I adored the layering in this story!
What Sommers captures in this novella is both the magical realism aspects of the story and a historical tale. This novella brings the culture, the time period, and human side of this story forward. At times, I thought it verged on pure historical fiction.
Some quotes I adored:
“Sometimes women marry men to make their lives a living, you know?” –Gerda
and
“When I held you in my arms, when my lips were on yours, when I inhaled your scent–for a moment, it felt like the old times.” –Kaj
The Blurb
Sixteen-year old Kaj has to make a trade. A mysterious woman he has never seen before and will never see again offers to make it so that the Red Guard would ignore his friend Gerda while they drag her whole family away to exile. All Kaj has to do is surrender the warmth of his heart.
Will Gerda stick with Kaj after he changes overnight for the worse?
Can the Snow Queen’s curse ever be broken?
What would you give to keep someone you care about alive?
Sky was born to Estonian-Russian parents and for most of her life has lived and worked as a lawyer in Tallinn, Estonia, with brief escapes to Finland and the United Kingdom for work/study and to all but the top and bottom continents in search of her muse. Her debut e-book in 2012 was about ancient goddesses running amock, trying to get their wilted powers back. She then proceeded to indie publishing her own ebooks and paperbacks and found her way from myths and legend via the Angelic Agency to fairytales retold for young adult and adult audiences. So far, Thumbelina has been updated for suspicious adults, a more sinister version of Cinderella was released on 21.12.20 and an adult Red Riding Hood retelling is about to be released on 21.03.21. A Wizard of Oz retelling and several short stories are in the works. All her books are linked by some character or another and she loves making you choose at the end – by letting you pick an ending to read – one for the optimist and a slightly different one for pessimists (well, except in the Cinders-Embers-Ash trilogy because only Douglas Adams could pull off a trilogy in 5 parts). She lives in a house with a small garden with her husband and mostly one, but on occasion plus four kids. No dog.