“All my life I saw my inaction as harmless. I was happy to stand by while Kizzy made decisions, while she ran toward danger or threat, answered back to insults. I thought my silence, my stillness, was a fine way to be. But now I realised it made me as bad as those men who took the side of a monster, who watched a locked door as children starved to death inside.” You are enslaved afraid of your live but mostly the live of your sisters.

Twins Kizzy and Lil are Travellers. With their family they live a free life entertaining people with bear dances. But destiny strikes and they are captured and enslaved by boyars men. They both try to survive in their own way, one fighting the other one staying in line. Everything is better than the threat of being sacrificed to the most terrified boyar, the Dragon.

If you are expecting Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave to be solely about the brides of Dracul you are going to be disappointed. This book however is a wonderful novel about the prosecution of Travellers, due to their lifestyle and appearance in Europe. It’s a dark, historical novel about endurance, about will power, love for family with hints of magic. It had everything I I didn’t knew I needed. It had a poetic writing style, wonderful characters, it’s fast paced but painfully harsh, beautiful, small and delicate. I loved how Hargrave illustrated that hardship can develop strong wills and how love can overpower almost everything if we are bold enough to follow our hearts. However, expect a story about the background of the brides of Dracul so you won’t get disappointed.