The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair by Natasha Hastings and Alex T Smith
| The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair by Natasha Hastings and Alex T Smith | |
|
| |
| Category: Confident Readers | |
| |
Reviewer: John Lloyd
 | |
| Summary: A rare but real-world historical event inspires the author to swing into dark fantasy for the nine-and-up bracket, with two realities meeting across London in a Gaimanesque, del Toro-like fashion. The red pen was underused, mind. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 448 | Date: October 2022 |
| Publisher: HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks | |
| ISBN: 9780008496050 | |
|
Share on: | |
|
| |
The River Thames had frozen to death in its sleep. And thus the Frost Fair could happen – people trading on the completely iced-over river, like our heroine Thomasina's father with his gingerbread and confectionery shop. Thomasina will be working the Fair too – but her twin brother won't, as he dies in Chapter One. It was a tragedy she feels no small guilt for, and which has made her father a sullen, closed shop – and her bed-bound mother has spoken not a word – not even opened her eyes, more or less – in the four years since, either. But into the dark, frosted London comes Inigo, with supreme magical powers, and a willingness to help Thomasina. Not only can he introduce her to the fantastical Other Frost Fair, using the river surface at night for no end of mystical beasts and characters and their happenings, but he has a unique proposal for Thomasina, which will shake her world to its core.
This is a strange beast, all told – a well-wrought fantasy for a debut novel, but one that managed to engage and confound in almost equal measure. Partly that is down to old big-headed me thinking I had got the gist of this far too early – things were on the up for Thomasina, with a new friend, a new potential career (more of which, later) and things improving for those around her, and I thought it was a book about moving on. If anything it's a book about the power of the family, and how important it is to keep a grip on all connections within it – the adults clearly suffer when they shut themselves off, and clearly do that because they see nothing else as an option, having suffered.
So some of me was reading this thinking I've got this licked, I know just what will happen and when – very little of which came true, mind. If I'd have been reading that version of this novel I would have thought this too long-winded, but I wasn't, I was reading the author's version – and yet you know what, it still felt a bit under-edited. A helpful character crops up at one point fairly late on, and while it could have been a call-back taking a page at most, the introduction took half a chapter.
Another minor gripe is that the book obfuscates and delays and confuses, and far too close to the end admits when it's set. Its target audience will like as not know nothing about the Frost Fairs, and how traders moved into the middle of the frozen Thames as a unique holiday destination and worked their trade there. Instead, dripping with fantasy as it is, the book leaves the young reader unsure whether this is true or not – is this a well-realised otherworld for the book to live in? No, it's history. And I always feel awkward when a book takes a real and really weird part of our times and wrangles a genre story out of what is actually real life without admitting it.
That said, some bits of this do smack of a lack of realism. There is a madness isn't bad mantra running through a sub-plot that feels far too 'woke' for the days it's set in, and the way Thomasina's new friend just burbles with delight and pleasure at getting loans and setting up a new career for the two of them just smacked of make-believe. The go-getting young businesswoman, in that day and age, thinking of doing what she does? I didn't fall for it.
But this brings us to the final points (at last) – the fact this is the opener of a series (or it looks like it, due to the compound title). To its credit, this is so very much more about The Frost Fair than it is about The Miraculous Sweetmakers, and we really feel that we have had an adventure as well as a series-opener with all the attendant world-building. To such an extent it is impossible to tell what the confectioners' sophomore effort will be like – this could a series whose self-contained entries are as disparate and individual as you could wish to imagine. Certainly nobody as I write can tell. But what we can see is that there is some good craft about this distinctive read, with a most unusual blend of dark, body-snatching PG horror with something of The Snow Queen, if stuck in London. It's by no means perfect, but I still saw a great potential in this author from what she brings to her unusual narrative.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Any lapse in historical education and you could imagine the above being set in Victorian times, when it's not. Time Trap by Richard Smith is, mind – and has just gained a sequel. For a different drama concerning someone being masterful with the meringues and other sweeties, consider Alice Eclair, Spy Extraordinaire! A Recipe for Trouble by Sarah Todd Taylor.
Please share on: 
Facebook, 
Twitter and
Instagram
You can read more book reviews or buy The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair by Natasha Hastings and Alex T Smith at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair by Natasha Hastings and Alex T Smith at Amazon.com.
Check prices, read reviews or buy from Waterstones. Waterstones currently charges from £2.75 for orders under £20, over which delivery is free. You may also click and collect from a Waterstones bookshop at no charge.
Comments
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
