Lovely Creatures

A gorgeously wrought, dark, and unsettling twist on fairytales where the Devil stalks a storm-whittled landscape, and where Bryony searches for her long-lost sister. It's written as a weave of tales, and Bryski's prose has a magic all its own. A woman finds her sister sleeping in a glass coffin. There's a wolf and swan-maiden, and a man who holds everyone in thrall with his stories. Bryski delves deep in heartache and guilt, love and friendship, and the landscape of the story is tightly intertwined with the people traveling through it. Beautiful, strange, and profoundly moving.

LOVELY CREATURES is gritty, surreal, and spectacularly whimsical novella that interweaves fairytales, deliciously twisted, yet recognizable, in a warped wonderland, unravelling how all the stories and characters are all interconnected by the thread of death.

Bryski explores how death becomes a spectacle, how desire interweaves with grief, about who controls the story of the characters' lives and the difficulties in reclaiming themselves.

I really enjoyed this story! This novella has a unique style that mixes fairytale retelling and dark themes with a dust storm ridden land and a traveling circus act. I enjoyed the prose, as well as how it changed slightly between the different narrators. I also enjoyed how the pov shifted with symbols — it was a unique and fun way to keep the readers on their toes as to who was narrating. The cast of characters was interesting and their stories kept me reading until the end in one go. The story is sad and dark but ultimately bittersweet and wholesome, about grieving and moving on and finding a family of your own. Overall I definitely recommend this quick and enjoyable read! Thank you to NetGalley and Psychopomp for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!