A book about gravediggers in a creepy month.... yes please. I got this in my September 2019 Owlcrate box and was super excited for it and had it on my TBR for both Octobers and never got around to it. I put it in for a Magic Kingdom prompt for the Magical Hopathon this month and I got done with it in 3 days. It was such a quick read. I read over 100 pages in one day and wanted to keep reading.
I really enjoyed the culture, folklore and the use of love spoons. I have wanted my own love spoon for a long time and just reading about it was one of my favorite parts. Especially since it plays a major role in this story. When I first started reading, I thought maybe the book was set is Ireland because of the names and it reminding me of the Gaelic language. But it is actually Welsh.
We follow Aderyn or Ryn who is a young gravedigger trying to take care of her siblings after her mother's death and her father's disappearance. She starts noticing rising dead or The Bone Houses. She has believed the stories that she was told in childhood that they can't cross iron and they will never leave the forest. The bone houses start appearing more frequently and eventually swarm her village. Ryn also gets a job as a guide for a future mapmaker and she takes him into the mountains for more personal reasons to him.
Ryn takes care of her younger siblings and is trying to stay out of the workhouses. She is being denied her father's payment as a scout because he didn't finish the job due to disappearing. When he left, he gave Ryn half of a broken love spoon and this damn love spoon made me bawl like a baby.
The mapmaker Ellis also learns of his past and his endgame was fucking heartbreaking. I was creeped out by the bone houses appearing out of no where when they attacked. But I did not expect to cry as much as I did. I think being a parent played a major part in why I was crying. I understood the love that the parents had in the book and it was very relatable.
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