Charlotte Kersten

Year published: 2017

Category: YA horror

CW: Sexual assault, physical assault, self-harm, burning, body horror

Summary: Bethan is the apprentice to a green healer named Drina in a clan of Welsh Romanies. Her life is happy and ordered and modest, as required by Roma custom, except for one thing: Silas, the son of the chieftain, has been secretly harassing her.

One night, Silas and his friends brutally assault Bethan and a half-Roma friend, Martyn. As empty and hopeless as she feels from the attack, she asks Drina to bring Martyn back from death’s door. “There is always a price for this kind of magic,” Drina warns. The way to save him is gruesome. Bethan must collect grisly pieces to fuel the spell: an ear, some hair, an eye, a nose, and fingers.

She gives the boys who assaulted her a chance to come forward and apologize. And when they don’t, she knows exactly where to collect her ingredients to save Martyn.

My thoughts: The story behind this book is quite touching – Monahan was inspired to write it because of her grandmother’s own writings that she never got to flesh out, as well as her Romani heritage. I will say that this is a pretty wild story to dedicate to your grandmother (or maybe Monahan’s grandmother was way cooler with a whole bunch of things than mine were), but I love that background and I think you can sense that underlying motivation in how much heart there is to the story and how integral the grandmother-granddaughter relationship is.

That relationship is, by far, my favorite aspect of the story. Gran is definitely the star of the show- she is fierce and uncompromising, strict and irascible, and despite how grim and unaffectionate she is, it is more than apparent that she loves Bethann an incredible amount and is 100% there for her when she needs her. It’s a beautiful relationship, and we’d all be lucky to have our own Gran.

I also think the book offers an interesting look at Romani culture, especially when it talks about the massive weight of stigma and judgment from outsiders and how that creates a stronger sense of isolationism and self-reliance. There’s also an interesting section about the G slur and how Bethann addresses it when her love interest Martyn uses the word early on out of ignorance. It also looks at some of the complexities of Romani culture like the extreme emphasis on women’s purity; in this case, that value plays a significant role in the story because the main character’s sexual assault and how it impacts her status in the community.

This is largely a rape revenge story, so let me take this opportunity to wax poetic about those. On one hand, I sometimes feel that rape revenge stories aren’t my favorite because they don’t really realistically address the aftermath of trauma and the complexities of healing journeys and what is truly requisite for them – and I just happen to love stories that do those things. But, on the other hand, are those things necessary elements of every story about assault? Sometimes I can shut off the hand-wringing and admit that it can be really satisfying and cathartic to see someone who has been hurt simply fuck shit up for the people who hurt them.

Ultimately, I think, it depends on execution. It’s a mixed bag here for me – for one thing, a lot of what makes rape revenge stories so cathartic is undercut here by the fact that Bethann and Gran are technically just doing it all to save a man (Martyn, who is killed during the assault). I also think its efficacy is slightly undercut by how guilty Bethann feels about what she’s doing. At the same time, it is still really satisfying that she is able to take action into her own hands, make the perpetrators suffer and regain control over the situation as best she can.

A few final notes – parts of the relationship between Bethann and Martyn are very sweet, including how he teaches her to read and helps her sell things in the market and how supportive and respectful he is at the end, but he is also extremely pushy during the start of their relationship, which was more than a little annoying to me. I thought that several aspects of life post-assault were depicted quite well, including Bethann’s complex feelings (and lack thereof, sometimes) and the mixed responses of blame, shunning, awkwardness and support that she receives from her community.