A light reading week for me.  I was left without a book after abandoning Valentina by S.E. Lyons nine pages in (it seems really well reviewed but I had issues with the writing style), and ended up in the clearance section of W.H. Smith which is where I stumbled across the book I did manage to read.

Barefoot on the Wind – Zoe Marriott.

A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which is always a good start in and of itself.  Hana lives in an isolated village surrounded by a forest where the trees warn her of a monster.  When her father is taken by the monster, she sets out to find and defeat it.  The magical world that Zoe Marriott created in this book swept me away in the very first pages, and continued to go from strength to strength as things became stranger and stranger.  Hana is also a wonderful creation, a dutiful daughter suffering from depression, she is strong, determined and utterly fierce.  When pushed, she pushes back in all the right ways, and the depiction of the depression she’s been living under for years is really thoughtful and nuanced.  I recommend this to anyone who likes an amazing hero, anyone who likes fantasy, and anyone who likes fairy tales.  So everyone, really 😉