“She is obsessed, she is compelled, she is called. She is a selkie, and Ash has her skin. It’s infuriating and delicious and easy and challenging and tumultuous and she is hungry for more.”
★★★★
Titan Books | 2023
Filed Under: The cottagecore has rotted.
This is a sapphic horror novel – two women, both equally giving off bad vibes in very different ways – fall in love after meeting at a farmer’s market.
It sounds just precious, doesn’t it?
Side note: My husband was going to propose to me at a farmer’s market. And then, not knowing his plan, I managed to say something about public proposals being my worst nightmare. So he changed his plan to something more intimate. Anyway…
Don’t get too caught up in the meet-cute of this novel, because everything else is a fucking insecure, anxiety-ridden hellscape of awkwardness and red flags and infatuation, and then like some gross shit I won’t get into because it’s all a big fucked up spoiler.
And trust me when I say, you do not want this to be spoiled for you.
Ash is a mysterious waif who runs an apothecary stall at the weekend farmer’s market, where she sells decadent cupcakes, homemade soaps and lotions, candles, pottery and plants… and whatever else off-grid no-waste purists make. Shoes made out of bark? Hats made out of grass? I saw that on Naked and Afraid.
Rosemary has a PhD, is a literature professor and just got out of a 3-year relationship with a shitty guy. She sees herself as Ash’s opposite, and when they meet, there are immediate sparks and Ro finds herself obsessing over this ethereal beauty who is everything she’s not.
The bulk of this novella is Ro figuring out how she’s feeling and giving into her infatuation with Ash while trying to navigate the unreasonable boundaries that Ash has set in place. As their relationship develops, the dark side of Ash’s personality reveals itself in small glimpses between the cracks in her sunshine-y grass-hat facade. It’s only ever enough to suggest something is a little… off… but the deeper they get into their blossoming relationship, the more twisted things become.
And that’s probably why the ending had me on the floor.
You get farmers markets, literary references galore, cheating boyfriends, toxic mothers, strict grandmothers, soap, cupcakes that taste like sex, spider plants, pottery, chickens, raccoons who didn’t see it coming, greenhouses, forbidden rooms, craft rooms, abattoirs, infatuation, exploring sexuality, creepers being voyeuristic, cell phone videos, making out on a hike, boundaries, needing privacy, ignoring red flags, being offline, not owning a tv, charcuterie boards, fresh bread, being shot down emotionally, country houses, big porches, unpredictable mood swings, confrontation, blindfolded bathtime, power-disrupting storms, typewriters, poetry, murder, not letting anything go to waste, and secret messages.
Told through impossibly captivating and twisted prose that I have now come to expect from Dawson – like girl, you are WILD – that kind of writing is I thinkkkkk not going to be for everyone. And honestly, it usually doesn’t work for me, but there is just something about the descriptive literary writing combined with the fucking disturbing context that has sucked me in. Much like this edible. I hope this review makes sense.
The story is passionate in every sense of the word but does take its sexy time getting to the horror elements, and because of that, the reading experience was a little uneven for me. I wanted more of the ending and less of the beginning.
But overall, to go from an eager farmer’s market romance to a disturbing off-grid nightmare in full bloom was pretty intense, and made for a super compelling and unique read.
It’s just got so many vibes, it’s unreal.
A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.
Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colours, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…
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