Crewel

Crewel

Gennifer Albin

★★★★☆

“I knew we could never hide how special you are,” he murmurs against my hair. The basement door bangs open.

But before I can say I’m sorry for failing them, or tell him I love him, the boots are on the stairs. I scramble into the hole. He restacks the bricks behind me, shutting out the light. My chest constricts in the darkness. And then he stops. A large crack of light still streams in to the tunnel from the basement. I can’t move.

The bricks crash onto the concrete floor and light floods back into the tunnel. Choking down the scream fighting to loose itself, I struggle forward in the dirt, away from the growing light. I must keep moving forward. I try to forget Dad, and Mom and Amie in the other tunnel, as I crawl through the cold soil.

Keep moving forward.

In a fantastical future world, spinsters weave decisions, the future and life. Those with the spinning gift are called by Arras’s Manipulation Services to work the looms of multicolored threads that keep the country alive. They are given some of the highest possible privileges in Arras, but with consequences: they can never return home or see their families again.

All her life, Adelice has been trained by her parents to fail the most important event in her entire life- her testing. But when she messes up and accidentally weaves, they come for her in the dead of night, killing her father in the process.

Caught in a web of lies and intrigue, who can she trust? As first her new friend then her mentor and stylist fall away, Adelice struggles to unravel the secrets behind Arras’s true history. In a powerfully written, unique debut novel about a society where the Spinsters’ Guild makes all the decisions, one special girl dares to defy the boundaries of society and makes her own way in a tightly woven world.

Crewel is a masterfully woven novel of a world where people play God and memories can be erased with the snip of a thread. I would recommend this book to readers ages 11-15. At the moment I can’t think of any other novels to compare it to but if you have a suggestion, comment below. Thanks!