There’s something so intoxicating about the blend of folklore, longing, and the untamed wild, and I was utterly spellbound from start to finish.

I was so incredibly lucky to receive an ARC of this from Net Galley and I don’t think I’ve ever squealed louder at an email, so thank you very much to Knopf and Pantheon for letting me read this piece of art early.

The day that I rate an Erin A Craig book lower than 5 stars, please assume I am no longer me. Everything she has ever written is marvelous and A Land So Wide is no different. Her adult debut had everything I love about her writing, beautifully eerie prose, the ache of a longing love, and above all else a mysterious dark magic.

A Land So Wide takes us to Mistaken, where a colony of people live behind the Warding Stones that protect them from the ravenous Bright-Eyeds, ready to pounce on anyone out after dark. Greer Mackenzie is faithful to the Benevolence, the makers of the stones, and yet she yearns to document the world beyond
their gift.
I have to say- I loved Greer Mackenzie. She was so determined to do what she knew was right and ultimately sure of herself and who she wanted to be. She was not afraid to say what she thought, even in a setting historically where what women think is undervalued. She used her strengths to help her community and pursue the man she loved without thinking about it.
When the man she is to marry, Ellis, disappears past the stones she stops at nothing to find him, and finds out so much about the world she grew up in because of her journey.

I would read this again and again without being bored (and I’m going to when I get my physical copy in September). It just grips you and pulls you in. I savored every single word in these pages and dreaded it being over, but it really, truly was everything I could ask for.