Amy was five when she vanished during a family trip, only to be found hours later, clutching a golden acorn and claiming to have visited fairies. Now she’s eighteen, and the fairies are calling her back.
While attending a wedding deep in the Antrim glens, the voices grow darker and their song takes hold. Not sure if she’s mad or if the fairies are real, she flees, drawing well-meaning Simon into her fairy-fuelled road trip.
To escape their hold, she must confront long-hidden secrets, and find a truth which may not be hers to unearth.
But, even then, the fairies may not let her go…
This is most definitely a fairy tale, set in the beautifully evocative landscape of Northern Ireland. But it’s not a fairy tale as you know it; it’s almost more akin to a thriller feel, a cat-and-mouse game through the landscape and Amy’s head.
Amy can hear the Fae, the fairy folk who inhabit the space on the edges of our daily lives. She played with them as a child, wandered into their world and met the Queen, and came back out with an acorn – the acorn she’s kept with her ever since, trusting it to keep their beguiling voices at bay. But as she grows up and the incidents with the Faeries began to take a darker turn she’s pushed towards the mental health services, with visits to doctors and psychiatrists. Her father, alcoholic and mostly absent, tries to be a voice of reason; her mother dotes on Amy and fiercely protects her daughter’s versions of events. It is Amy’s brother Mark who is trapped in the middle; the overlooked child in the battleground, adored by his sister yet hating the veneration that she is given by their mother; determined to protect Amy, but not entirely sure what she needs protecting from.
And into this family held together by tension comes Simon; attracted to Amy and wanting to do the right thing for a girl hovering on the line between madness and sanity. As the Faeries claim an ever-stronger hold over Amy’s mind, she wavers between flight and resistance – but may find that other influences are at work.
The setting of the book is very evocative, and fits perfectly with the at times slightly terrifying nature of the story. While the plot doesn’t race, it keeps tugging; it was a book that I could dip in and out of, and the story would keep carrying me along. The ending was satisfying, and also thoughtful; Zebedee’s knack of interweaving place and characters makes for a light read with darker undertones.
It is the characters who make this; the motivations are all wound together brilliantly, and the final twist at the end is unexpected, yet fits perfectly. It’s a complex web that’s interesting to read, particularly set against Amy’s own uncertainty as to what’s real and what isn’t, and Simon’s stumbling attempts to help. Amy’s swings between compliance and fight are excellently done, and her character is a tense center-point to the story, compelling all the way through. It’s also nice to see a piece where the Faeries are genuinely nasty – and the twist at the end there is also excellent!
While they play a major part in the plot, the Fae don’t actually come in to the story very much; it’s a human-centric story, but one with enough tension to keep you turning the pages. If you like thriller-style books and stories that play family tension off against the line between madness and reality, with a side dose of beautiful landscape and a dash of romance, try this.
Waters and the Wild is due for publication on the 23rd July 2017, and is available for pre-orders now.
© Kate Coe, May 2017
Waters and the Wild by Jo Zebedee
Published July 23rd 2017
http://jozebedee.com/
Review copy courtesy of the author
183 pages
