WINNER, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for YA
HONOUR BOOK, Book of the Year Older Readers CBCA
SHORTLISTED, Prime Minister’s Literary Award
Be swept away by a lush, witchy tale about forbidden magic and missing girls who don't need handsome princes to rescue them.
“Full of vivid and poetic prose, this girl-power fantasy will win fans among lovers of magic in the natural world.” —School Library Journal
“Wilkinson offers plenty of tantalizing surprises in this tangled volume featuring complicated familial connections, dangerous secrets, and even more perilous obsessions.” —Publishers Weekly
“A spellbinding, leisurely paced tale with a captivating, imperfect heroine” —Kirkus Reviews
“Readers who prefer stories with rich characters will effortlessly lose themselves in this ambitious, lyrical fairy tale.” —Booklist
“Gritty, visceral and unflinching, A Hunger of Thorns is a lush coming-of-age story that upends narrative expectations about witches and fairy tales.” —BookPage
“The luscious depth of the worldbuilding and the effortless skill with which it is conveyed make me utterly jealous. Read this, and wonder where Lili Wilkinson has been all your life.” —Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Aurora Cycle
“A Hunger of Thorns is visceral fantasy; it tells its story not just in the bodies of young people but through all creation around them. This novel teems with life-forms real and imagined—winged, scaled, furred, barked and leaved, macro and micro, solid and almost intangible. It zooms in with scientific precision, then pivots to passionate invention. Maude’s quest will take you to deep, dark, festering places and bring you soaring back out into the light. This novel resonates strongly with our uncertain times. It will give courage and hope to readers seeking their true selves and a way forward into a richer, realer life.” —Margo Lanagan, author of Printz Honor Book Tender Morsels
“In this wonderful book, Wilkinson creates a whole new kind of magic—enchantments woven from family, from living things, and from the marrow of Story itself. Unlike anything else.” —Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies and Impostors series
“A gorgeous dark fantasy about the unshakeable bond between two girls, and the undeniable power of female rage.” —Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of The 100
“A lush, spellbinding tale with dangerously enchanting characters, A Hunger of Thorns is filled with gorgeous emotion and sapphic yearning that will leave you breathless. Wilkinson’s masterful new story soars. This is one for all the wild girls who get lost in fairy tales.” —C. S. Pacat, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Rise
“This is my kind of fairy tale: visceral and dark, lush and lovely, and filled with feral girls who know how to save themselves. A Hunger of Thorns is a beautiful, ferocious vine that will work its way inside you and linger. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.” —Kate J. Armstrong, author of Nightbirds
Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic—and her best friend.
These days, magic is toothless, reduced to glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.
Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest—a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.