chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
chestnut_pod ([personal profile] chestnut_pod) wrote in [personal profile] lirazel 2022-03-18 05:50 pm (UTC)

You may enjoy Margo Lannagan's Brides of Rollrock Island! Selkies and a lovely style. She writes Australian horror when she isn't writing smart fairytale YA, which I think is a selling point.

I don't know what your Valente Tolerance™ is, but I adore her MG "The Girl Who…" series. The writing is more baroque than your listed examples, but the heart feels like it's in the same place to me. Does also include a selkie.

I've already recced you Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days, I think, but the recommendation stands. No selkies, alas, but it is outstanding in other ways!

There's also selkie-adjacent MG novel Merrow, by Ananda Braxton-Smith. This is on the edge of actual fairytale, but I didn't feel cheated at all; I remember it as a wonderfully sensual read full of textures and scents, and a really compelling main character and relationship to myth.

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