Adelaide Jensen

I know, I'm trying not to be too spoilt.

No, you're doing great.

Let's talk a little bit more about Arvel.

So as you said, she's come into the story.

She's had the worst time of her life.

She's in a really hard spot.

She's looking after her brothers.

You know, you've explored grief as a huge theme in this book.

What made you decide to look for that in this writing?

Yeah, I really loved that Maeve called her on her everything.

Right, because that's what friends do, right?

They do.

And it's like, okay, well, I'm not just going to continue to be nice to you forever and making this effort if you're just going to shut me out at every turn.

That was really, I don't think a lot of books do that, to be honest, and that felt really refreshing.

Yeah, and then Arvel kind of has to realise her own selfishness, I guess, even though she's going through terrible, terrible things, but also it's so much going on.

One of the other brilliant characters in the story is Leon, who's kind of was Catherine's dad.

Yeah.

And then now it's he's sort of become Arville's, like, father figure, which I really love because it's got that bit of found family in there, but they're having to sort of find each other again in the grief process.

Speaking of that great interaction between Maeve and Arvel, it's kind of like this interesting new theme I'm seeing in some fantasy novels as well about open and clear communication.

And I think perhaps what I'm seeing is like a lot of modern writers being so aware of these things and also like almost like therapy.