Reviews - The Dance Tree | The StoryGraph

1.26k reviews for:

The Dance Tree

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

3.95 AVERAGE

emilysteve's review against another edition

3.0

I’ve previously read The Mercies, KHM’s other historical fiction for adults, and I think if I’d read TDT first I would have enjoyed it more - but it felt very totally similar to The Mercies, from

the useless and thoughtless husbands to the ‘twist’ being lesbianism.

I liked that Lisbet’s perspective wasn’t one that you would expect, and the writing was as ever for KHM deeply evocative, but many of the other characters were so flat (every woman is perfect, apart from the difficult women, and they’re difficult because of understandable reasons and so we ultimately need to sympathise with them, but all the men are awful and incapable of redemption apart from the one good man). That’s facetious, but towards the end it did become -for me - increasingly noticeable that the women were all given rich inner lives and only one of the men was. Some of the logistics were unclear too (it might have been my edition, but a map would have been useful) - that sounds really boring but the dancing plague functioned here really more as background and without the detailed historical scaffolding I would have at least liked to know how close Lisbet was to the city,

or how long it would take them to get to the shrine,

or where the forest actually was to understand more what impact it had on them. There was a lot of potential but it fell into overly formulaic patterns for me overall.

arianajae's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

chrysantheme's review against another edition

4.5

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

gelliestar's review against another edition

3.5

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

emmasbooktherapy's review against another edition

5.0

Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking historical novel with two of the most touching yet subtle love stories I have read in a while - I absolutely adore how Millwood Hargrave writes historical fiction about women loving each other as friends and lovers as well as heterosexual love, and how both are perfect, intimate, sensual, and breathtaking. - one of my new favourite authors