soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2017-12-21 06:45 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2017-12-21 06:45 pm
Plain Kate, by Erin Bow
WELL this is a book that gave me a lot of feelings. I read the first half the book, had to set it down because I didn't have the time to finish it in one sitting, and then it took a while to convince myself to pick it back up again to finish it because it was so HARROWING and I didn't know if I could take it.
And it did indeed continue to be harrowing, and I cried a bunch at the end, but it was also really really good.
It's a book about dealing with grief and also about dealing with being seen as strange/other/outcast/dangerous. Set in an alternate world, it's the story of a girl named Plain Kate who is a woodcarver but not guild-sanctioned, whose father died recently, and who is considered to be probably a witch by other people who see her as dangerous as a result.
She flees her village, and the rest of the book is a road trip of trying to survive, trying to find a place she can belong, and trying to stop someone else who actually IS a witch and actually DOES want to murder a whole bunch of people.
She succeeds in the end at all these goals, but not before a bunch of people do die, and it's all a lot more dark than you usually expect younger-end-of-YA books to be. And a lot more ethically nuanced too.
And it did indeed continue to be harrowing, and I cried a bunch at the end, but it was also really really good.
It's a book about dealing with grief and also about dealing with being seen as strange/other/outcast/dangerous. Set in an alternate world, it's the story of a girl named Plain Kate who is a woodcarver but not guild-sanctioned, whose father died recently, and who is considered to be probably a witch by other people who see her as dangerous as a result.
She flees her village, and the rest of the book is a road trip of trying to survive, trying to find a place she can belong, and trying to stop someone else who actually IS a witch and actually DOES want to murder a whole bunch of people.
She succeeds in the end at all these goals, but not before a bunch of people do die, and it's all a lot more dark than you usually expect younger-end-of-YA books to be. And a lot more ethically nuanced too.