Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness)
In this intricately imagined and lushly written take on Cinderella, a sequel to best-selling St. Crow’s Nameless (2013), it’s not just the prince who’s charming. Almost all the characters are charmers of one sort or another, and here that means they’re talented at producing magical charms, which end up in buildings, doorknobs, clothing, and, of course, shoes. Ellen Sinder, a particularly talented 16-year-old charmer, has a decidedly miserable life: her beloved mother is long dead, her loving father is missing, and she’s stuck living with a truly wicked stepmother—who exploits the teen’s talents for her own business—in her father’s house, where she believes she must stay in order to keep her scholarship to prestigious St. Juno’s Academy. Between the emotional and physical abuse heaped on poor Ellie by her vicious stepmother and the prevalence of powerful magic, this fully developed and compelling alternative world is brimming with intriguing details and intense emotional stakes. For all the complexities, however, St. Crow’s fantasy world is easy to enter, thanks to the combination of classic story elements and contemporary touches to the characters. A finely crafted, stirring riff on a classic. Grades 9-12. --Francisca Goldsmith