Born on Eventide, Morrigan Crow is a cursed child. Everything that goes wrong in Jackalfax can be traced back to her. She is feared by the townsfolk, and despised by her family. And, destiny dictates she will die on her 11th birthday.

However, the mysterious Julian North interrupts her final meal to introduce himself as her patron, and with Death on her heels, she is spirited away to Nevermoor to begin her trials for the Wundrous Society. Trials for children with unique and extraordinary talents. But Morrigan doesn’t have one, other than cheating death.

To stay in Nevermoor, she needs to complete her trials and win her place in The Wundrous Society. If she doesn’t,  her destiny may just have been delayed…

Morrigan is self-doubting, determined and daring. Julian North is confident, caring and charismatic. With an abundance of enigmatic characters, both loveable and loathsome, and the wonderously whimsical and inventive settings, Nevermoor is a place that once you enter, you will never want to leave.

The Trials of Morrigan Crow is a sublime fantasy with a huge heart that left me dreaming of a life in The Deucalion Hotel and yearning for a Brolly Rail to transport me to school.

I will be breaking my strict “no buying hardbacks for my bookshelf” rule for this book (I have a child who needs food, or so he tells me). There is no way I can wait for the paperback to share it at school. I need to be surrounded by people who’ve ventured to Nevermoor so we can talk bedrooms, smoke and shadows…

It’s gone straight into my top 9 reads for 2017!

ebook proof courtesy of Hachette Children’s Group.