This book was an oddly cozy read about planning a murder to exact vengeance on someone's abuser. The fairytale vibes are strong, although this is unlike any fairytale you've ever read. 

The narrative focuses on Marra, the youngest princess of a very small kingdom, wedged between two large kingdoms, that maintains its independence only because of its access to the only deep-water harbor between the three of them. Thus if one of the big kingdoms attacks the harbor kingdom, the other big kingdom would retaliate very Cold War-style. The queen of the harbor kingdom must strategize and politick her heart out, using her three daughters as pieces on a game board to preserve the safety of her people. So when the opportunity arises to marry her daughter to the heir to the northern kingdom, she seizes the opportunity. Marra, as the youngest, watches all of this happen before she is sent to a convent (to keep her safe? to keep her on reserve?). But when she finds out about the treatment of her sister in the northern kingdom's court, she resolves to do something about it. Along the way, she collects a motley (and endearing) assortment of companions: a dust wife, a godmother, an exile and ex-slave, a dog made of bones, and a chicken possessed by a demon. This crew is united in a sense of justice and admiration of Marra's dedication to a lost cause. As the characters repeatedly say—they will probably fail and die. Toward the end of the book, Marra states what is the thesis of the book: 

And this is what truly matters, not the doing but the trying. The book brings up issues of sexism and patriarchy all over the place, and all of those problems are still there, but maybe things were made a little bit better by the efforts of the gang. And maybe if more people valued someone else's life more than they valued one of their teeth (iykyk), then maybe things all over could get just a little bit better.

My biggest critique of the book was the opening. The book starts in media res, and we get some back and forth with the timeline until everything is all caught up. Since the point we start at in the first chapter is pretty dark and gripping, I felt like this was included here just to grab the reader's attention, even though this narrative device is never used again in the book and did not add anything to the experience for me.  

In the end, the book is about women's rage, power, and magic, the power of a found family, and the loyalty of a reanimated dog. 

Also (very, very end of book emotions)

no one can convince me that the dust wife and Agnes aren't going off to live their best cottagecore magic lesbian lives