The Sisters of Straygarden Place
by Hayley ChewinsPublished by: Candlewick Press on October 13, 2020
Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 200
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
A riveting middle-grade fantasy about sibling bonds, enchanted houses, and encroaching wildness, lyrically told in eerily beautiful prose
The grass grew taller than the house itself, surrounding it on all sides. It stuffed the keyholes and scraped against the roof. It shook the walls and made paintings shiver.
Seven years ago, the Ballastian sisters' parents left them in the magical Straygarden Place, a house surrounded by tall silver grass and floating trees. They left behind a warning saying never to leave the house or go into the grass. "Wait for us," the note read. "Sleep darkly." Ever since then, the house itself has taken care of Winnow, Mayhap, and Pavonine--feeding them, clothing them, even keeping them company--while the girls have waited and grown up and played a guessing game: Think of an animal, think of a place. Think of a person, think of a face. Until one day, when the eldest, fourteen-year-old Winnow, does the unthinkable and goes outside into the grass, and everything twelve-year-old Mayhap thought she knew about her home, her family, and even herself starts to unravel. With luscious, vivid prose, poet and author Hayley Chewins transports readers to a house where beloved little dogs crawl into their owners' minds to sleep, sick girls turn silver, and anything can be stolen--even laughter and silence.
Content Tags:
Perfect for readers who want:
- Sibling bonds between sisters.
- Gorgeous, poetic prose, bordering on a light Gothic-y style.
- A minor mystery to be solved.
- Light creepy moments that give you pause.
- Character-driven story that’ll pull you in.
- Adorable droomhunds.
- A magical house that is a character unto itself.
Many thanks to Candlewick Press and JeanBookNerd for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
Not gonna lie, I had almost no idea what I was getting into with this book. The cover was gorgeous, and the summary caught my attention, so I just dove in. I was expecting maybe more of an adventure, but that’s not the case. The beauty of this book is in its subtleties, in its quiet creepiness. Even though I expected none of it, I was pleasantly surprised!
The Sisters of Straygarden Place is a heartwarming tale filled with sisterly bonds, a magical house, a descriptive atmosphere, an age-old mystery, and lots of sacrifice.
I will say that this book feels light on plot. It took a little while for things to really get moving, and even then, the plot itself was slow. It feels more like a character study, which when you combine that with the gorgeous descriptions, made for an enjoyable, light read.
Also, not that it matters, but the cover of this may not look like much when you just see a picture on the computer, but in person? It’s stunning. The green and silver together are gorgeous, and the silver is all shiny and fits with the content of the book perfectly. It feels really nice to hold in your hand and look at.
What struck me early on about this book, which carried through to the end, is just how beautifully it’s written.
There are passages that just really gave me pause because of how beautiful they are, and I had to read them twice. It’d be easy, in a case like this, I think, to fall into purple prose, but that isn’t the case here. The writing still has the ease and feel of a middle grade book, but with enough descriptions that it evokes maybe a light Gothic feel, where there’s subtle creepiness and horror baked into it.
At its core, this is a book about sisters—what brings them together and what pulls them apart.
Being a sister is hard. True story. Being a good sister is even harder. Especially when secrets are being kept between them. The three sisters are literally all each other have, since their parents are gone. Well, that and their magic house, of course. It’s been that way since the youngest two can remember, basically, although the older sister, Winnow, remembers a before. She remembers their parents.
There’s not really much I can say without wandering into spoiler territory except that seeing the three together was sweet, but there was also a sort of beauty in how they fall apart and have to learn how to be sisters again, too.
These were words Mayhap usually used to comfort Winnow when she was sad. Together, they would imagine the type of shoes the day would wear next: boots fashioned out of carmine suede, or Grecian sandals braided with ivy, or amaranth ballet slippers covered in little beaded periwinkles.
Perhaps Winnow meant them as a bridge between silence and lies. But Mayhap—full and exhausted and still shaky from her interaction with the grass—could only press her lips into a forced smile and nod.
Tomorrow, she feared, the day would be barefoot.
The whole book takes place in a house (namely, Straygarden Place), but this isn’t just any house.
It’s a magic house, which makes it infinitely better than every other house. That’s not just it, though, either, because while the magic, on its surface, seems splendid and everything one might want, it’s also a dangerous sort of magic. One that takes in order to give. It’s an almost selfish magic, in a way.
Since the whole book takes place in one location, it can be a bit slow in some places, but at the same time, it really lets us explore the magic surrounding the house, and it allows us to really focus on the three main characters, which I enjoyed! The house has a certain history, as one might expect, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it!
“Oh, sometimes it’s memory, sometimes music. Sometimes it’s love, or language, or solitude. The cost of light is darkness.”
This book is so hard to review, because I feel like there wasn’t a lot of action plot-wise, but that a lot happened with the characters. So I’d recommend this more for people who are okay with less action, who enjoy sitting in a world and really getting comfortable with it.
If you’re going into this book hoping for a rushing plot or something to suck you write in, that’s probably not going to happen. Instead, what really pulled me in was Chewins’ writing, with the vivid details but easy way of reading. The setting is absolutely charming, and while there is a little mystery, the focus is more on how the main character, Mayhap, reacts to everything than the mystery itself. It makes me think, in a lot of ways, of a younger, milder version of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, where sometimes slightly creepy, slightly paranormal things happen but the focus is on the character’s reaction more than what’s happening.
There were definitely moments that were a bit creepy or ominous, and Chewins does a fabulous job of creating an atmosphere.
I think that’s why I enjoyed my stay at Straygarden Place so much, because I could feel the place like I was there. It was like I was being invited in to participate in unraveling the mystery.
Tutto shook his head emphatically again. “No, Mayhap. The library belongs to the house. And the house has rules. And the rules will be followed.”
About Hayley Chewins
Hayley Chewins is an author and writing coach. She grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, in a house so full of books that she learnt to read by accident. She’s fond of telling people that she writes books about magical girls with secrets—even if that’s not an actual genre. Her books are literary fantasy, surreal fairy tales, or weird magic. (Or: all of the above.)
Her debut, The Turnaway Girls, was a Kirkus Best Book of 2018 and made the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer List of Best Feminist Books for Young Readers. Her second book, The Sisters of Straygarden Place, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press on October 13th, 2020, and has already been called “superb, spooky, and unforgettable” in a recent starred review.
Hayley lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her soulmate/husband/fellow coffee addict, Liale, and their toy poodle, Darfer.
She is represented by Patricia Nelson at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, otherwise known as The Most Amazing Agent Ever.
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