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Cover of The Snow Child

The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey

🌶️fade to black·spoiler
Available on Kindle Unlimited

Why Read This?

You'll experience a profound meditation on love, loss, and the delicate boundary between reality and fairy tale.

Synopsis

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

At a Glance

4.02 ★ Goodreads
Spice Level🌶️fade to black
Endingspoiler
PairingM/F
Romance Pacingestablished relationship
Energymedium

Top Tropes

survival romancefairytale retelling

Mood

melancholicatmosphericmagicalbittersweeteerie

Book Details

Goodreads Rating

4.02 ★

Page Count

423 pages

Published

2012

Primary Genre

Magical Realism

Pairing

M/F

POV

Third Person

Romance Pacing

Established Relationship

Cliffhanger

spoiler

Audiobook

Available

Yes

Format

Standard

Narrator

Unknown Narrator

Narrator Count

Single

Tropes

RomanceMagicActionAngstWorld
Theme Constellation

Mood & Vibe

Mood

Writing Style

lyricalatmosphericimmersivethoughtfullush

Story Pacing

slow

Emotional Weight

heavy

Energy Required

medium

Vibes

A haunting Alaskan fairy tale where grief crystallizes into something fragile and magical, and love means learning to hold on to what the wilderness gives you.

Characters

FMC Archetype

caretakersoft/gentle

MMC Archetype

reluctant heroprotective love interest

Relationship Dynamics

established relationshiphurt/comfortonly one who understands them

Spice Details 🌶️

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Spice Level 1

Spice Style

None

Getting Steamy

None

Bringing the Heat

None
Browse more books by spice level →
suicide attemptchild deathstillbirthmiscarriageanimal deathinfertilitygriefdepressionsuicidal ideationisolationambiguous ending
Browse books by content warning →

World & Setting

World Type

historical

Primary Setting

forest / wildernesscottage / cabin / homestead

Fantasy Creatures

Representation

N/A

Reading Context

Emotional Payoff

Best Time of Year

winter

When & Where to Read

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