About the Book

An amazing and captivating, curl-up-on-the-sofa debut about a magical frost fair and the lasting power of friendship.

It’s a cold winter during the Great Frost of 1683. Thomasina and Anne are the best of friends, one running her father’s sweet shop and the other the apprentice at the family apothecary – together they sell their goods on the frozen River Thames. When a family tragedy turns Thomasina’s world upside down, she is drawn to a mysterious conjuror and the enchanted frost fair.

But soon the world of Father Winter threatens to claim everything she holds dear. Will they be able to solve the magical mysteries that surround them . . . ?

About the Author

Natasha Hastings started developing The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair while studying history at Cambridge University, where she focused on gender and mental illness. While exploring these topics, she became determined to have the lives of working women, as well as their experiences of mental illness in this period, form the heartbeat of her debut book, The Frost Fair.

What I Thought

This reminds me of dark autumn Sunday evenings watching the BBC adaptations of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and The Box of Delights with my family.

The wintery setting is reminiscent of both of those tales too and there’s dark and spooky vibes right from the shocking end of the first chapter.

Thomasina is an appealing protagonist, her drive and ambition contrasted by the guilt and grief she carries. When she is made a miraculous offer we can see why she grasps at it.

Her friendships give her hope, and the story does really get quite bleak so it’s good that she has Henry, Anne, and their business idea, to cling to.

There was a very touching scene with the parsnip seller that made you root (lol) for Thomasina even more.

With discussions of female madness/‘hysteria’, representation of asthma and exploration of the multitudes of ways people deal with grief this is not a light middle grade but it is magical. Both the Frost Fair and the Other Frost Fair are exquisitely drawn and I would love to see this come to laugh as a Sunday BBC family series one day.

Thanks to TheWriteReads and the publisher for the eARC for the purposes of an honest review. Check out the hashtags to see what everyone else on the blog tour thought. #TheMiraculousSweetmakers #TheFrostFair