 Hi everyone, my name is Steph. This is Kiddletjoy and welcome all welcome back to my channel. Today I have a young adult fantasy review and that is for the book Deep is the Fen by Lily Wilkinson. Now I have reviewed Lily Wilkinson's previous fantasy work which is Hunger of Thorns before so I'll leave that linked on the screen but this is her most recent release. It comes out on the 16th of April. I had the best time reading this. I was a little bit unsure initially when I started reading it in the first couple of chapters just because I had to reorient myself in the world. This is a fantasy world that is reminiscent of our world. Things like school and work and cars and things like that. They all exist but also magic exists in this world and magic is very tightly controlled by people and certain magics are outlawed and if you are using magics that have been outlawed you have the potential to be labeled a witch and to be taken away and rehabilitated. In this story we're following Mary who is one of a group of three friends and they've just finished school and they're all about to go their separate ways which is upsetting to her. She wants to make the most of this last summer and it gets interrupted when Teddy who is one of her friends and the boy that she has a huge crush on decides that he is becoming a member of the Toad Men which is a secret society that exists in this world that has kind of outdated views on women and the world and they also dabble in magic and Mary is able to see some magic. She can't work magic but she can kind of see threads of magic in people and she doesn't like what she sees around the members of the Toad Men and so she is determined to stop Teddy from getting involved with them. In order to do that she needs to team up with sort of her academic rival from high school caraway. She doesn't really like him because he comes from privilege and he always seems so aloof and removed from everyone else and she thinks that he thinks he's better than everyone else but he has connections to the Toad Men and he says he's able to help her try and stop Teddy from getting involved heavily in them if she helps him with something and he's a bit sketchy on the details. Eventually she finds out it involves going to an ancient Toad Men ritual in the middle of the Deeping Fen which is kind of like a magical bog and once they get there things kind of go from bad to worse. Mary realises that not everything is what it seems not everyone is telling the truth. Some people can't tell the truth. There are three ruling members of the Toad Men and she doesn't quite know who she's dealing with. She also finds out some secrets about her friends that she didn't realise before. She finds out about the truth behind the witches or the women who have magical abilities and why people have been taking their magic from them. At times it has that really gothic fantasy feeling to it but it is incredibly well written and seeing how Mary has to adapt and grow and learn and trying out smart everyone around her is really fun. This is very much a smash the patriarchy kind of book in the best possible way. It also has the coolest cover. I love this. I think it's very creepy and cool. It really blends those supernatural elements into the story really effectively and I also think it does a really good job of showing that Mary is still a teenager. She thinks she knows everything. She makes a lot of mistakes. She does learn things and she's very smart and she's very capable but she's also only a teenager and only human and I think that's really interesting. I love that there are connections between this and Hunger of Thorns but if you haven't read that it's not going to stop your enjoyment of reading this book at all and I thought it had a very satisfying conclusion while still also leaving a few things open for thinking about and questioning at the end. So I will leave a link down below where you can find that more information about this book. I did receive a review copy from Ellen and Unwin and I thank them very much for that because I have really really been enjoying Lily Wilkinson's foray into fantasy supernatural storytelling. I think she does an incredible job of we of weaving these stories together and creating really fun engaging stories. So as I said I'll leave links to everyone down below so you can find out more information about the book. If you have read this book or any of Lily Wilkinson's other books feel free to let me know and have a chat to me about them down below. Otherwise feel free to leave a frog emoji to let me know that you're here. I hope that wherever you are in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.