I tend to have mixed feelings about modern fairytales. Having grown up on the Grimm Brothers variety, I find that many of the ones I read miss the mark; they are too clean, too neat, with packaged morals and little subtlety. Raised by Eva Adderley avoids these pitfalls and is truly wonderful adult modern fantasy.
Raised follows Sadie Masonson shortly after her father, Arthur, has died. He abandoned her in their home village of the Liminal Place when he moved into the forest to live with a colony of bears—bears that eventually killed and ate him. Her difficulty processing their complex relationship is only heightened by the arrival of the wolf woman Ylfa, mourning the death of her own mother, and the sudden integration of Sadie’s girlfriend into her magical world.
