The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair
By Natasha Hastings
Blurb
An amazing and captivating, curl-up-on-the-sofa debut about a magical frost fair and the lasting power of friendship.
It’s a cold winter during the Great Frost of 1683. Thomasina and Anne are the best of friends, one running her father’s sweet shop and the other the apprentice at the family apothecary – together they sell their goods on the frozen River Thames. When a family tragedy turns Thomasina’s world upside down, she is drawn to a mysterious conjuror and the enchanted frost fair.
But soon the world of Father Winter threatens to claim everything she holds dear. Will they be able to solve the magical mysteries that surround them . . . ?
Natasha Hastings was selected to join The London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme in 2019. Currently working as a fundraiser, she started developing The Frost Fair while studying History at Cambridge University, where she focused on gender and mental illness. She became determined, while exploring these topics, to have the lives of working women form the heartbeat of The Frost Fair.
Our Review
“The Other Frost Fair is created from magic and sea smoke, it’s a living, breathing thing with traces of ancient magic. It’s as curious as the breath before song, and as strange as the glimmer of moonlight on water. Yet it still exists, and you’ll visit it tonight.”
It may only be August but The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair is the perfect wintery read. Natasha Hastings plunges readers into 17th Century London, in a book that practically brings a chill to the air. The Frost Fair is full of the magical promise that snow brings, but it is also quite dark in places. At times it reminded me of The Snow Queen, perhaps because of the obvious wintery theme but also because of the importance placed on the power of friendship.
Thomasina is rushing home with her twin brother, Arthur, after sneaking out to meet friends when the unthinkable happens and he drops dead in front of her. She had been berating him for being too slow and in her frustration had said something unkind to him before turning and realizing that something was wrong.
“She looked at the person she loved most in the world as his cold fingers trembled on her own and knew her brother was beyond words now.”
Four years later London is full of excitement over the appearance of The Frost Fair on the frozen river Thames. Thomasina is wracked with guilt following the death of Arthur and feels herself telling him all about the wonderous sites she sees. At home she helps her father in his sweet shop and looks after her mother, each still dealing silently with the devastating loss of their son. Her father barely speaks to her, and her mother has withdrawn into herself, a shell of the woman she once was.
“The person who scribbled and doodled away her time in this book was a force of nature, a world away from the woman upstairs. Whenever Thomasina felt upset or lonely, she’d turn to Mother’s household book and try to conjure up in her mind the woman who’d once existed.”
When a stranger appears offering her the chance to bring her brother back to life in exchange for her memories of him, she thinks it is a price worth paying. She follows the stranger to 'The Other Frost Fair', a place filled with whimsical and magical sites.
“I can conjure your dead brother back from the dead.”
Around the same time Thomasina also makes friends with a young girl named Anne who begins to slowly bring Thomasina back to old self.
This magical tale is an excellent study of grief, and while it is dark at times, it is also hopeful. I highly recommend it.
Our Final Rating...
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