My March reads included lots of faery tale research, and two wonderful novels – The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Aussie author Holly Ringland and South of the Buttonwood Tree by Heather Webber – plus a surprisingly charming rom-com.

14 of 80 – The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland
Holly Ringland’s award-winning debut The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart has been sitting on my shelf for years, and I’m so glad I finally got to it (although I listened to the beautifully narrated audiobook, as I haven’t managed to curl up with a book for a while). It has the best opening sentence I’ve read since Holly’s second novel The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding* came out last year: “In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine-year-old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire,” and the writing is so beautiful, so full of love and hope, and woven with the secret language of flowers and the beauty of this country, from the lush green of sugarcane fields to the deep blue of the ocean and the stark red enchantment of Central Australia. It’s heartbreaking at times, filled with longing, grief and regret, secrets and lies, friendship and family and love turned to pain, but it’s deeply moving and intense and sweet amongst the sorrow, with a mystery that slowly reveals itself, a broken woman trying to piece herself back together with gold paint and lies and the hidden messages in faery tales, and the importance of women’s friendship, support and courage. I’m looking forward to the upcoming seven-part TV series too, starring Sigourney Weaver, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Leah Purcell and Asher Keddie. And the book is so beautifully designed, with gorgeous flower illustrations within the stunning cover…
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story about stories: those we inherit, those we select to define us, and those we decide to hide. It is a novel about the secrets we keep and how they haunt us, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Spanning twenty years, it follows the life of Alice as she discovers that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.
* “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.”

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15 of 80 – Snow White and Rose Red and Diamonds and Toads – the Kind and Unkind Girls trope
I’m off to meet up with my faery tale friends, to drink tea, eat little themed cakes, and chat about Snow White and Rose Red, and Diamonds and Toads, two of the many Kind and the Unkind Girls stories, ATU 480, which themselves have many variants.
Snow White and Rose Red is one of the Kind Girls stories, and is based on the short story The Ungrateful Dwarf by German writer Caroline Stahl, published in 1818, then retold and adapted by the Brothers Grimm not long after, and included in The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew (or more correctly Nora) Lang in 1899. Two of my favourite versions are by Kate Forsyth and Lorena Carrington in their beautiful book Snow White Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women – especially the hilariously vile insults from the ungrateful dwarf – and from the Usborne collection Forgotten Fairy Tales of Brave and Brilliant Girls, for it’s wonderful ending. 
Diamonds and Toads is of the Unkind Girls trope, and was published by the Langs in their Blue Fairy Book in 1899, based on Charles Perrault’s The Fairies from 1695 – both of them based on Giambattista Basile’s story The Two Cakes (or The Two Little Pizzas in my translation – told you all faery tales are weird!) in his The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones, first published in 1634.
And both are included in Lucy Cavendish’s gorgeous Faerytale Oracle Deck.

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16 of 80 – The Comeback by Lily Chu
Last year at an author event I ran a comp, and to enter you had to recommend me an audiobook I might like. The most intriguing entry was The Stand-In by Canadian author Lily Chu, and while I wouldn’t usually have picked it up, I really enjoyed it. Her second novel The Comeback is just as good – sweet and funny, with a strong friendship at its core – along with lies and omissions that cause serious issues. There’s also family drama, and the pain of parental expectations on two very different sisters, as well as the challenges MC Ariadne faces as a work-obsessed lawyer trying to get ahead at her law firm, but constantly passed over because of her Chinese heritage – despite being born in Toronto and not speaking the language of her parents. It is a rom-com though, so there’s also a fascinating relationship with a man far more emotionally intelligent than Ari, who plans her life down to the last second and has never let her heart over-rule her head as she strives to make partner – but he’s protecting a big secret that will blow up both their lives. It’s a story filled with compassion, growth and eventual self-acceptance, of two people being challenged to decide what they really want to do with their lives, rather than what a parent expects or friends demand, and the audiobook is beautifully narrated (ebook and paperback out beginning of May). And while I knew nothing about K-Pop in the beginning, I got a crash course into a fascinating new world…

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17 of 80 – South of the Buttonwood Tree by Heather Webber
I loved Heather Webber’s books Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe and In the Middle of Hickory Lane so much, so I’ve been trying to ration her other two books, because it’s so lovely knowing I have more of hers to read. But I finally let myself slip into her second standalone book, South of the Buttonwood Tree, and I adored it as much as her other ones. They’re all such wonderfully comforting reads, full of magic and friendship and the family we choose, with a little bit of romance and an intriguing mystery at their heart. And in this one, there’s a tree that gives advice in the form of an engraved button, strands of magic and folklore, and the healing power of moonlight, plus love and hate, passion and prejudice, secrets and lies, heartbreak and hope, and a twisty-turny journey towards redemption – for some characters at least. Heather’s writing is beautiful and magical and full of wonder and joy, and I can’t wait to read The Lights of Sugarberry Cove, then At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities, which is out in August.
I listened to the audiobook of South of the Buttonwood Tree, as that’s all I’ve been managing at the moment, but I loved this one (and Heather’s others too) so much that I bought the “real” books too, and I can’t wait to curl up on the couch with a pot of tea at some point and read them all again… 

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18 of 80 – Snow White Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women by Kate Forsyth and Lorena Carrington
Saturday is the Australian Fairy Tale Society’s online Magic Mirror to discuss Snow White and Rose Red as well as Diamonds and Toads, both examples of the Kind and Unkind Girls tropes (one the former, the other the latter). Which is the perfect opportunity to rave about the Long Lost Fairy Tale Collection books written by Kate Forsyth and illustrated by Lorena Carrington. The third in the series, Snow White & Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women, is a gorgeous selection of stories, full of magic and wonder and kindness, all beautifully illustrated by Lorena, and with an explanation for each from the writer and the artist about why it was chosen and it’s history and meaning. I love the title story, as well as Strawberries In the Snow, The Lass Who Climbed Mischanter Mountain, Tricking the Witch, The Pot Who Went to the Laird’s Castle, The Enchanted Cup and The Corpse Watchers – so pretty much all of them, lol.