#YA Review: Her Dark Wings by Melinda Salisbury

I will start this review by quoting from the blurb on my proof copy of this YA novel, due to be published in July 2022:

Her Dark Wings is a potent, passionate modern-day take on the Persephone myth, beautifully told by an exceptional writer.

back cover blurb

If I was in my late teens, free of exams and responsibilities, I would have devoured this novel in one sitting. As a full-time librarian with family responsibilities, I had to pace my reading which had the advantage of allowing me to savour every perfectly constructed sentence and passage of this gripping story. Steeped in Ancient Greek lore, the narrative has a mythical feel; set on an unnamed, agricultural island where Ancient Greek rituals are observed by a contemporary population, the effect from the earliest pages plunges the reader into an unsettling space where the veil between real-life and the mythological realm appears to have been lowered. Author, Melinda Salisbury, has clearly steeped herself in research and writes so lyrically, that she transports her reader into this modern day fable with the same ease that an Olympian might summon a mortal from the earthly realm.

Our narrator, Corey Allaway, is a broken seventeen year old, submerged in the misery of first teenage heartbreak from which she does not seem able to resurrect her former self. She is totally overwhelmed by the joint betrayals of her first boyfriend, Alistair and her childhood best friend, Bree. Consumed by jealousy, rage and obsession she narrates in a voice of heightened emotion which compels the empathy of the reader as she explores her inner turmoil and reconstructs the events leading to a night on which everything will change. The appearance of a beautiful boy with golden lips at the Island’s Thesmophoria festival sparks a chain of events which encompass gods, furies, and mortals. The permeable border between the human and mythical world is used as a backdrop to interrogate the fine divide between love and hate, obsession and attraction and friendship and betrayal.

Corey’s affinity with the earth, her uncompromising sense of justice and gift for propagating new life produces enlightening results in a narrative that takes your breath away with both its plotting and prose. It becomes clear quite early in the story that the shattering of a life-long friendship is the ultimate betrayal in Corey’s mind and her feelings are examined with poetic beauty. I honestly could quote from virtually every page, but here are two examples taken from Corey’s imprisonment in the Underworld. Firstly as she returns to the care of one of the Furies after an encounter with Hades:

She folds her wings back once more. Even in the few moments she’s been away my mind has sanded down the edges of her, letting me forget how different she is compared to me, with her black quartz eyes, her talons and her feathers. 

p130

And just a few pages later, whilst still in the cave of Erebus, with Alecto the Fury, this meditation on friendship:

Friendship is built on stories – secret for secret, confession for confession, and each one weaves invisible threads between you, binding you to each other. The more threads, the stronger the friendship.

p135

This book is targeted at the YA market and I can see it being very popular amongst the older teenage audience. Those 16 – 18 year olds who were amongst the earliest readers of Maz Evans’ Who Let the Gods Out MG series, are likely to be intrigued by the reacquaintance with familiar names. I will certainly be adding it to my own teen’s TBR stack ready for the end of the public exam season. For those regular readers of my blog, who often come here for primary school recommendations; this is very definitely an older teenage book, with language and adult references not appropriate for the younger audience. As an adult, many years older than the target market, I thoroughly enjoyed Her Dark Wings and would categorise it in the same bracket as Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles or Circe and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History in terms of thoroughly immersive writing infused with classical content.

I am most grateful to David Fickling books and Liz Scott PR for sending me a proof copy of this book in return for my honest review.