Sunyi Dean

‘I devoured this’ V.E. Schwab A gorgeous new fantasy horror – a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart... Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, and Let the Right One In

The Book Eaters

Lauren

"None of us are truly good," the vicar said, at last. He put a hand on her shoulder, so gently, so kindly, and she almost threw up on the spot. "All we can do is live by the light we are given.”

Really, it was pointless to apologize. Victims didn't want your sorry-so- sorrys when you were hurting them, they wanted you to stop. 

For here was the thing that no fairy tale would ever admit, but that she understood in that moment: love was not inherently good. 

Certainly, it could inspire goodness. She didn't argue that. Poets would tell you that love was electricity in your veins that could light a room. That it was a river in your soul to lift you up and carry you away, or a fire inside the heart to keep you warm. Yet electricity could also fry, rivers could drown, and fires could burn; love could be destructive. Punishingly, fatally destructive.

“Our childhood books always ended in marriage and children. Women are taught not to envision life beyond those bounds, and men are taught to enforce those bounds. We grow up in a cultivated darkness and don't even realize we're blind.”

"That's what fairy tales do to us," Devon said, rueful. "If we grow up think- ing that we're princesses and someone else will rescue us, then we spend our lives waiting for that rescue and never trying to escape ourselves."

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