OH this snuck up on me. kind of like a ‘women who run with the wolves’ meets eerie, old time, small-island fiction.

bea + ulrika’s vivid sisterhood, with its beautiful and brutal honesty, is the primary lens through which we experience stages of womanhood/feminine archetypes. as bea ages, a wider story slowly starts to unravel.

the depth could be missed by some readers or simply not resonated with, but i *loved* what this book represented.

many scenes are just so spine-chilling. bea in her nightdress. gahh. i definitely feel like i could go back and enjoy a re-read with taylor swift’s ’mad woman’ playing alongside it.

thank you, netgalley and grove atlantic for the arc!✨

Witches, past, isolated population, a priest and Sweden. Sounds like fun!
Unfortunately I found this book hard to follow and very slow. The story is confusing, because we are given only glimpses into the life of two sisters. It´s like watching polaroid snapshots from somebody's life, you see a person as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman, grown woman , her wedding, her first child and then her own burial, but everything that had happened in between we must guess. In this book it´s similar. Various scenes without clear connection, lots of omission, unspoken and unshown things that have happened and we readers are expected to know is too much for me.

I very much appreciated the subject matter and style of writing but I was disappointed in the structure of the plot and found it difficult to follow exactly what was happening. More explanation needed for the link to the Blue Maiden and the power of the supernatural would have helped. This book has so much potential but I just felt it lacked the extra layer that would help the reader relate. Many thanks for the preview - I will certainly watch out for more from this author

Anna Noyes' The Blue Maiden is so atmospheric - you are right there on this oppressive island with Beata and Ulrich. But many times I wanted more in terms of story and characterization. I'm still very glad I read it and I will definitely seek out Noyes' next books. Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.

This is a gorgeous book that takes you to Sweden long ago. I loved the atmosphere and the celebration of women. The cover is lovely as well. Would recommend.

Set in a gothic Nordic island, we follow two sister pushing through life in a small village. When they grieve for their mother they find they must travel to another island that homes all the witches but tales past. I flew through this book so fast!

This one’s all about the vibes - the island and it’s community really came to life. I like these sorts of dreamy, strange works!

I will say it’s a very sad novel though, and I was left wishing there was a little more hope. I know it’s not that type of story, and the writing was beautiful. I think the author has a lot of potential and I’d read more work from her. Some of the narrative arc was a little confusing, but I’m not sure if that’s because this isn’t a finished copy.

Really fantastic creation of atmosphere and interesting characters though. Just a little tighter on the plot and I think it could be a great debut.

This one was a DNF for me, but I am so thankful to the publisher, author, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to this one before it hits shelves on May 14, 2024.

I thought this was a great debut novel. It was transportative and creative and had me intrigued through the entire story. The setting was well plotted out but I did feel it felt short in connecting sections of the book. Additionally, the ARC copy was configured strangely and hard to read.

This sounded great but the ARC is a mess and can’t be read. Hard to enjoy a book if you’re unable to read it.

This book has a lot of potential. The atmosphere is there, and the writing is beautiful. I fully believed in the island and its strange inhabitants. I was drawn into the strange history of the town and the “weird sisters” (haha) roaming it. It’s the narrative that needs a little bit of work. The narrative arc has a strange, unfinished quality to it— almost as if it’s too long to be an effective short story but too short to be an effective novel. It’s really too bad because with some reworking, it could be a fantastic debut.

Thank you for the ARC. I would be curious to read more from this author.

The Blue Maiden needs one more round of edits before it goes out into the world. The two main sections of the book--the burning of the island's women and the later narrative--could use more connections, and the relevance of the Blue Maiden itself might be brought forward so that readers better understand how the characters understand it. In the primary narrative, two sisters struggle--along with other islanders--to maintain a subsistence life, and when one marries, she finds that she's married the father of her half-sister. She bears his child and suffers postpartum depression, finally finding roots in motherhood. It's a beautifully written and almost unbearably bleak novel that left me enormously sad for the sisters and the child who will grow up in a family created out of obsession and desperation rather than love.

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with an ARC of Anna Noyes’s debut novel The Blue Maiden.

Synopsis: Two sisters who look nothing alike but are eerily bonded grow up with their widower father on the Scandinavian island of Berggrund. Off the coast of Berggrund lies another island called The Blue Maiden that has attained local mythology about witches and creepy women in the woods. The girls’ mother, long dead, has some tenuous connection to this island, as does their father, who apparently once abandoned the family dog there.

To be honest, I had a great deal of difficulty discerning the projects of this narrative. In a nutshell, the younger sister Bea (Beats) winds up married to a sexy older guy who returns to claim family property. At first, her father thinks this man will marry older sister Ulrika, but Bea’s physical similarity to their mother winds up attracting him. Early in the marriage, he calls her by her mother’s name, and it eventually comes out that he had a love affair with her. Worse still, Ulrika is his daughter by their mother, and he brings Ulrika to their home and the two begin an incestuous relationship. When Bea, after many miscarriages, has a baby, Ulrika essentially mothers the infant, including nursing it. Then at some point, the husband’s brother, Elias, enters the scen and he has a thing for both sisters too. Then I got lost.Bea is eventually alone with her son and has some sort of epiphany at the Blue Maiden, it seems.

What I suspect was intended as an atmospheric, eerie Midsommar-style narrative unfortunately obscures the point of the novel. I just kept thinking, “OK, so…..?” A frustrating lack of pay off combined with characters that annoy cause this to rate 2.5 stars from me. There are glimmers here of potential, but they, like everything and everyone in Berggrund is lost on a mist.

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this arc.

I went into this expecting witch hunts and a fight between church and lore honestly and maybe that was my mistake. I felt like I was confused the whole time, lost in the haze and confusion much as Beata seemed to be. It gave Midsommar without drugs and violence yet all the confusion was there.

I did enjoy the lilting melody of the storytelling. It was very lyrical and whimsical. I personally struggle with books such as this as so much is left to the imagination and unspoken narrative.

And the ending — it didn’t seem like an ending at all. So much was left unspoken and an intense moment started and then it ended right in the middle. What does it mean? Where do we go from here? I don’t know and I don’t feel like I’ll ever know.

In the quaint setting of the small Scandinavian island, Berggrund, during the early 1800s, we delve into the lives of Pastor Silas and his two distinctly different daughters, Ulrika and Beata. The exploration unfolds in Anna Noyes's debut Gothic noir fiction, "The Blue Maiden," where the siblings share an intriguing connection through their shared belief in the supernatural, an element deeply rooted in the island's historical backdrop.

Berggrund, notorious for its history of witchcraft and the haunting events on the uninhabited Blue Maiden island, presents a stark contrast between its picturesque name and the dark occurrences that transpired there. The mist-shrouded islet shores play a role in reflecting the ethereal colors of the sky and ocean, adding a layer of mystique to the atmosphere.

Raised by their stern and parochial father, the sisters harbor a fascination for the fairytales and legends that surround the area's dark history. Both daughters yearn for the love and affection absent in their relationship with their father and the companionship of other children during their formative years.

In examining "The Blue Maiden," it becomes apparent that the writing style of the novel presents a notable challenge for readers, including myself. The narrative unfolds with a choppy and jerky quality that significantly hindered my ability to seamlessly follow the plot. However, I enjoyed its vivid portrait of familial complexities intertwined with the supernatural, capturing the essence of a historical period fraught with mysticism and intrigue.

The cover of this book is stunning, and the story itself was quite interesting. I particularly enjoyed the well-developed characters and the intriguing lore. However, I found the book to be somewhat disjointed, especially in the beginning, as the author switches between two narrators in a way that is difficult to follow. Thankfully, in the second half of the book, the author sticks with Bea as the narrator, which made it more enjoyable and easier to connect with. Overall, I believe this book had a lot of potential that unfortunately got lost in its attempt to be lofty and aloof. I hope future books from this author prioritize clarity and conciseness in writing because I believe the core idea was simply lost in translation.

The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read the ARC ebook.

This is a debut Nordic Gothic read and I don’t think this was geared for me. I found it to be disjointed and a confusing story (at least for me) that left me with a feeling of disappointment upon finishing. I’m not sure if it was the writing or story or both. I did enjoy some of the dialogue between the father and his daughters. This is Anna Noyes debut and I would probably read a future book of hers.

I only rated a 2 star, and I just want to remind you, this is my opinion and others have rated it higher.

The synopsis of this sounded right up my alley. However the story didn't fall together as well as I had hoped. Too much info packed into a novel too short, I felt..

With some editing, this book has the potential to be higher rated. But as of now, it's a bit disjointed, which makes it difficult to follow and I had to keep going back (which isn't normally a thing for me) which toon away from the overall experience. It does have some excellent things going for it particularly around the characters. It may also be this way for me bc I'm normally a fast reader. Anyway, overall it was enjoyable.

The Blue Maiden had a choppy and jerky writing style which made it difficult for me to follow the plot. I struggled to finish reading this book for that reason. I think if the writing had better flow, while still keeping the natural almost earthy pagan atmosphere that the author did a great job at evoking, then I think I would have enjoyed the story.