I am such a sucker. All you would need to do to lure me down a dark alley at night would be to dangle a book like One Dark Window in my face.
It’s Danielle crack, or rather, a full box of extra toasty Cheez-its, which incidentally, is also crack. It is a large fountain Diet Coke from McDonald’s (because for some reason their soda fountains make the best soda, don’t ask me why) with extra ice.
This book literally ticks every box I ever could have had: strong-yet-not-“not like other girls” heroine; broody dark hero, tarot magic, dark aesthetic, engaging side characters. I don’t think I could recommend it highly enough, so I’m just going to keep talking about why it hit such a chord with me, and why you need to treasure these feelings when they come along, because they’re rarer than you think.
I’m a basic reader bitch, I’ve said as much before, and although I don’t like to limit my pool of available books by filtering on something so shallow as protagonist appearance, I freely admit that I gravitate naturally towards things that remind me of myself. That sounds no narcissistic, but it really isn’t, because I read not to puff myself up on my own awesomeness, but rather to feel more comfortable in a body that I still don’t feel at home in, even though I’m in my 40s. But I like seeing characters that look like me.
I understand the desire for representation from minorities on a very miniscule level, but enough to know how much it matters. It was hard growing up in the 80s as a dark little Italian girl when the ideal was that California Barbie blond ideal; it’s why I always picked Barbie’s brunette friend (when I had the opportunity) and Jetta was my favorite Misfit (sidenote to say that the character of Jetta was originally Black but was changed to make it more palatable to the intended audience. Ironic, right?). This is all to illustrate why I immediately got sucked in, because I saw a lot of myself physically in Elspeth.
Situationally, she spoke to me on the level that she always felt a little put aside or ignored by her family and the world at large. She was bold in a way I am now, and wish I was when I was actually her age, but she doesn’t fall into the standard YA heroine mold (thought this book is not really YA) of being the warrior princess type. Speaking of that, and representation in general, we need to see less of girls and women in fiction having to be all things (the warrior, the genius, the beauty queen, etc.) all at the same time in order to be worth admiring or reading about. Elspeth isn’t a fighter, though her magic makes her so, and she isn’t especially feminine…she’s just herself, and that’s worth reading about too.
Fiction is made for vicarious living, so it still makes me happy even to this day as a married woman, to see the handsome, enigmatic male hero becoming enamored of the heroine who is sort of like me. In so many ways I still read for the benefit of the girl I was. I know a lot of times male protagonists in female (cisgender heteronormative) centered fiction are about as unrealistically portrayed as you can get, and that may seem weird when looked at the problem with women characters being over-idealized to whatever unrealistic societal standards are the norm these days, but it’s different, and I’ll die on that hill.
Why? Because women have been suffering at the hands of that power imbalance for far too long, and if this is a way (especially as many of these types of books are written by women) to rectify that imbalance, then I am all for it. I know that men do share some of these experiences themselves, but it’s not only to a lesser degree, but on a much quieter level and not done quite so publicly. As long as we live in a world where men hold the power and majority of the influence, we as women will always be subject to that specific kind of scrutiny, so while I’m not wont to throw it in anybody’s face, I want to be honest about what I like about something.
Getting back on track – Elspeth + Ravyn = 4 eva. He’s exactly the broody, dark goth boi I secretly obsessed over in high school, and here I am not-so-secretly obsessing over him now. In high school/college, I needed to see more characters like Elspeth catching the attention of characters like Ravyn – if I had, I can only think that maybe, just maybe, I might have had a higher opinion of myself and it might have given me the push I needed to meet more people than I did then. This is another reason why fiction is so important, and why it has effects beyond just making us happy in the moment – it’s a way to live not only vicariously through the characters, but to bring aspects of the books we love into our actual lives by emulating what we read, either consciously or subconsciously. It’s why words have power, and why we need to be more conscious of what we put out there in the world as “normal” and “good” and “ideal.” The romantic subplot isn’t Twilight-levels of in your-face pining, but there’s a level of tension between Elspeth and Ravyn that runs throughout the book. I guess you could classify it as slowburn, but not on a level where Elspeth has eyes only for him – she has other priorities and problems, which was refreshing.
If you’re just in it for the surface stuff though, you’ll still find something to enjoy – the tarot card-esque magic system is really unique, and the origin story that goes with it (and incidentally ties into the plot at large) is truly engaging. Long story short, there’s so much to love here, so I can’t recommend the book enough. If it seems like romantic fantasy fiction with a dark, gloomy aesthetic and magical bent is in your wheelhouse, then make time to read this.
/
Keep It To Your Shelf 