An entrancing story about magic, sisterhood, and love that crosses barriers. I can't wait to see what Rossner produces next. She's a contemporary fantasy author to watch

Sisters of The Winter Wood is a dark coming of age fairy tale, using prose and poetry alternatively to differentiate personalities. Sadly, I could not get into the story and didn't finish it.

The Sisters of the Winter Wood is very much a coming-of-age, character driven, dark fairy tale with many elements to love.

The two sisters, Liba and Laya, grew up in a small village, secluded both by their Jewish heritage and their parents secret ability to transform into animals. A death in the family means their parents leave them home alone and from day one, the sisters are faced with unfamiliar magic and people that they are ill equipped for. The sisters grow into their own shifter abilities while they experience love and real fear for the first time.

This book is tagged as adult fantasy but I found it to read very YA. Which is wonderful, if you’re expecting it. The tropes these young teens find themselves in are very common in YA fantasy. And the story is very focused on them finding love, becoming comfortable in their own skins, and learning who they really are. Again, a wonderful message, if you’re expecting it.

The authors note at the end was beautiful. The history she used to write The Sisters of the Winter Wood is tragic and Rossner’s ability to weave real facts into the fiction is well done. If only that had been more of the focus instead of the teens ability to find themselves.

If you enjoy YA fantasy romance then you will love this book. If you enjoy a skilled author using historical facts to strengthen their fantasy, you will love this book. If you enjoy tales of young women coming into their own and discovering their true power, you will love this book.

Now that you truly know what to expect, go forth and read!

*review will go live 9/21/2018 at: http://www.readingbetweenthewinesbookclub.com

The Leib family lives in exile, because their parents married for love. Their mother’s Christian family cast her out. Their father’s Jewish family banished him. Ever since they married, the Leibs have lived in Dubossary (Dubăsari), in relative peace and quiet—but all the secrets have caused a lot of tension. The elder Leibs have a chance to be reconciled to the Jewish side of their family at the beginning of The Sisters of the Winter Wood, by Rena Rossner, but it means leaving young Liba and Laya behind. The potential reconciliation couldn’t come at a worse time. Not only is anti-Semitism on the rise, but the girls are almost ready to confront the two families’ biggest secrets.

Liba is the sensible older sister. She studies Torah with her father. She lives within the confines of Hasidic Jewish life. Laya, on the other hand, longs for freedom and travel. When their parents take to the road, the girls begin a battle of wills. Liba tries to enforce their parents’ rules while Laya takes every opportunity to try things that were previously forbidden. Neither girl knows that their mother finally revealed the blended family’s secret: that Liba will be able to turn into a bear like their father and that Laya will be able to transform into a swan like their mother.

On top of the sisters’ squabbling over keeping the family’s Jewish rules and their blossoming magical abilities, they also have to contend with the arrival of the curiously enticing Hovlin brothers, who peddle addictive fruit and more. And then Rossner weaves in some of the history of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. It’s a lot to keep track of and, unfortunately, I think the characterization and the dialogue suffer. Where Liba is more fully realized, Laya reads very one note for most of the book. The note is willfullness. Curiously, Rossner wrote the chapters in Laya’s perspective like poetry, with very short lines that I really don’t know what to do with. Because so many of the characters are on the stubbornness spectrum, there are a lot of arguments between two or more characters who refuse to compromise. There’s a lot of shouting.

I think I would have enjoyed The Sisters of the Winter Wood a lot more if it had contained one less thing. If there had been fewer plot threads, Rossner would have more room for characterization and nuance. The book would have been less like so many other young adult novels featuring characters who are all convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong and no one has an ounce of ability to compromise. I can just picture them standing somewhere, feet planted and arms crossed, just bellowing at each other until someone backs down. All that said, I enjoyed Rossner’s world building. I love the idea of Jewish bears running around Moldova and Ukrainian swans flying overhead.

Readers who like historical fantasy might enjoy this, if they are willing to overlook this book’s flaws.

The Sisters of the Winter Wood is a historical fantasy novel following a Jewish Ukrainian family. The two main characters are Liba and her younger sister Laya, and this is a story of self-discovery that almost reads like a dark fairytale, partly inspired by Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and by many Russian and Ukrainian folktales.
My biggest complaint is that half of the story, Laya's PoV, is written in verse. I am not a poetry fan.

Everyone says that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when one has a gorgeous cover like this, I couldn’t help myself. I need to know more about this book once I saw it and then when I read the synopsis, I knew that I had to get my hands on it. This book sounded like something out of a dream. Right away I was surprised at how much religion there was in the book. It played such a big part in the characters lives, that I was really glad to see it included. Another part that I loved right away was the different writing styles between Liba and Laya. I honestly thought that it was a really clever thing to do. Especially when the story is told in first person when switching between the two characters.

The beginning did feel a little slow to me, but because of the fact that Laya had such an interesting style of telling her point of view, I wasn’t affected much by the slow beginning and then immediately the story picked up pace. There was a bear and a swan and a mysterious family we didn’t know anything about. This book did a really good job about describing what was happening, but sometimes the details were a little to much for me. I wanted it to focus so much more on the fairy tale aspect of this world immediately, but true to magical realism, it was always just out of reach for me.

All in all, this was a very unique story and a lovely experience to read.

Rossner has blended history and lore into an unforgettable tale of friendship, family and above all else, true love that triumphs over lies, tribulation, change and the darkest of times.

Fans of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden will surely fall in love with this tale of two sisters who are so opposite of each other. The Sisters of Winter Wood was a truly magical and beautiful book. With the most beautiful writing I've read in a long time. Liba and Laya were just too great of characters. Each having their own POV, I absolutely loved the difference in text for both Liba and Laya. It showed the difference in their personalities. Laya is a swan so her story was light and airy with breathtaking prose. Whereas Liba is a bear so she's more practical, wordy, and so her story was more accurate and descriptive. I can't wait for this wonderful to be published in September. I thank Netgalley so much for the chance for me to read this ahead of publication. I can't wait to promote this come September,

I think my main reaction to this book is disappointment, because the concept has a lot of potential but the execution is really lackluster. Part of that is the fact that I recently read Spinning Silver, which is another fantasy novel about a Jewish heroine that is perfect in every way, but Sisters of the Winter Wood was just a kind of meh reading experience. It's supposed to be set in a very specific time and place, as I learned from the (actually very interesting and helpful) afterword, but the book doesn't convey the setting very well, and the behavior of both heroines is pretty irrational in places. Just didn't live up to expectations.

Thank you for the ARC NetGalley! The Sisters of the Winter Wood is a beautiful fairy tale woven with Jewish culture and history. I loved the way Rossner displayed the different characters of by writing Liba's story as poetic prose. Liba was slower, thoughtful, plodding. While Laya was impetuous, passionate and hurried. But the love of the sisters for each other was the center that united the fairy tale and reality. Truly a beautiful story.