The Grace of Wild Things

The Grace of Wild Things 

By Heather Fawcett 

Published February 14, 2023

368 pages 

My review: four out of five stars 

Read for my March 2023 Reading challenge, prompt 6: surrounded by Wilderness: takes place in, ends up in, on the cover, is about. This one starts out with a girl seemingly lost in the woods and then takes place mainly in a witch's cabin in that woods. 

An inventive and fantastical reimagining of Anne of Green Gables—with magic and witches!—that explores found family, loss, and the power of a girl's imagination, from the acclaimed author of The Language of Ghosts and The School Between Winter and Fairyland. Perfect for readers who loved The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Serafina and the Black Cloak.

Grace has never been good at anything except magic—not that anyone believes her.

While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.

But the witch is that bad—she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them.

But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this book! Although I received a copy of this e-book in exchange for my review, all opinions remain my own.

This book is not what I was expecting and I'm glad. Full disclosure, I've never read Anne of Green Gables, so I don't have that to compare it to. This is said to be a reimaging of Anne, but I couldn't even tell you if it was close lol. Grace is an orphan, but she doesn't think she ever has a chance at being adopted. Not with her magic ability. So, she runs away from the orphanage to find the witch to see if she can live there, learn to be a witch from her. The reluctant witch makes a deal with Grace, learn all 100 and 1/2 spells in her grimoire, and she will train her.

This turns out to be much more than just learning and performing spells for Grace though. I loved watching her make friends in the nearby town, figure out how to use her magic, basically without the help of the witch (or anyone else for that matter) and figure out how she's going to get through this grimoire.

I loved the way this story ended. Not at all what I expected, but perfect for this tale. Overall, this book gets a solid four stars for me. There were parts that felt a little bit long, but in the end, it did tie in quite well. The only concern I would have with younger children reading this is, if they have an overactive imagination (like I did) they may have bad dreams because of some of the magic and interactions between the witch and Grace. There wasn't anything terrible, but it does lead my active mind down its own little road.