Eve's Fan Garden

In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Summary taken from the author’s website.

When I purchased Ash by Malinda Lo I knew very little about it other than it was a retelling of Cinderella with a twist.  I knew the twist to be that the main character, Ash falls in love with another girl.  While the simple description of the book would be to say that it is a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, I feel that in all honesty that is just a small part of what Ash is about.

In the book the main character Aisling (pronounced Ashling), or Ash for short, is mourning the loss of her mother who dies in the very beginning of the novel when Ash is 12 years old.  Her father soon remarries a woman who has two daughters of her own, and does not have much love for Ash.  When Ash’s father becomes ill and then dies Ash is left to the care of her stepmother who forces Ash to be her servant in order to repay her father’s debts.

The book spans about 5 years, from the time Ash is 12 till she is 18.  During this time she has only one friend, a fairy named Sidhean (pronounced Sheen), until she meets the King’s huntress.  A girl named Kaisa (pronounced Kai) whom I imagine is close to Ash’s age.

The romance that grows between Kaisa and Ash is quite sweet really.  After the sad life that Ash has lead up to when she meets the huntress, to see her come alive again and experience the feelings of love and worthiness that she has missed for so many years just make this a wonderful story to read.  I won’t give away any details that are not given in the description from the author’s site, but I will say that I did enjoy this story.  While the writing style was not always my favorite– some of the descriptions were quite telling as opposed to showing– I found that I did not get hung up on that for long and was swept up into the story from the moment I picked it up till the moment I set it down.  I would give this around 3.5 out of 5 stars.

A companion novel called Huntress will be coming out from Little, Brown  Books for Young Readers in spring of 2011, I look forward to reading this as the huntress was a very intriguing character.

To read an excerpt of Ash, please go HERE.

~Georgia