The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

She has a choice.  She can either marry the old man her father chose or go to the convent.  She doesn't want to marry and she doesn't want to go to the convent either.  So she dresses herself as a boy and decides to go traveling...

Del Rey sent me an ARC of this book to read for review (thank you).  It will be published December 5th.

This author's words resonate in my soul.  What she writes talks to me.  She uses some traditional fairy tale characters but changes the story enough to make it new.  She also doesn't make anyone very nice.  There's lots of danger and her main characters just barely survive, but it makes for a good story.

This girl is friends with the frost demon and while they have a symbiotic relationship, they aren't that close.  He has saved her life and he's also falling in love with her but he can't.  She's human and he's not.  That relationship is what will keep her alive.

She finds bandits in the woods and she recovers the girls they stole.  Her only place of refuge is Moscow and she gets there just ahead of the bandits.  What she doesn't know is that one of the Prince's friends is false.  And when she finds out, it's almost too late to save herself...

It's a gripping tale that holds on hard to you, the reader.  I read it in one evening and I'd read another by this author.  She writes excellent tales!