"Meadowsweet" review

Overview

Title: Meadowsweet

Author: C.J. Milbrandt

Subgenre: Slice of life, comfort read

2021 Bingo squares: Found family, Comfort, Self published

Recommend: Yes, with the caveat that the comforting story is based on a really depressing premise

Stars: 4/5

Review

Thanks to the author for sending me a copy of this book to review in anticipation of the audiobook’s release on March 8! I’ve kept my review as unbiased as possible.

Meadowsweet is, on the surface, a charming slice-of-life novel about a young boy who goes to live with a distracted sculptor in a magical mountain where the sculptures come to life. The boy lacks a father figure, the sculptor lacks a family (though he has a well-meaning-if-a-bit-scary brother-in-law who visits for about half the novel), and the two of them adopt each other over the course of some exploration, picnics, and a scary thunderstorm while preparing for the winter.

The descriptions of the stone that wakes up and the statues that come to life are just lovely - my favorite is the stone that you have to sing to in order to wake it up, but it doesn’t mind how off key you are. And while the sculptor isn’t deliberately written as autistic (I asked the author), he could have been, finding himself engrossed in his art just a little too much, and not quite knowing how to interact with people around him. Even if unintentional I found it nice representation, and his social awkwardness was sweet. In true slice-of-life fashion, very little happens, but very little needs to happen - probably the most upsetting thing to occur is that Tupper gets a cold.

You may have picked up from my first paragraph that there’s a but to all this, though, and there is: But…if you stop for a moment and don’t take the whole situation for granted (to be fair, usually a bad idea in fantasy novel settings), literally everything about the characters' situation is totally miserable. Freydolf, the sculptor, was disowned by his parents in the prologue. Tupper is taken away from his home to be Freydolf’s servant…at the age of ten…because his family needs the money. Everyone in Tupper’s village (race: Flox) is terrified of Freydolf because of his race (Pred) and have always been for as long as Freydolf has lived in this mountain. So Freydolf is miserably lonely, all the Flox are scared, Tupper is a terrified ten-year-old basically stolen from his home, and this is somehow worse than Beauty and the Beast.

Anyway….if you can get past all that and just not think about the really depressing premise at all (which, let’s be honest, is 95% of fantasy novels so I can give it a pass), Meadowsweet is a very cute slice-of-life and a great comfort read. Just, maybe skip the prologue and start with chapter 1 if you’re looking for pure comfort escapism.