I had to read it twice just to be certain, that sure has my curiosity peaked and coupled with Minnow going to juvenile detention I can't wait to read Ms. My Thoughts: Yeah.in that synopsis you did just read that this girl is HANDLESS. Now, Minnow is being questioned by an FBI psychiatrist about the night she escaped, the same night the Prophet was burned to death in his own home-a murder Minnow may be responsible for.Ī modern retelling of the Grimm fairy tale, 'The Handless Maiden,' in which the Devil orders a girl's hands cut off, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly is the story of a girl growing out of the wreckage of corrupted faith. Soon, she gets arrested and placed in juvenile detention. In exchange for freedom, she leaves behind her family, her home, and Jude-an outsider boy who changed everything.īut the real world isn't the sanctuary Minnow imagined. She has just escaped the strict religious commune run by a cruel man named the Prophet. When seventeen-year-old Minnow stumbles out of the woods one winter morning, she is haunted and handless and covered in someone else’s blood.

This was a good story but not my favorite from Ms.

But the slow beginning and the rushed ending made the story feel a little lopsided. Overall, Fire and Hemlock was well written and had that signature Diana Wynne Jones magic. Lynn when she was ten and he was a divorcee quite a few years her senior, it felt weird even if it was really just Polly crushing on Mr. I also found the relationship between Mr. Needless to say, there was a lot of buildup for the ending but because much of the novel was buildup I found the ending to be rushed. During the last fifty pages the story returns to Polly at college and she is trying to figure out how she forgot about Mr. Much of the novel was Polly recounting the childhood memories she thought she had forgotten. This funeral crashing led to her chance meeting with Mr. The novel begins with Polly packing for college but quickly shifts to when she was ten years old and crashed a funeral. It took me a while to get in to the story. The other set involves Thomas Lynn and a fantastic world of made-up stories and curses. Polly has two sets of memories, the normal everyday memories of her parents divorce and her childhood. Image my surprise when, while obsessively organizing my Goodreads shelves, I stumbled across Fire and Hemlock a Diana Wynne Jones book I had missed! I dashed to my local library and the rest is reading history. Over the course of a summer, during my formidable years, I read everything by her that I could get my hands on. I was pretty sure I had read every book Diana Wynne Jones had written.

The secret lies of minnow bly