Mary S at the Library

One of my favorite fantasy series to read is the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden. The first book, The Bear and the Nightingale was the first book I read by this author and I was hooked almost immediately! It follows young Vasya, a Russian girl who is struggling to navigate her belief in the fairy tales her nurse would tell her and becoming a woman who is soon to be married to a man of her father’s choosing. She knows the spirits that guard her home and the forest surrounding her village are real but everyone sees her as a child refusing to grow up. I struggled a bit in the first chapter or two getting used to some of the Russian names and words but then I couldn’t put the book down. This was a nice change of pace from the fairy tales I grew up reading over and over again. Vasya became a character I rooted for, cried with and even sometimes felt ashamed of. Following her journey starting with this book and through the next two was something I wish I could experience for the first time again!