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|summary=From the striking and haunting front cover which has already inspired a make-up demo on You Tube, to the intricately crafted fairy tale with a twist, this book is a piece of art. Hardinge writes beautiful, lyrical, descriptive prose which makes her story come alive.

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Marketed as a twisted fairy tale, ''Cuckoo Song'' is so much more. Hardinge’s lyrical style sets it apart from other fantasy reads. Such phrases as ''she was weeping spider silk'' lend it a melody all of its own. At the story’s heart is the sense of wanting to belong and connect with others. It revolves around Piers Crescent’s daughter Triss who wakes up after an accident to find that her world has changed. She doesn’t feel that she is herself and starts to exhibit extremely peculiar behaviour. She is ravenous and inexplicably binge eats. For some reason her little sister Pen appears to hate her, scissors act strangely around her and her parents are anxious for her to remain ill and cosseted. She has memories from the time before she nearly drowned but she can’t visualise the actual incident.