Reviewed: December 18th 2021
Released: December 20th, 2021
Genre: Fairytale Retelling
Sixteen-year old Kaj has to make a trade. A mysterious woman he has never seen before and will never see again offers to make it so that the Red Guard would ignore his friend Gerda while they drag her whole family away to exile. All Kaj has to do is surrender the warmth of his heart.
Will Gerda stick with Kaj after he changes overnight for the worse?
Can the Snow Queen’s curse ever be broken?
What would you give to keep someone you care about alive?
This Snow Queen retelling is a 90-minute prequel to Cinders and the Magic Mirrors Saga and can be read as a standalone.
Helen’s thoughts: 5/5
I love Sommer’s fairytale variations. She gives the characters a snarky view on life and manages to twist the original tale out of recognition, but still draws it all together at the end.
To Thaw a Heart is based on the Snow Queen, and the belief that Marina’s grandfather Kaj gave up his ability to love in order to protect the girl he had sheltered when the Red Guard came to kill her and her family.
It is so clever the way Sommers weaves the history of various characters together between the different stories she writes. Although they are standalone stories they all connect and enhance each other.
The touches of history, the mystery of the Romanovs all lend this short story a magical quality, especially as Marina has been newly crowned the Goddess of Luck, and has yet to figure out how that works.
The blend of history and present day gives this story a unique blend of magical possibility and twenty first century cynicism. To Thaw a Heart is not as humourous as some of the other stories, but delves deeper into relationships and what love really means to different people.
An enjoyable read, that connects a few more dots. I cannot wait to read Charm and Mayhem which releases as part of the Realm of Darkness Anthology, currently available on preorder and releases October 2022.
I received an ARC and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
About the author:
Sky was born to Estonian-Russian parents and for most of her life has lived and worked as a lawyer in Tallinn, Estonia, with brief escapes to Finland and the United Kingdom for work/study and to all but the top and bottom continents in search of her muse. Her debut e-book in 2012 was about ancient goddesses running amock, trying to get their wilted powers back.
She then proceeded to indie publishing her own ebooks and paperbacks and found her way from myths and legend via the Angelic Agency to fairytales retold for young adult and adult audiences. So far, Thumbelina has been updated for suspicious adults, a more sinister version of Cinderella was released on 21.12.20 and an adult Red Riding Hood retelling is about to be released on 21.03.21. A Wizard of Oz retelling and several short stories are in the works.
All her books are linked by some character or another and she loves making you choose at the end – by letting you pick an ending to read – one for the optimist and a slightly different one for pessimists (well, except in the Cinders-Embers-Ash trilogy because only Douglas Adams could pull off a trilogy in 5 parts). She lives in a house with a small garden with her husband and mostly one, but on occasion plus four kids. No dog.
To purchase To Thaw A Heart– Preorder for 99c Releases December 20th 2021
Amazon UK eBook
Amazon US eBook
If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my books which are available in eBook or paperback: Book One: Sentinals Awaken. Book Two: Sentinals Rising. Book Three: Sentinals Justice. Book 3.5: Sentinals Recovery. Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and get notified when my next books are published.
Helen Garraway 