A historical fiction with a side of fantasy. I loved the mix of feminism, agriculture, and industrialism along with the fae. The ending was a bit a slow and I found myself skimming it. Otherwise, this would have been five stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for access to the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill is an interesting and engaging read, covering in the same breath industrialization, early 20th century feminism, opposing sisterhoods and familiar traditions on the verge of death. The book follows two very different sisters, Alaine and Delphine, who, ultimately, will do anything to protect the other.

When Delphine marries a man she thought she knew much better, and embroils herself in his cruel new world of high class and industry, Alaine takes matters into her own hand to try and win her sister back. But deals with the fae are tricky, and soon the fae start asking for things neither sister can afford to lose. Both sisters will have to come together to see that their family is safe, and that the fae return what is rightfully theirs.

I really liked the Fae world in this book, the suffragette backdrop was also interesting, the story was just kind of slow for me. I wish we spent more time in the Fae world.

This was an enjoyable read. I always like books with fairies in it and I think it had a cool twist about how the fae folk were once humans that had bargained or wandered into the fae realm. It was easy to root for Alaine and Delphine in this story. They had a lot of hard things to go up against and who wouldn't want an extra bit of help or a push to have things work out. But also learning that somethings come at too high a cost and then you have to work extra hard to make things right.

It was a sentimental and slightly bittersweet story since the timeline was just as more and more iron railworks and such were going up, and the fairies were losing power and places they could go. I would have loved to go see the orchard up on Prospect Hill and the Linden tree where the first bargain of the family was made.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

This book ended up being different than I expected but in a good way. Alaine and Delphine were well-developed, and flawed characters whose actions kept the plot moving. I enjoyed the world-building and the feeling that I was in the middle of a folk story. This book just satisfied something in me that was looking for a good story that was easy to read. I give this book a solid 4/5 stars.

I recently read WEYWARD and these books reminded me a lot of each other -- both deal with a touch of magic (this one more so than the other, but still), the societal issues women face, and the relationships between women, especially within families. I really loved the characters in this novel. They felt very real -- they were flawed, but I was still rooting for them, and wanted them to come out on top, even while bearing witness to the mistakes they were making. The stakes were high for all of the characters and they felt very believeable. I also just really enjoyed the reading experience!! I loved the magic system and the love that this family had for each other and the land they cared for.

4.5 stars

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review via Netgalley.

This book is a mix of historical fiction and fantasy that sounded intriguing to me fresh off of reading "Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries". My love for that book probably set unfair expectations for this one, but it was not quite what I was hoping for. Set around 1900, this story follows adult sisters Alaine and Delphine, who both get a POV. They've inherited shares of their grandfather's orchard they grew up on, but have very different attitudes about it.

Alaine is dedicated to running the orchard, from the day-to-day operations, to the harvest, to negotiating sales and managing the profits. She even aspires to participate in local politics in order to influence agricultural policies, despite women's lack of autonomy and rights in the time period.

Delphine is about to marry a wealthy man from a nearby town, her lifetime of etiquette training finally paying off and allowing her a chance to leave the farm for a more glamorous lifestyle.

Bargaining with fairies is a long-standing tradition for Alaine and Delphine's family, for things like good luck, nice weather, and fruitful harvests. The existence of fairies is not widely accepted, and is seen more as a religious quirk or folktale than reality.

I was hopeful that there would be more direct interaction with fairies in this story, and perhaps a reimagining of how historical events could have been influenced by magic in this world. Instead, there were a lot of small-town politics, women's suffrage, and farming, but very little magic. Fairies don't appear on the page until around 75% into the book, which is not-so-coincidentally when the story starts to pick up.

The writing was enjoyable and easy to read on a line level, and the magical elements were well-thought-out and interesting. The logistics of fairy bargaining and politics were fun to read about, but I kept waiting for the bargains to become more interesting and less mundane. All in all, I would recommend this book for those interested in early 1900s historical fiction, farming stories, etc. but not as much for people who are hoping for a fantasy-heavy book.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, & the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review of “The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill”.

Fae and fairy mythology are so popular right now, and I love that this book takes those legends back to their roots with bargains, trickery, and mysterious magic.

The protagonists of this story, Alaine and Delphine, are sisters living in turn-of-the-century Indiana. They grew up in an Irish-American family with a long history of making fairy bargains at their family home on Prospect Hill, where the veil is evidently thin. The bargains are all simple and prescriptive: they leave out trinkets in exchange for simple favors. Help with a harvest. Finding a lost shoe. But over generations of hard work and careful bargaining, their family has turned their property into a successful orchard.

Alaine has the run of the family orchard, along with her adorably devoted husband, Jack and their six year old daughter Emily.

Delphine is set to be married into one of the richest, most influential families in the area.

But when things take a turn for the worse, with the farm and with Delphine's marriage, Alaine starts making more risky bargains, breaking rules that her family has maintained for generations and putting everything in jeopardy.

I love the way the lore of this book plays with British and Irish folklore, while also branching out to reference fairylike myths from all over the world, and twisting them all in a new and interesting way. The fairies are equal parts beautiful and terrifying, and altogether impossible to fully understand. Their motivations are complex and well-developed, even as they remain otherworldly.

Delphine and Alaine's relationship (along with some others in the story) shows the blend of love, tension, and devotion that can exist between sisters so vividly, while also exploring themes of maternal love and love for one's spouse. Alaine's husband Jack is officially on my list of all-time best fictional husbands. May we all be lucky enough to find someone that loves us the way Jack loves Alaine.

TL;DR: The setting was lovely, the story was full of love, and the fairy bargains were both magical and scary.

I'd recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction who crave a touch of folklore and magic.

There's something odd, and a little frightening about the woods bordering the lands on Prospect Hill. The land of the Fae borders the human world here, and for years, the farmers on Prospect Hill have made small trades, or bargains, with the Fae to ensure anything from luck in a meeting to a good harvest.

As time passed and life became more mechanized, fewer people believed in the bargains. Alaine and her younger sister Delphine still do, however, though Alaine is the regular maker of bargains with the Fae to ensure the plentiful harvests from the family's orchard every year, while Delphine looks to the possibility of a different life off the farm, in the town of Perry's Landing as the wife of an influential man.

Both sisters are very different. Alaine is down to earth and totally practical, with full responsibility for the family's orchard business. She also decides to run for the position of president of an agricultural society, something welcomed by some of the members, and hated by others. Alaine feels that she can manage everything through hard work, and just the right bargain with the Fae to nudge situations in her favour.

Delphine, on the other hand, is artistic, a bit of a dreamer, and eager to leave her rustic background behind her, and looks forward to becoming a vital part of the Perry's Landing's wealthy set. She still maintains a connection to her Prospect Hill legacy after moving, in that she, too, makes small, regular bargains with the Fae to ensure some small measure of control in her marriage, even before she discovers that her marriage is utterly wrong for her. Delphine's mother-in-law and sister-in-law look down on her farming origins, and her husband sees her as only useful for arranging gatherings for his business and political dealings. Then, Delphine realizes that her husband is actually abusive, which she attempts to conceal from Alaine, which fails.

Alaine decides that a fairy bargain is the way to handle Delphine's situation, and things go predictably wrong. Alaine sees her previous small bargains and desired results as successes, and arrogantly believes she can control the terms of whatever bigger bargains she makes. Things start to go wrong, then something terrible happens, requiring both sisters to reassess their assumptions about themselves, each other, and the bargains they've been blithely making for years.

Rowenna Miller takes her time at the book's outset to lay the groundwork for the sisters' lives and dreams, so that one has a clear idea of what is at stake when Alaine begins relying increasingly on a supernatural fix to all problems. When things begin going off the rails, we feel for both women, and appreciate how complicated and loving their relationship is, thanks to Miller's careful character development. It's what makes this book so engaging. It's also pretty dark in parts; i.e., when Delphine decides to deal with the outcome of a bargain gone bad. We get a harrowing trip into a dead landscape, full of heartless and frightening beings, and get a better understanding of the connection between Prospect Hill and the Fae's world.

This is a richly textured and enchanting book, and well worth the read.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Redhook Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.

The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill is a historical fantasy that, at its core, wrestles with the concepts of individual and collective good. The families of Prospect Hill have been making small bargains with the Fae for generations, placing offerings of silver needles and lace on window sills and in trees in exchange for fair weather and strong harvests. Two sisters, Alaine and Delphine, have been making different types of bargains all of their lives, with Alaine trying to rescue her family's struggling farm and Delphine trying to find a wealthy husband. The safe, tried and true bargains that they have been making all of their lives end up not being enough for either sister, and they decide to try their hand at diving deeper into the world of the Fae and their own family's connection to the Fae of Prospect Hill.
The situations and characters in this novel are frustrating because of how true and relatable they are, even in a world where a woman's place is supposed to have expanded and her options opened up. The novel is feminist not only in its consideration of the individual woman, but in the way that one must make choices on whether to benefit oneself, or to change the circumstances for everyone. Fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries will adore this book, as the tone and plot do follow some rather parallel, if not identical paths.

The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill is a gorgeous, thoughtful, and creative take on folklore, fairies, and family. It's also stressful as hell. There's a general sense of impending doom hanging over the entire book, and for me, that lessened the enjoyment of reading it slightly.

The story hinges on the relationship between sisters Alaine and Delphine. Alaine is ambitious and crafty - within the small world of her hometown and her family's orchard. Delphine dreams of a life away from Prospect Hill and jumps on the first opportunity to get out. Both of them make gambles and both of them pay the price. The push and pull between the sisters, the cycle of conflict, resolution, and love, was wonderfully rendered, really creating the beating heart of this book. The family bonds in general were my favorite part of Fairy Bargains, grounding the otherwise fantastical story.

But this isn't just a story of family. It's also a story of fairies. I'll be honest, fairies and fae stress me out, but since they seem to be everywhere right now, they're hard to avoid. I did enjoy the bargaining culture that the book frames out, the little transactional ways humans and fairies make use of each other. But whenever there's fairies, there's bound to be bad choices, and knowing something terrible was coming made it hard for me to truly enjoy this story. The other shoe was always going to drop, and when it did, I was mostly just resigned and annoyed with the character's choices.

I do think this book succeeds at everything it was trying to do. It just wasn't entirely my cup of tea.

3.75/5

Fairy bargains of prospect hill was a cute wholesome story about two twin sisters who use their family passed down knowledge on bargaining with the Fae for their ambitious needs. Although they are twins they could be nothing more than different, Delphine wants nothing more than to be a good wife for her new husband and his family but finds that nothing she does is good enough. Alaine on the other hand finds herself the new owner of the family farm and will stop at nothing to prove to those around her that a woman is more than capable of running a business. Both sisters use the magic the fae bargains promise and find that they don’t know as much as they thought and nothing good can come from bargaining with the fae. The story was very moving and wholesome, In my case I tend to like most books written about the Fae. There’s an other worldly feeling that enchants the reader while also keeping them in the present. This book focused a lot on the sisterly bond between the characters and what they would each be willing to do for the other. We see some domestic violence and the mentions of the first suffragists movement. Over all the book was an enjoyable read and I would highly recommend.

I liked this book, but I don't think it met its full potential. There are some major feminist plot points (which I'm a huge fan of), and when you include the bargains and trickery of the Fae, there's so much promise of an enchanting story here. But I believe this book could have greatly benefitted from some streamlining from the editors. The book is slow and dragged down with so much unnecessary detail. The world building and character development were both great - but almost too great. I feel like we got too much exposition about the sisters and the orchard, but it wasn't always in a way that moved the plot forward.

Also, I wanted the ending to go a little differently. I can't get into this without spoiling, but we spend so much of the book with Delphine lamenting how she doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere. And I'm not sure the place where she ended up really addressed that in a satisfactory way. I would have liked for her character arc to go a different way, but that's just personal preference.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for the copy in exchange for my honest review.

It’s a strange mix, isn’t it? Agriculture, industrialization, feminism, and the Fae.

At least, it struck ME as an odd combo when I started reading Rowenna Miller’s latest novel, "The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill." Set in the early 1900s, it’s the story of Alaine and Delphine, two sisters who, while growing up on Prospect Hill, learn the way of bargaining with the Fae. Now grown, and as farms make way for factories and the women’s suffrage movement gains ground, the sisters hold onto the old ways of fairy bargaining, using it to improve their lives in small ways. Until Delphine finds that she needs to escape her marriage and a much larger bargain is needed, and the sisters are forced to pay a price that neither is willing to pay.

So yes, farming and feminism and faeries (That’s a lot of Fs!) at first seemed out of sorts. But as the pages turned and I delved deeper into the story, Miller won me over with the history and fairy tale aura of it all. My initial reservations disappeared like … well, like magic. (Ms. Miller, do I smell a fairy bargain?)

"The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill" truly is an enchanting historical fantasy and a powerful tale of sisterhood. I was taken with Alaine and Delphine both and loved the way Miller weaves fairy folk magic into history. Her writing is lovely, too, and only served to cast me further under her spell.

The story does require a bit of patience, however, as it is slow to take off. But stay with it – your perseverance will be richly rewarded. I promise you this.


My sincerest appreciation to Rowenna Miller, Redhook Books, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

This was a slow read for me until the last 15% of the book. While the first 65% was good I was almost trying to just figure out the point of the story. I could guess where it was going but I was unsure.
When the climatic part finally happens I could see it coming, there was no twist. I wish the book focused more on the fairy land than the leading up to the fairy land.

I really enjoyed this historical fae-based fantasy. The story follows two sisters from one of the oldest families on Prospect Hill. Decades ago their grandfather made a bargain with a fairy and this family land and orchard is the product of that bargain. It's a well-known family tradition to learn and forge fairy bargains - bargains for lost items, good weather, or good harvest. There have been many warnings as the girls have grown up too. The women's suffrage movement is happening currently too. One sister is trying to make moves for her community and lead the agricultural society all while doing anything and everything to save her family's farm. The other sister, recently married, realizes that her husband is married to his work and apparently, she cannot do anything right in his eyes or his families. She's the country bumpkin who should find a hobby and raise babies. She's stifled and hasn't made many friends in her new town and longs for home. After an event she returns home to the farm and her sister is fuming. New fairy deals are made and the sisters have forgotten a very important rule in the trade of fairy bargains. Words matter.

The second half of the book we are transported beyond the veil into the fae's world. One sister's mission has her at a disadvantage as she must quickly learn how to maneuver this new political scene while keeping her mind. She only has so much time on this side and failure isn’t an option. She's willing to bargain anything to get what she wants back, even if that means sacrificing herself.

I didn't want this book to end! I would really love to read more stories about the other families on Prospect Hill. What kind of bargains have they traded to make their mark on Prospect Hill?!

This book was a struggle for me, and I'm not exactly sure why. This seemed perfect and I was so excited for it. Fairies and vengeance? Sign me up! The writing was good but it was very slow. For example, there was a wedding and there were chapters and chapters leading up to it, but not a lot about the wedding itself. It seemed to descriptive and yet I didn't seem to learn much about the main characters beyond a surface level.

Also, there was a lot to unpack and I wasn't sure if it was city v country, modern v oldentimes, men v women, progress v stagnation... So many themes in this book.

Delphine and Alaine were stereotypical and not very original. I wanted to poke Alaine in the forehead and tell her to knock it off. Leave the nice fairies alone. We all knew what was coming.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read this e-arc.

I’ve said it dozens of times before: You have to be a truly exceptional writer to get away with a book that includes absolutely nothing we haven’t seen before, lest the reader be left feeling like they’ve just wasted their time re-reading several books they have already read.

Unfortunately such is the case here. Fairy fantasies aren’t exactly rare, yet we see many authors find a way to put their own spin on the standard tropes of the subgenre. Miller is fine as a writer, but given that there’s nothing at all here that is new to the topic, she would have had to be unusually exceptional to make up for the lack of originality.

The book drags a lot and is slow even by non action driven Fantasy standards, has little atmosphere, and hauls us along on the same disappointing journey into Faerie that we’ve been on many times before.

And while I liked Alaine and some of the secondary characters well enough, I was surprised to see someone like Delphine feature so prominently, particularly as a POV character. Though she gets braver (and I suppose more likable) in the end, as narrative dictates she must, she’s still a weak character with little to no appeal to a modern female reader. I’m always happy to see characters grow and evolve, but there has to be some appeal there to start with.

Loads to choose from in the fairy fantasy subgenre. Skip this one and pick one of the many other excellent novels on the topic.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill
by Rowenna Miller
Pub Date: 28 Mar 2023

This is a lovely, but dark fairytale with a bit of a historical feel talking about women suffrage. The first half is kind of slow going, but the story does pick up.

What would you do for something you really want or for someone you love. That is the history of a family who over the years have made bargains with the fae. Now it is sisters Delphine and Alaine who get caught up in making bargains...some small and some bigger favors with serious consequences.

3.5 stars