live with loss, and to free yourself from that which cages you. Did I also mention that thewriting is absolutely gorgeous?!
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review.

This stunning cover and lovely title themselves deserve a star. Cartwright definitely has a way with words, I will say that. There were plenty of pretty metaphors, several really nice turns of phrase and quotable lines.

I have a relatively high tolerance for purple prose (I'm guilty of a dose of waffle here and there myself) but sometimes all the introspection and flowery language caused scenes to drag. And herein lies the problem. The start was slow, opening with several chapters' worth of the protagonist Maréa's childhood, which was both unnecessarily long and written in a tone that sounded much older than it should. I wonder if her childhood would have worked better being told as a memoir sort of recollection? If I was in the middle of reading it, I would still turn the page, but if I was interrupted/had to put the book down then I didn't feel compelled to pick it back up again.

Characters-wise, I struggled to get a read on Maréa's personality - she felt like she could be anyone. And how many times did she have to say whore? (For context, Maréa's mother is a prostitute and Maréa grew up in the basement of a brothel/hair salon building.) Why does she call her friends (almost family) whores all the time? That's their profession but it's not the only thing that they are. I was reminded of the endless 'mate' repetition in S.J. Maas' ACOTAR novels. I also wasn't a fan of the 'gypsy beggar woman' stereotype that popped up briefly. The only character I was interested in was Sorren, the 'madam' essentially, but sadly we left her behind about a quarter in.

I'd heard that Maréa is bisexual and there's a sapphic romance later on, but unfortunately I'm not invested enough in Maréa's story to carry on just for that (I DNF'ed at 41%). Given that this is a debut novel, I will still keep an eye out for Cartwright's future work, as I thought the concepts were intriguing and her writing style is pretty.

I feel bad about only rating this book 3 out of 5 stars. Beth Cartwright's writing is amazing. She uses language beautifully and I can't fault that aspect of this book. But, for me, "Feathertide" was too slow-moving, too dream-like. It needed a harder edge to bring the characters fully to life and create a true modern-day fairytale for adults.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advance copy to review. This review is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

Sometimes I come across books that make me savor each and every scrap of world-building descriptions - this is one of those books. Feathertide was truly a beautiful coming of age tale for one unusual little girl named Marea. Her story is one of personal growth, discovery, and acceptance. The pacing is like a stroll through all the lovely descriptions Beth Cartwright breathes to life in her book. If fast-paced and action-packed books are your cup of tea you may not enjoy this one.

It was hard to pin down an actual time frame the novel takes place in. The circus, the town itself, and the boats make it sound like it's in the past but the mention of algebra made it sound more modern. As the book continued on, the time and place factor faded greatly and really doesn't have much impact on the story itself. The romance portion of the book is pretty light although it does include Marea's involvement with both sexes. I wish that Marea had more time to spend and learn about the Ornis Tribe as the little she did learn was a little unsatisfying after all that time.

"Discoveries, no matter what they are, can bring uncertainty because they can change everything."

Marea had always been special to the ladies of the whorehouse in which she is kept hidden. After keeping herself hidden in every way from outsiders she has a hard time letting anyone in and truly loving who she really is. Only when Marea leaves the only life she's ever known in search of her history does she begin to find her true self. The supporting characters in Feathertide are lovingly done and they each help Marea in some fashion (even if she doesn't immediately realize it). My favorite character that I would love to know more about was Elver, specifically her time before she found herself in the City of Murmurs.

"Desire is the sea. Love is the rock, solid, strong and defiant. Desire rushes to embrace you, and shower you with affection, wrapping itself around you and filling every crevice. But it is a disguise. With every touch desire reduces you, gouging out your surface, eroding your senses until you crumble; slowly sinking out of sight. We reshaped each other as lovers often do and then watched each other was away, until there was nothing left, but sediment. Desire has no boundaries, but it is love that sets them straight. Desire is ruinous; love is the ruin left behind.

The ending of the book could be cracked open towards a sequel, if that happens, I would 100% read it. I would highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy fantasy and young adult fantasy novels that feature slow pacing but beautiful world-building. I would like to extend a huge thank you to Beth Cartwright, Del Rey, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this beautifully crafted debut - all opinions are my own.

I honestly don't know where to begin with a review for this one as it was a stunning story, simply beautiful full of love and discovery.

The first thing to catch my eye about this book was the gorgeous colours of the cover and then once I'd read the blurb I couldn't wait to read it.

A book full of characters that make your heart soar and simultaneously fill you with sadness. This story is the peeling back of layers to leave behind the ugliness and revel in the beauty. I loved this book from the first few chapters and was desperate to see how the story of Marea would unravel.

Kept a secret for her entire childhood, this story is focused on how Marea moves forward to create her own destiny and discover more about where she came from and who she really is.

An emotional read full of highs and lows that take you on a wonderful journey, where you discover wonderful islands and people who inhabit them. This is a book that brings that special ingredient that I love to discover in a book and I highly recommend adding it to your TBR pile.

Feathertide is a wonderful fantasy/mystery written in poetic language. The protagonist Marea‘s journey of (self-)discovery, of finding acceptance and longing for freedom is simply beautiful (and sometimes sad) to read. Feathertide is a great coming-of-age book that will grip you slowly but won’t let you go once you are drawn in. It is full of magic and whimsy and beauty and will sweep any fantasy fan away with its stunning prose.

Maréa was born in a whorehouse to single mum Leàman but not knowing who her father was. In truth even her mother didn't know his name, but he was her true love. Maréa knew she was different - she had feathers growing from her back, and she was kept hidden in the whorehouse by her mother and the other ladies there, and only taken out once a year with her feathers well hidden.

When Maréa is 17, she decides to visit The City of Murmurs - the last place her mother saw her father - to try and find him and to see where she fits in. This started the biggest adventure of her life for a girl who had barely left the building she was born in.

I absolutely loved this book. It reminded me of The Night Circus in as much as it is a fantasy set in a fantasy land of bird people and mermaids, and people with the powers of prophecy. It is beautifully written, and extremely evocative of a bygone era, but more magical and exciting. I loved it and was sad when I finished.

Feathertide is a lyrically coming of age novel set in a whimsical world of mermaids and bird men. Following a young girl trying to unlock the secrets of her past and forge her path for the future I would recommend it for fans for Erin Morgenstern and Laini Taylor.

The writing style is definitely the book's greatest strength, it is poetic and expressive and overall a joy to be wrapped up in. It really sucks you into this world you become desperate to become a part of. It has originality in what could be described as a very saturated market.

The plot is simplistic however I do feel as though a younger audience may enjoy it. It is not detrimental but does miss the multifaceted layers that I could have hoped for. Similarly, the main character has a clear goal and that is her purpose in this book.

Overall it is a fun time with great description and full of emotion.

Overall I would rate this book a 3.5 stars.

Feathertide by Beth Cartwright

This story follows Marea, a girl born with feathers, on her journey to find out who she really is, to discover the multifacted nature of love and to find her place in the world.

Although dearly loved, Marea is hidden away from the outside world for her own protection. Raised in a whorehouse her mother and the whores dote on her and reassure her that her feathers are a beautiful gift.
The little exposure she has to the oustide world however, convinces her that her difference is something to be ashamed of, something to hide and that could potetntially bring her into danger.

She can only hide away for so long and eventually, as a young woman, she must undertake a journey to discover who she is and where she might really fit into the world.
Her journey takes her to the City of Murmurs and exposes her to a new world, one where her feathers need not be something to hide. She encounters the wonder and heartbreak of first love, the conflict of having feelings for two people at once and the heartbreak of impossible decisions.

The book is beautifully and lyrically written. It deals with physical difference and bisexual representation.
It's a story of self-discovery, friendhsip and love in all its forms, set against a subtly fantastical background.

For anyone who enjoys Kirsty Logan and fairytale re-writings, this would be an enjoyable read.

Thoroughly enjoyed this fantasy. It felt like a rite of passage for our main character and it was tough going for her to face her demons and battle her way through. Beautifully written, I could feel her anguish and her difficulty in the choices she had to make. Loved the characters she met along the way and the way the ending is left with the hope of a next instalment. A delightful read

This is a slow burning fairy tale about a girl who was born in a whorehouse on a luminous starry night.  Throughout her childhood Marea has to grow up in the cellar of the whorehouse where she is supposed to stay, out of sight, all of the time apart from one day a year, her birthday, when she is allowed to venture out in to town with her mother, so long as she is in disguise.  Marea has always been told she is too beautiful to be seen by other people, due to her bright orange hair and the golden feathers that grow on her shoulders and back.  Then one day on one of her rare visits to town Marea slips away from her mother.  What Marea discovers that day leads her to believe that there may be other reasons why she has been kept in the cellar for all her life.  Eventually Marea comes to an age when her mother can no longer force her to stay hidden away, and Marea sets off on a voyage to find her long lost father, from whom she inherited her golden curls and feathers.
This is a charming coming of age story with some wonderful world building and unforgettable characters.  However, for me it reads more like a young adult book and not the more adult story I was expecting, despite the frequent reminders that Marea was born in a 'whorehouse', her mother was a 'whore' and she was brought up with 'whores'.  And my goodness the constant similes throughout the story were very, very distracting.
Having said that, the overall story is a lovely, magical fairy tale about love and loss.  It is without doubt a beautifully written book (apart from the simile overload) that I would happily recommend to other readers. 3.5 stars

I tried really hard to like this book but I couldn't get into it. The writing was so good, and normally I would love a book like this, with this description. However, in this instance i do not think there was much of a plot or character growth or anything really. Nothing much happens. Her big thing is to find her dad to find herself but to me nothing changed much after she found her dad. I also think the romance with was just so random and unnecessary.

I'll start with the things I liked about this book - which was mostly the ideas. I thought that some of the elements of this book were very cool. I liked the idea of the City of Murmurs, I thought that the mermaid element was nicely done and I appreciated that the 'freak show' ship wasn't the entire book (I had a moment of fear that this was a circus book masquerading as something else but that wasn't the case). 

There are a lot of good ideas in this story, sadly for me they never coalesced into enough of a coherent whole for me to enjoy the reading experience. 

It took me a long while to get into reading this book, I think in part because it has quite a slow start, it takes a while to get from the 'normal' into the 'something changed' portion of the story and I'm not sure how much added benefit you get from experiencing Marea's childhood in such detail. I think a quicker more montage-esque sequence would have allowed for more exploration of the magical aspects of the story? I think you do need that backstory to inform the character but it meant that I wasn't excited to pick up the book and it felt like a stilted beginning. 

I didn't mind Marea's character, though, as will become clear as this review goes on, I don't think I was able to fully understand why she does some of the things she did because of how hard I found it to engage with the story. I liked how her understanding built across the length of the book and while it isn't an amazing character growth (she feels very young for almost the whole book where I would have maybe liked to see more maturity from her in later chapters) it is character growth nonetheless and in such a story that is important. I thought her self-love journey in the story was also good, and I appreciated that it took place slowly and in stages - it felt much more realistic than some other narratives I have read where it just takes one moment of 'no wait I am great' and suddenly characters who previously hated themselves are blithely stripping off like it's no big deal.

I am not one to shy away from flowery writing - quite often I really enjoy some intense descriptive prose. But something about this text felt inaccessible to me like it was too aware of the sentences to allow me to fully fall through the page and forget this was a book. I never like a book where it feels as though each sentence has had someone agonise over it - it makes for a book that not only doesn't flow well but in this case, the narrative felt like it was shouting 'don't you think this was a great sentence?!' at me, rather than letting me just experience the writing. In a book like this, it feels as though you're meant to fall into this weird and wonderful world but when held back by the writing in this way I found I just couldn't enjoy it!

The WLW storyline was appreciated in the sense that I will always like a book that has some LGBTQIA+ element to it. I also thought it was interesting to have a relationship where the expectations are spelled out from the start - not enough casual relationships where the casual nature is communicated exist in fiction - but I didn't find myself rooting for either of the romantic entanglements mostly because I never felt as though I was fully in the story.

This book, this world, has a lot of elements and, as I said at the start, I'm not sure all of them ever came together in such a way that the story felt coherent. Whether that was my inability to focus on the story or not, it never felt like I was reading something complete - instead, I was left with the impression of a number of ideas and a vague idea of what the story had been. 

This was a disappointing read for me for a number of reasons, but I will say that I found the last few pages, the epilogue to be very satisfying - that was probably my favourite part of the whole book and did give me hope that perhaps this is a book that will appeal to those who appreciate a more loosely woven story. While I would prefer some more work done on worldbuilding and making sure that we understand the layout and structure of The City of Murmurs there are some good elements there that could be pulled out into something really great. 

This book wasn't for me personally, I think it could have done with a bit of a tighter focus but the text was such that I couldn't access the story in the way I wanted to. 

My rating: 2/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley - all opinions are my own. 

Feathertide publishes July 30th!

Genre: Fantasy, Magical Realism
Published: Del Rey Publishing, July 2020
Rating: 4/5 stars

“A place full of memories can never be completely empty”


A strange baby-girl is born in a whorehouse, covered in the feathers of a bird. Her father is a mystery, that came from the mist and worshiped the sky.
Growing up in the whorehouse, away from the prying eyes of strangers on her feathers, Marea has always felt a deep feeling of displacement: she doesn’t belong here. On her eighteenth birthday she leaves her sheltered life behind and sets off to the distant City of Murmurs, hoping to track down her father and the answers she’s looking for.

Most of my anticipated releases for a new year are the ones by authors that I’ve read and loved before, but every now and then a debut comes by with a premise and set-up that intrigues me so that I anticipate it even more than my favourite authors new release. Feathertide was an example of such a debut. I actually made a little jump of joy when my request for an ARC got excepted by publisher Del Rey. Teetering between magical realism and fantasy, centring around a coming of age story in a mysterious and atmospheric Venetian inspired city ánd being recommended for fans of Erin Morgenstern and Katherine Arden: this was going to be great! And it was.

As much as I think the “for fans of”-comparison often does a disservice to both parties (especially when comparing debuts to works by very celebrated authors), I can see where the publishers were coming from. Feathertide has many of the same selling-points as the works of the aforementioned authors: stunning writing style, a rich and vivid setting and an atmosphere fogged in magic. It’s the kind of worldbuilding where, even if not everything is explained in detail to you, you can feel the depth of the world the author created behind it.
Where the City of Murmurs is a beautiful set-piece that feels almost like a character, the characters that inhabit it conversely feel more like set-pieces themselves. They lack depth, and although it fits the “modern-fairy-tale”-style, I often found myself wanting to know a bit more about them, outside their main quirk and role in the plot. I’m honestly not sure if that was a bad thing, as the only reason I wanted to know so much more was because they were so incredibly interesting in set-up.

Whether you will enjoy Feathertide largely depends on if you typically enjoy this genre. If you don’t like these kind of modern fairy tales, hate magical realism or need a fast paced plot to keep you interested: this book probably won’t convince you otherwise, as it’s not a ground-breaker in its genre. If you, like me, do love this type of book, are willing to get lost in the atmosphere and don’t mind the slower pace: Feathertide is one you shouldn’t pass up.
Personally, I loved my time with Feathertide and I look forward to more by the author. I would also very much welcome a return to this world, as I feel there is so much more beauty to be explored here.

I feel like I don't know what I have read. In one way it was beautifully written but in another there was too much purple prose. The book was very slow and I started skimming at one point.

Leman's daughter, Marea, is different, the product of a one night stand in the City of Murmurs and brought up in secret in a whorehouse.

Marea is protected from the world by the whores she lives with, and is taught from an early age to keep herself out of sight and covered when out in public due to her having inherited from her father his feathers, and keeping her hair cut short.

As she grows older she as we all do becomes more curious about the world she came from, and discovers that she could get to the place her mother concieved her and from there seek her father.

In the City she remains wary, not uncovering herself to show off her feathers and growing hair, she meets and falls in love with a mermaid and a student.

I read more fantasy than I realise, and this one is hard to peg but I'd put it as a strong older YA/adult book due to its themes of burgeoning love - between Marea and the female mermaid and male student, though it isn't explicit, and the frequency of references to the whores and whorehouse.

At times the pacing felt slow but wasn't too slow to remain enjoyable for the most part.

If you enjoy nicely nuanced language - read this book.

If you enjoy nicely nuanced almost worlds - read this book.

If you enjoy nicely nuanced other-world characters - read this book.

Summary - read this book as it is a total delight!