Where the Dark Stands Still
A.B. Poranek
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars
4.26
· Steam/Spice level: 2 of 5
Behind closed doors [?]
· 66 ratings · 367 pages · Published: 27 Feb 2024
Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon-inhabited spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood—called The Leszy—a bargain seems better than one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish.
Whisked away to The Leszy’s crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling she is not the first person to strike this bargain, and all her predecessors have mysteriously vanished. If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Because something wakes in the woods, something deadly and without mercy. It frightens even The Leszy…and cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming.
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Tagged as:
- fantasy 13
- magic 12
- young adult 10
- sweet/gentle heroine 10
- mystery 9
- demons 9
- slow burn 9
- m-f romance 9
- shapeshifters 8
- grumpy/cold hero 8
- paranormal 7
- witches 7
- monsters 6
- non-human hero 6
- found family 6
- bisexuality 5
- tortured hero 5
- high fantasy 4
- gifted/super-heroine 4
- betrayal 4
- hurt/comfort 4
- pagan 4
- competent heroine 4
- independent heroine 4
- take-charge heroine 4
- grumpy & sunshine 3
- forced proximity 3
- poor heroine 3
- tortured heroine 3
- virgin heroine 3
- good grovel 2
- nerdy hero 2
- queer romance 2
- age gap 2
- shy heroine 2
- working class heroine 2
- sweet/gentle hero 2
- historical 1
- forbidden love 1
- disabilities & scars 1
- Add topics
- content warnings
- nontraditional hea 7
- mental trauma 5
- death / grief 5
- past abuse 3
- religious trauma 3
- misogyny 2
- torture of mcs 2
- abuse 2
- third party abuse 2
- past child abuse 2
- Format
- audiobook
- third person pov 8
- standalone 3
