Daughter of the Forest

This story is a retelling of a fairy tale of six brothers who transform into swans due to an evil enchantment. Their sister Sorcha, the Daughter of the Forest, painfully weaves shirts from starwort nettle to break the spell and save them. Filled with romance, otherworldly elements of medieval Celtic legends such as fairy folk and magic spells, this novel is a powerful testament to love and loyalty.

I have always loved legends and fairy tales and felt totally immersed in this magic world of Marillier’s Celtic forest.

This book absorbs you into its world! It’s the type of book that you pick up to read, and when you set it down, you have to take a minute to re-adjust back to reality. You say to yourself, “Just one more chapter…” Then it’s three in the morning, and you have to force yourself to turn out the light. You rejoice, grieve, and hope for the main character to achieve her goals. You long for a happy ending and admire the main character’s courage as she endures for the sake of her family. Through the trials she faces, you… show more.

Based on the Six Swans fairy tale and the legend of the Children of Lir, this series starter follows Sorcha, daughter of the Lord of Sevenwaters. When her father’s new wife turns her six brothers into swans, Sorcha is the only one who can save them. To do that she must complete an impossible task. She survives in the forest, with the help of the Fair Folk, but when she’s kidnapped and brought to a foreign land she’s torn between opposing forces: the desire to save her brother, protect herself, and be with the man she loves. The Otherworld in… show more.

This retelling of a fairytale about the six swans is the one situation where the character cannot talk by choice. Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters must refrain from talking to save her family as her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. This unique situation may remind you of The Little Mermaid where the character voluntarily gave up their voice for love. And I think this is what makes this such a powerful story.

Sometimes you meet a character who touches some part of your soul and stays with you forever. Sorcha, the woman at the heart of Daughter of the Forest, is a hero in the best, most unconventional ways—quietly relentless, powerfully resilient, empowered but also willing to sacrifice everything to save her brothers. Even as she draws the hatred of some, she inspires others to discover the best in themselves—including Red, a British Lord and natural enemy of Sorcha’s Irish family. Like life, the story gets dark at times, but Sorcha is the light in darkness that leads us all back… show more.

This is a hauntingly gorgeous, heartening and yet cruel retelling of the brothers-transformed-into-swans fairy tale. In third grade, I gasped aloud in my school library at the imagined feel of nettles burning my hands, and wondered if I loved my own bratty brothers enough to make Sorcha’s sacrifice. This book reminded me of that. It punctured my chest and made me fall even deeper in love with Marillier’s work.