Reading: The Seventh Bride

T. Kingfisher's The Seventh Bride is a fairy-tale-inspired fantasy - Bluebeard and The Robber Bridegroom are the most obvious influences - rather than a straightforward fairytale retelling. It tells the story of Rhea, a miller's daughter who is unwillingly betrothed to the mysterious and rather sinister Lord Crevan, and what happens when she visits his house in the remote woods and finds that he has been married six times before.

I liked this a lot; it's darkly creepy, but with a quirky humour that I enjoyed. Rhea is a wonderfully down-to-earth heroine and I enjoyed her interaction with the other wives, and the way the novel does make a more serious point about the intersection of economic inequality and consent. I was also pleased to note that it was a fairytale whose central characters are mostly explicitly described as not being white, and while I may be reading too much into my headcanon of a f/f pairing at the end I rather hope I'm not.