Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

[I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]   

Release date: 12/4/18
Rating: 5/5 stars
Genre: Magical realism/fantasy/historical fiction
Features: Romance, mystery, racial prejudice, strong families, small town life/people, storytelling, folktales/legends, rural England
Quotes:

"When the moon hours lengthen . . . it is the time of magic. And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so do the borders between worlds. Dreams and stories merge with lived experience, the dead and the living brush against each other in their coming and goings, and the past and the present touch and overlap."

"They were collectors of words . . . they kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique."

"In this room, in this inn, they had seen her dead and seen her alive. Unknowable, ungraspable, inexplicable, still one thing was plain: she was their story."


What happens when a wounded stranger carrying a dead girl stumbles into an ancient inn known for storytelling, and the dead girl comes back to life, all on a cold, dark, winter's solstice night? Stories and conjectures abound, as three different parties come to the forefront and claim a connection to the silent, mysterious child. Is she Lily White's dead sister, the Vaughan's lost daughter, or Robin Armstrong's abandoned child?

Of course, I can't tell you how it all resolves, but I can tell you that the book is worth every word, every sentence that leads to the climactic ending. This rich, atmospheric book is the kind of story perfect for devouring in from of a roaring fire on a snowy, winter's eve. I hadn't read anything by Diane Setterfield before this, but now I'm going to have to look up her other works -- her writing style is just exquisite.

Set during the Darwinian age of rural England, the townspeople near the Swan Inn are still very steeped in folklore and legends. Setterfield weaves in the magical, the mythical, and the physical into a beautiful story. If you're a fan of Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale, this magical, historical tale is for you.

I also adored the characters. They're unstable, lovers of stories, greedy, honest, optimistic, hardworking, and painfully good and occasionally undeserving of the way they're treated -- but most of all, they're very real. Setterfield focuses on three groups of people that lay claim to the girl and explores their sorrows, their triumphs, and their hearts, and like any masterful storyteller, she weaves it all together for the perfect ending.

I gave this one 5/5 stars. Excellent, honest characters, intriguing characters and folklore, and a seemingly unsolvable mystery had me invested from the beginning.