About the Book:
Many years ago, Rowan’s ancestor followed a white hare and disappeared without trace. Since then, her descendants have warned the women of the family against the magic of the cunning, shape-shifting hare – known often to be witches in disguise. Centuries later, Rowan, heartbroken and yearning to escape, ignores the warnings and follows the hare to a new world.
She finds herself in the mysterious yet beautiful realm of the Shadow Mountains, underneath the green light of a single bright star. Entranced by its beauty, she is lured deeper into the embrace of the faery realm. But the hare is revealed as a witch and all its promises of happiness and healing turn to dust as Rowan finds herself a pawn in an ancient rivalry between witch and faery lord, entwined in the fickle nature of the fae. As the danger beneath the glamour around her grows, Rowan will need all her skills to survive.
Find on Goodreads. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).
About the Author:
Raised on a healthy diet of fantasy and fairy tales, Bex Hogan has spent much of her life lost in daydreams. Writing her stories down was a natural progression and now she enjoys sharing her time between living in the real world and escaping to her imagination. A Cornish girl at heart, Bex now lives in Cambridgeshire with her beautiful family.
Interview:
Pitch your book in 10 words!
Two unhinged faeries try to manipulate a broken-hearted mortal.
This is a book about heartbreak, but crucially not one of “regaining” the lost love (as the witch and the lord are trying to do) or finding new love. It is about healing from heartbreak and discovering you are enough without those people’s love. Why did you want to explore heartbreak without a romantic plotline?
So much YA tackles first love and romance, which is brilliant as it’s such an important part of growing up, and I’m a sucker for a love story as much as the next person. But thinking of my own experiences, watching my daughters, nieces, their friends…more often than not, the first true heartbreaks come from friendships. And I don’t think we see that particular type of heartbreak in fantasy enough. So I wanted to explore that unique and confusing pain in the (relative) safety of the faery world.
Rowan starts the book utterly devastated having been dumped by both her best friend and her boyfriend for not being cool enough. Why was it so important to you that Rowan had been hurt by a platonic and a romantic relationship?
Our relationships with others so often define us, and I wanted Rowan to start her story with two of the most important people who had shaped how she viewed herself to have left her world. And that the departure was a very deliberate choice on their part, a rejection of Rowan’s own character. It’s a fierce grief that many teens (and let’s face it, the rest of us too) are often faced with, and how do we start to pick up the pieces? To have lost both friendship and romantic love would be crushing, which is where I wanted Rowan to begin her journey, unanchored and utterly at sea.
Herbs and flowers are central to Alba’s magic and to Rowan’s adventure in the Faery Realm. What fascinating bits of herb lore did you pick up whilst researching for this book?
When I research fairytales for inspiration, I always look to the original versions, and for ROWAN I was interested in drawing from the first Rapunzel story. The earliest known version comes from the Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile, published in 1634, and is called Petrosinella. This is the name of the girl who ends up in a tower, named after the (then) Italian word for parsley – the herb her mother had been caught stealing from the witch, who demanded her unborn child as punishment. So I knew I had to give a nod to parsley in my book, and was thrilled to discover how rich the folklore around it was, across cultures. A herb that is widely regarded as having medicinal properties, but is also connected to death and the devil, is right up my street. And some folklores say that it can be used to break a curse, which is always a useful piece of knowledge when writing a fairytale!
Rowan is an artist – and discovers a magic to her drawing. What drew you to this form of magic?
I have always wished I could draw, but despite my best efforts nothing looks the way it’s supposed to when I try! So to me, the way that people can bring an idea or an image to life on a page is a very real kind of magic. It seemed a very natural gift for a human to possess that would translate to something more powerful in the realm of faeries.
Each of your stories in the Faery Realms reworks a folktale or folklore in some way. What did you draw on for Rowan’s tale?
As a Cornish maid, I always like to find a way to bring a touch of home into these books, and for ROWAN, it was the legend of the white hare. This tells the tale of a young woman who falls for the wrong man, and dies forsaken and heartbroken. She then appears to her deceiver as a white hare, a ghostly apparition visible only to him. Her continued presence then torments him and when she deems he has suffered enough misery, she will lead him to his death. It felt perfectly apt for a book about heartbreak and the damage it leaves in its wake.
The series is inspired by the Cornish landscapes. Which locations particularly inspired ROWAN?
Very early on in my brainstorming process, I went for a walk with my mum in an ancient bluebell wood near my childhood home in Cornwall. And among the blanket of bluebells was a solitary white bluebell. It’s common to see clumps of three-cornered leeks or wild garlic and mistake it for white bluebells. Or maybe you’ll spot some Spanish white bluebells. But a true native albino bluebell will always grow alone and is a rare sight indeed. Given that we saw it on Beltane, the whole experience was truly magical and I knew then it would form part of the narrative. Discovering that in folklore a white bluebell is said to mark the place where a vow has been broken, only offered further inspiration!
If you accidentally wandered into any of the Faery realms, which would you hope to land in and which would you want to avoid at all costs?
Honestly, I’m not sure I’d fare well in any of them! But the Shadow Mountains are definitely a place I’d want to avoid if at all possible. I think the Moorland Court we visit in NETTLE* would probably feel the most like home to me, with its Cornish-esque landscapes, so I’d try my luck there if I had a choice. But as I say, I wouldn’t like my odds!
Please recommend a UKYA book you think readers will love.
FOREST OF HEARTS* by M.A. Kuzniar is a deliciously dark retelling of Snow White, so perfect for readers who like their fairytales a little grizzlier!
Thank you, Bex!
*Affiliate link
Leave a comment