I have been reading this book, isn’t the cover beautiful?
It’s a lovely story about women; the relationships between mother and daughter, sisters and friends. And about, finding yourself and owning your truth. There’s lots of talk of fairy tales, tattoos, stars, shells, the sea and plants. It’s rich and beautiful like the cover.
I haven’t finished it yet (almost I am up to the seventh skin), but I think it’s going to be one of my favourite books of the year. Esther, the character, is a bit annoying, but there are reasons for that.
Here’s the blurb …
From international bestselling author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Holly Ringland, comes a haunting and magical novel about joy, grief, courage, and transformation.
‘On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.’
The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from lutruwita, Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.