Gateways between world, always harbingers of doom!

A combined Beauty and the Beast and a Gateway to another world story. No beasts in this world now, but they have been here in the past, and they truly were malignant Beasts. What we do have is a sentient hedge that sprouts thorns around a strange citadel and doesn't let any one in or out, except for Sami, the midwife and now the cook and housekeeper for the family, when absolutely necessary.
Zuhra and Inara, born of a Paladin father and a human mother, are secured inside the citadel along with their mother Cinnia and Sami.
When the Paladins came through a portal from another world they came to rescue the human world from the renegade Paladins, and the monsters that had swarmed through the gate and attacked the human world.
Then the Paladins disappeared, including the girls' father Adelric, something their mother Cinnia had never recovered from. She is like a demented wraith mourning and trying to protect, from what neither we nor the girls know.
When a stranger is able to come through the treacherous hedge protecting the citadel things become more complex and a course is set on from which there is no retreat.
A fascinating step into a world that involves Paladins, Gryphons, betrayal and two young women's lives being turned upside down
For some reason which I'm having trouble defining, I just wasn't as enchanted as I'd hoped to be, although I kept reading to see what would be revealed.
I did like the bond between the sisters. Inara "had the power of the Paladin in her veins--and her eyes." She is so powerful she's lost to the reality around her unless she can do something to bleed the resonance of her power off. Zuhra spends her life trying to communicate with her sister and protect her.
But, getting back to Beauty and the Beast. Well the young man Halvour (handsome prince) did find a way through the magical hedge, he did awaken the inhabitants out of their daily routine, the citadel's gateway from the Paladin world was breached, and a Beast did come through the gateway between the worlds. Although it seems that unbeknownst to all, another kind of beast was already roaming the human world. (Ok, I had my suspicions that something was up but not the what!)
The arrival of Halvour opened up Pandora's box and as we all know this is never a good thing!

A Macmillan-Tor/Forge ARC via NetGalley ( )

I received this galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Sisters of Shadow and Light twists around many traditional fantasy tropes in ways that feel fresh and fun. You have a mysterious castle, isolated by a sentient hedge. A family lives inside, though some may consider them monstrous. A mother, a servant and friend, and two teenage girls. Zuhra and Inara have never been beyond the hedge. They dare not. Inara was born with the glowing eyes of a Paladin, the entities who built their home and who were once the celebrated heroes of the realm; public opinion is not as kind now. Inara is so overwhelmed by her power, a roar that consumes her senses, that she can barely interact with the world. Her older sister Zuhra is her fierce advocate and defender--and desperately want to know about the world beyond the hedge.

Then one day, the hedge actually lets a strange man through, and the girls' world begins to change in radical ways.

Larson does a wonderful job of allowing readers to discover the outer world through the sisters' experiences, but the family dynamics are the true heart of the book. There is a great deal here about sisterly love, and also about abuse and forgiveness. Their mother was utterly broken when her Paladin husband vanished the night Inara was born, and she protects her daughters through deprivation and cruelty. There's a grim note of realism about their relationships, and I loved seeing how the family grew and changed. To me, that was much more interesting than the romantic entanglements of the siblings.

I found this YA fantasy to be a fast, breezy read--I blazed through it in a day! It will be released on November 5th, 2019. ( )