This is my second book by Hardinge and I'm beginning to get a feel for just how weird her YA novels are. I feel like she's willing to start with premises that are so far beyond ordinary strange and just embrace the oddness of them.
A fairy tale, in the sense that it's a tale about the fae, but also something of a horror story (as so many fairy stories should be), Hardinge crafts a beautiful and terrible story from an unlikely perspective that never faltered. The best part, at least for me, was how she never dragged out any big reveals past when the reader figures out what's going on. Rather than making her characters completely un-insightful, she let the narrative flow at a reasonable pace and made each big reveal an excuse to up the ante. Which is so much more pleasant to read.
...why yes, yesterday was an extremely long day as I sat around at 40+ weeks pregnant with nothing to do. Did my goodreads updates give that away?