Thornhedge

 Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher, 116 pages.

Kara wrote about this wonderful Sleeping Beauty retelling here a few months ago, and I entirely agree with everything she had to say. I find myself especially infatuated with the characters. Toadling is not much of a fairytale hero (like at all), but she is extremely compelling, as is the knight who drives the story. 

This is an incredibly gentle little novella, and reading it feels very cozy. Unsurprisingly, it reminds me quite a bit of Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone, which was an Orcs & Aliens selection recently. The books feel like they could exist in the same world, although this one has more of a character focus than a plot focus. I would also recommend it for fans of Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered, which has the same formula of a fairytale with a very different configuration combined with a lot of introspection. Overall, a really phenomenal novella.