Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Book - Once upon a river by Diane Setterfield
Genre - Fiction / Fantasy
Pages - 464
My Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“There are stories that may be told aloud, and stories that must be told in whispers, and there are stories that are never told at all.” 

Once upon a river was my one of the most anticipated read of this year and I loved this book till its last page. I received the hardcover copy as a birthday gift, so this review might get a little biased.

The book starts with a mystery of a dead girl that comes to life abruptly after drowning, and people start telling and re-telling the story of the girl trying to solve the puzzle, as well as, feed their imaginations. Then the tale of the little girl starts spinning and the mystery to solve her true identity begins. The way the author writes this book like a fairy-tale and adding meta-fiction to the story, it engages you in the book even more deeply.

This book is written in a slow and gentle manner, so it might get a little boring for you (as you might have seen a few people DNF'ed this book), but this book is a real literature treat and you won't regret finishing it.

It was really hard for me to categorize this book, as it explores various genres- fantasy, mystery, romance, magical realism, historical fiction and has themes of folklore and science. The author did a marvelous job in engaging all these literary categories.

You can sum up this book in "Something happens and then something else happens and then all sort of things happen, expected and unexpected, unusual and ordinary''.

To buy this book at the cheapest price in India, click on the link below:

Hardcover
https://www.amazon.in/Once-Upon-River-Diane-Setterfield/dp/0857525654/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Paperback
https://www.amazon.in/Once-Upon-River-Diane-Setterfield/dp/0857525662/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=