Honeysuckle

Once upon a time, on the edge of a forest, there was a lonely child with only his older sister for company. So his sister made him a playmate — Daye, a girl woven from carefully selected flowers and words. And finally, this boy, Rory, had a friend.

Rory is gloriously happy, until he learns that Daye is a seasonal creature. At the end of each season, she must be woven back together or fall gruesomely apart. And when, one autumn, his sister fails to return home from university in time, Rory has no choice but to watch his best friend slowly crumble, not knowing until the last second if she can be pieced together again.

Realizing he can no longer rely on his sister to keep Daye alive, Rory determines he must leave home to learn how to do it himself. And the more he learns, the more he starts to wonder: Why can’t Daye survive more than one season? Can he do anything to break this cycle of bloom and decay? But as Rory grows older, his thoughts turn darker too . . .

While Rory sinks deeper into research and experiments, ensconced in libraries and hunched in university labs, Daye is left to wait for his return. Alone. Sometimes, the silence seems to seep all the way to her branch-bones. Sometimes, the company of birds is the only thing to remind her that she is still alive. And as Rory keeps pushing his experiments further and further, Daye starts to wonder – how far is too far?

An entrancing, inventive and unsettling reimagining of the story of Blodeuwedd from Welsh mythology, Honeysuckle is a feminist Frankenstein with flowers; a deliciously dark, twisted, horror-tinged fairytale with rot at its heart . . .