Early Review – Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Magical Realism
Length: 320 pages
Publisher:‎ Random House
Release Date: February 4, 2025
ASIN: B0D3Z4GSKV
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley for Review from NetGalley
Rating: 3/5 stars

“Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well.

Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains, on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic and she can picture a happily ever after: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and climb mountains so tall it’s as if they could touch the bright blue sky. But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I this eGalley from NetGalley for review.

Thoughts: I picked this up for review because I love fairy tale retellings and this is supposed to be a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. This was okay but not great. The story moves really slow, is very predictable, and flat-out sad. I didn’t love any of the characters; they were all selfish in their own ways. The main redeeming quality of this story is the beautiful outdoor setting and descriptions. It made me yearn to go and visit the Alaskan wilderness. I almost stopped reading this about 25% of the way in, but decided to persevere because of the glowing reviews…I should have stopped reading it…nothing improved from that point on.

Birdie is a young single mom doing her best to raise her daughter Emaleen in a small town in Alaska. One day, a loner of a man, Arthur, starts coming to have tea in the cafe Birdie serves at. The two are strangely drawn to each other. Birdie decides that if her and Emaleen could just go and live a life closer to the earth out in the wilderness with Arthur everything would be better for them. Sure, Arthur disappears a lot and has a huge secret but things are good, until they aren’t.

This was very slow and very predictable. I also struggled a lot with the characters. Birdie was a bad mom. A lot of excuses are made for her but a lot of what she does is definitely in the child endangerment region if not flat-out neglect. I just could not like or sympathize with her. Arthur was also pretty unlikable to me. Yes, he had some weird stuff going on, but he should have known the dangers he was dragging Birdie and Emaleen in to.

I did enjoy the beautiful Alaskan setting and at times, the way Birdie and Emaleen try to eke out a living in the woods with Arthur was magical. However, the way the story went was incredibly predictable. I kept hoping for something different or more intriguing to happen. However, this whole book is just watching a preventable disaster slowly play out.

My Summary (3/5): Overall this has some beautiful writing and description and I loved the setting. However, the plot was slow and predictable, and the characters were unlikable and hard for me to engage with. This was not the book for me. I don’t plan on picked up future books by Ivey.