Joanna Ruth Meyer

ECHO NORTH was a lyrical and imaginative fairy tale retelling. With elements from East of the Sun, West of the Moon and Tam Lin with lashings of Beauty and the Beast, Echo Alkaev goes to great lengths for her white wolf.

After a wolf attack when she was a child, she lived a quiet life in her father's bookshop since she was bullied and reviled whenever she went out in public. Her father meets a woman and decides to marry her but he hasn't picked a good woman. Her constant demand for things is show more pushing her father into bankruptcy and causes him to go off to sell his last items of value. He is gone for six months before Echo finds himself injured in the woods.

A white wolf offers to send him home if Echo will agree to spend a year with him at his home. Seeing no other way to save her father, Echo agrees and her adventure begins. She learns that the wolf is under a curse set by the Wolf Queen and Echo has to agree to let him spend the night with her every night but to never light a lamp and look at him. During the day, they explore the house and Echo learns to bind the rooms together.

Echo's favorite room in the library which is filled with mirror-books. She can jump into any story. She meets two other readers as she explores the stories. Mokosh is the one who tells her the rules of stories but it is Hal who intrigues her more and who she falls in love with. She learns that he is trapped in the mirror-books and has few memories of anything but the stories.

As the year comes near its end, rooms begin disappearing and her quest to find a way to help the wolf and free Hal from the mirror-books gets even more intense. She comes to know that Hal and the wolf are the same. Bad advice from Mokosh has her lighting a lamp and looking at the wolf turned Hal just hours before he would have been free.

Echo vows to find him and free him from the Wolf Queen which is where the resemblance to Tam Lin kicks in. She needs to journey to a magical land and is lucky to have a storyteller/guide who was once the North Wind but gave up his powers because he fell in love.

This was a beautiful story filled with wonderful images and lyrical prose. I enjoyed it very much. show less

When Echo finds her missing father unconscious and half-frozen in the woods, she is given a choice by the white wolf -- if she agrees to live with the wolf for a year, her father will be sent home safely.

This is a retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” with elements from “Beauty and the Beast” and “Tam Lin” thrown into the mix. There are so many things about this story which appeal to me, including the unexpected and wonderful library, with books Echo can literally step show more into, and a sequence where she learns to play piano music composed by a Bach-equivalent. (I have fond memories of learning Bach.)

Yet I found this book frustrating and slow. Stories unfolding slowly can be compelling, if the prose is beautiful or the characters are nuanced and complicated, or the plot is full of suspense. Here, both the prose and the characters are rather straightforward, and I predicted nearly all the twists (bar the finale) because I already know how this sort of story goes.

But I believe that this tale could delight a younger, or a less critical reader -- or even one who hadn’t encountered “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” as often before.

Another book I would send back in time to my teenage-self, if I could. show less

《 four stars 》

⭒˚.⋆ ❝who would you be, Satu North, without your great heart?❞ ⋆.˚⭒

Wind Daughter is a teensy bit of a letdown after its predecessor, as I personally did not find it to be as good as Echo North, but, despite that, it is still something I enjoyed.

Meyer's writing was, as usual, lovely and enchanting, vaguely reminiscent of an old folk tale or song. The setting delightfully chilling and atmospheric, yet oddly warm and comforting at times as well.

The story was show more intriguing, twisty, and ultimately binge-worthy, as I found myself unable to put it down once I had started, and, consequently, stayed up far too late to finish it. While everyone else in my house was asleep, I was curled up in my bed, smiling, crying, and struggling to contain squeaks and even the occasional bit of laughter. And in the morning, I was definitely suffering a book hangover.

And as for the main character... I'm pretty sure she was a highly sensitive person. Which I happen to be as well, so I definitely didn't mind seeing that represented. show less

This dark young adult fantasy was GORGEOUS. So lovely and atmospheric with breathtaking descriptions and haunting beauty in a bleak world where a family lives close to a cursed wood and tree sirens lure souls out to their death. Owen has already lost his mother to the curse of the wood. Now he cares for his young sister (loved the sister) and tries to keep his family going as his father grieves. When he’s on a train to visit the next town, he’s attacked by the forest sirens. He’s the show more only one spared. He and Seren, the youngest daughter of the witch of the wood, form a forbidden connection. She’s a siren. He’s a human. This had a lovely forbidden love cursed fairy tale feel, and I devoured every bit of it.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less