Fairy tale inspired, but with some modern themes like

domestic violence

. At first I thought this would be one of those books that was macical and tried for beautiful and mysterious prose, but with characters that stay a bit superficial or distant. I was pleasantly surprised that it becamw more personal and relatable further into the book. While it still kept the simple heart of a fairy tale, the characters and scenes had a lot of life to them. The premisethat Marra started on a quest and gathered friends/compatriots around her just made the book more lovely and warm the further the story went. Bonedog was magical but also just a wonderful dog. Just such a really warm and lovely book, even if it's about

murder, something nobody seems to have a problem with

.