I hadn't planned to borrow this one from the library, but it sounded right up my street so I had to bring it home. In basic terms, this is a retelling of the fairy tale 'Rumplestiltskin' for a Young Adult audience. I know I'm a bit older than a young adult, but inside I'll always be that awkward 16 year old, so I'll always have time for YA fiction!

In some ways, I went into this expecting to find the story heavily disguised or tangential to the fairy tale as it's quite a 'basic' one, but actually the writer has managed to stick to the main points of the script, while giving the story a nice twist with a ghost story and a mystery element, and the whole thing has a flavour of its own.

The main characters, Sirilda and Gild, are very well written and have clear chemistry. There is a moment when they first meet that gives a brief moment of worry that things are going to develop way too quickly, but then as the plot develops and you're given some backstory, you can understand certain reactions better and the whole thing just sits more comfortably. Likewise, the villain of the piece, the Erlking, really does come across as a nasty, slimy git. The only disappointment for me is that some of the supporting cast could do with a bit more description and story.

It's not particularly graphic, but it does get quite dark in places; there are brief but quite shocking descriptions of violent ends for minors in a couple of instances, and some of the creatures are not pleasant. It all adds to the atmosphere of the story and in some respects it is nice that she didn't go down the 'happily ever after' route, but equally I'm not 100% I wouldn't have preferred at least a little bit of levity towards the end!

On the upside, there is a sequel! So that shall be going on my library request list shortly in the hope that it all gets resolved to my satisfaction!