By Graham Joyce

Personal notes:  I may have found a new favorite author with this book.  I loved the gritty feel that this story has – the feel of this story is how I picture Tara’s description of viewing this reality after being away.  I loved the characters – especially Ritchie.  (Who doesn’t love a musician?)  I also loved reading the various characters’ perspectives.  And I do still wonder who the narrator of the story is.  I also loved how Jack’s learning story is deeply embedded within the larger story and how nothing is explained.  How can one truly explain the other?  Let’s just leave it at not allowing strangers to pick cherry blossoms from one’s trees.

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Doubleday, 2012

Genre: Fantasy, contemporary fantasy, faerie tale

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780385535786

Audience: Adult

Number of pages: 310 (incl. Author’s Note)

Setting: Outwoods, CentralEngland

Time period: Contemporary with some periods in the past

Plot summary: When Tara Martin reappears on her parent’s doorsteps twenty years after she disappeared, she doesn’t look a day older.  Everyone has questions and many are not happy with the answers.

Subject headings:

From Pima County Public Library:

Missing persons — Fiction.

Memory — Fiction.

Fairy tales — Fiction.

Fantasy fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Similar works:

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Other: Diversity – musician, teens, psychiatrist, fae

Graham Joyce’s website