THE FAIRY BARGAINS OF PROSPECT HILL
Lilabeth Canner taught her daughter and granddaughters to safely bargain with the Fae—for luck, good weather, and empty wombs. Years after her husband traded a handkerchief to a Fae girl for a plot of land on Prospect Hill, the Canners’ oldest granddaughter, Alaine, presides over the family’s failing farm. Alaine harbors a deep resentment of her younger sister, Delphine, whose impending marriage to Pierce Grafton will sweep her away to the big city and leave Alaine to worry about the farm alone. For her part, Del is jealous of her big sister; Alaine has a place in the world: at the farm, where Del has never felt as if she belongs. Her dreams of joining the socialite class flag as she struggles to adapt to the posh Grafton lifestyle, however. Both women soon find themselves making risky, untested bargains with the Fae to improve their circumstances—a decision that has dire, if predictable, consequences. Awkward dialogue plagues the opening chapters as Miller shoehorns information into casual conversations between family members. Poor pacing turns the novel’s first half into a slog, and readers well versed in Fae literature may bristle at how long it takes the sisters’ proverbial chickens to come home to roost. Del’s society faux pas and Alaine’s financial woes receive enough attention in the first half to almost completely drown out the early fairy bargains—the stakes of which are so low that it becomes easy to forget this is a fantasy novel. Yet when a bargain finally goes awry, the sisters’ personal problems cease to matter at all. To its credit, the last third of this fairy story proves enjoyable. Although Miller nicely ties up the majority of loose ends in the denouement, many readers may not stick around to find out what happens on Prospect Hill.
