Sarah Beth Durst
My dad was in the army so I moved around a lot, and I thought I had trouble with putting down roots. I had no idea how good I had it.
In The Warbler by Sarah Beth Durst, Elisa is rootless and completely unmoored by a curse that has kept her and her mother moving every ten months throughout her life. If they ever stop moving, they will literally put down roots and turn into a tree. As the book begins, her mother has done just that, choosing to stay long enough to transform into a willow, leaving Elisa alone and without the one person who kept her anchored even as they moved relentlessly onward.
Her latest destination isn’t just any random small town, and here Elisa starts to get answers while the story unfolds for the reader through flashbacks two generations into the past.
Elisa is easy to root for. Her story is one of resilience and strength against difficult odds and the magic is gently woven into the narrative so that it feels inevitable and grounded in reality. The other characters in the book feel less carefully drawn, with motives that don’t always feel true or accessible, which weakened the emotional impact of the story. I felt as unmoored as Elisa did, and not in the way the author intended.
Ultimately, this is a book about choices and agency and the evil of taking those from others. It was a little too lyrical for my tastes, but the underlying themes resonated with me. I just wish I had been able to connect as much with the characters as I did with the message.
3 Like-Elisa-I-Needed-More-Grounding Stars
