The Maid­en and Her Mon­ster is a gor­geous, atmos­pher­ic debut fan­ta­sy root­ed in his­to­ry, folk­lore, and sap­ph­ic romance — per­fect for fans of Kather­ine Arden, Ava Reid, Han­nah Whit­ten, and Nao­mi Novik.

The for­est eats the girls who wan­der out after dark.

As the healer’s daugh­ter, Mal­ka has seen how the wood’s curse has plagued her vil­lage, but the Ozmi­ni Church only comes to col­lect its tithe, not to pro­tect heretics with false sto­ries of mon­sters in the trees. So when a cler­gy girl wan­ders too close to the for­est and Malka’s moth­er is accused of her mur­der, Mal­ka strikes an impos­si­ble bar­gain with a zealot Ozmi­ni priest. If she brings the mon­ster out, he will spare her moth­er from exe­cu­tion.

When she ven­tures into the shad­owed woods, Mal­ka finds a mon­ster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, dis­graced golem who agrees to impli­cate her­self, but only if Mal­ka helps her ful­fill a promise first and free the impris­oned rab­bi who cre­at­ed her.

But a deal eas­i­ly made is not eas­i­ly kept. And as their bar­gain begins to unrav­el a much more sin­is­ter threat, pro­tect­ing her peo­ple may force Mal­ka to endan­ger the one per­son she left home to save — and face her grow­ing feel­ings for the very crea­ture she was taught to fear.