Review by Stacey O’Carroll
Author: Kell Woods
Publisher: Voyager AU (HarperCollins Australia)
RRP: $34.99
Release Date: 25 February 2025
“Her tail flicked of its own accord, and she surged through the water, faster and stronger than she had ever thought possible.”
What happens when you blend historical fantasy with fairy tales, romance and poetic descriptions? You get Kell Woods’s second genre-blurring novel, Upon a Starlit Tide. Following on from her successful debut novel, After the Forest, based on the Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel, Woods uses her wickedly dark and enchanting style to create an adult fairy tale filled with magic, mystery and romance in Upon a Starlit Tide.
“She wore it like a shell, that coat; a briny leather casing that hid the soft, female truth of her.”
Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and Charles Perrault’s Cinderella, Upon a Starlit Tide follows Luce as she discoverers her truth and power. Luce has always felt a little different from her sisters, Veronique and Charlotte, and the people of Saint-Marlo, Brittany. As her wealthy ship-owner father’s favourite, she longs to escape her sheltered life for an adventure at sea. But her world begins to change when she rescues Morgan de Chatelaine from the sea. Soon Luce is swept up in his charm and an extravagant ball, but she is torn between the excitement of new desire and her love for her friend Samuel. As the war with England escalates and fae begin to leave Brittany, Luce discovers her difference is actually her hidden power.
“The sun slid above the storm clouds tattering the horizon, washing the water in weak spring sunshine.”
Although Upon a Starlit Tide is only Woods’s second novel, she clearly has a talent for weaving fairy tales into historical fantasy romances and building magical and captivating worlds. For readers familiar with the fairy tales the novel is inspired by, there are key plot points connecting to the original texts, as well as quotes from each at the start of certain chapters. However, Woods has created something more than just a retelling of these well-known tales; she has crafted an immersive adventure with an intelligent, complex protagonist who swishes her tail at the original texts.
“Luce waited for the sea-dead to spy them. To change their staggering course and come ever closer.”
Integrating fae and other magical creatures into the story adds a darker layer that will satisfy lovers of adult fairy romances and fantasy tales. Instead of a fairy godmother, Luce has groac’h, a sea-fae who helps her get ready for the ball (complete with glass slippers) after her dress and mask are ruined. Woods’s imagery of the groac’h is as far from a Disney fairy godmother as one could get with her “terrifying tusks.” Each mythical creature is to be feared by the humans, but who could blame them when the sea-dead (those who died at sea) come to life like zombies.
“She felt the change this time: the magic slicking over her, head to toe, as cool as the green-blue sea.”
A particular stand out was Woods’s beautiful prose and poetic descriptions. Her way with similes, metaphors and descriptions adds to the epic romance and lingers like a fine perfume long after the reader puts the book down. If there is an audiobook version in the future, I would highly recommend this as a companion to the physical book to tap into that childhood whimsy of having a fairy tale with evocative prose read to you.
Woods’s Upon a Starlit Tide is for lovers of historical fantasy, fairy tales, magical and fairy romances and anyone who loves to escape into an epic adventure. Get swept up in the sea of romance and mermaids, and add Upon a Starlit Tide to your 2025 reading list. With many more fairy tales in the canon, readers are sure to be in for more of Woods’s beautiful prose and fantasy interpretations in the future.