Small Favors by Erin A. Craig

 

I just know this is going to end up as one of my favorite books of 2024. It is fantastic. I felt lukewarm about her earlier book, HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROW, but SMALL FAVORS takes everything I did like about that book and heightens it: strong and flawed heroine, culty and claustrophobic small town, folk horror, fairytale retellings, feminism, and the seductive lure of evil and danger.

In the town of Amity Falls, people live like frontier men and women, harvesting based on the season and going by wagon when they need bulk supplies. But something in the surrounding woods has changed. Animals come out and they don't look right. And there are whispers of creatures with silvery eyes.

Ellerie, our narrator, stands at the forefront of this tale. And when tragedy strikes, she finds herself forced not just as protector for her siblings but possibly bearing the burden of saving the entire town. If they even want to be saved, that is.

Evil is, after all, a most seductive mistress.

I am just blown away by how good this was. It's easy, I think, as an author to feel the need to handhold your younger audience when you write YA. But this book doesn't do that. I'm glad it wasn't an adult story because it was so intense that I think it would have actually been too much if it were more graphic. Craig deftly handles serious and disturbing themes that are probably, unfortunately, relatable to some members of her young audience: sexism, emotional abuse, religious abuse, gaslighting, hard choices regarding right vs. wrong, and the perils of first love. Ellerie is allowed to be selfish and flawed but it's clear from the get-go that she's a good person. I loved her so much and her growth over the book is as much as a coming of age tale as it is a hero's journey.

My only qualm is that I wish there had been an epilogue or something because the ending felt the teensiest bit abrupt and I was curious what ended up happening with the parents/baby.

But apart from that, bra-fucking-va.

5 out of 5 stars