Kaye is 16, and is used to traipsing around after her mother’s dream to be a rockstar. Over the past few years they have moved around a lot. Her mother loves to sing, but she also likes to smoke and drink to excess. Kaye has spent many a night pulling her mother’s head out of a toilet bowl and looking after her.

This even became a full time thing as moving from city to city and moving from school to school was just too hard. It was easier just not to go, and get a job to pay for food and rent for them both.

Kaye hated school anyway. She was always labelled the weird girl, but her insistence from a young age that she could see fairies, definitely didn’t help. Kaye had one good friend who didn’t believe Kaye but was still her bestie regardless. Kaye hasn’t seen her for ages, but after a violent encounter one night, Kaye and her mum return to their home town to stay with Kaye’s Grandmother.

Once home again, Kaye catches up with her friends, both human and faerie, but trouble isn’t far behind. She is soon drawn deeper into the faerie world, meeting swamp beings, witches and all manner of creatures in an underground faerie cavern.

She learns that two faerie kingdoms are sparring for power, and she finds herself in the centre. But it isn’t all bad. When she meets an injured silver haired faerie knight on her way home one night, she is intrigued and enamoured by him.

But Roibin is complicated, along with the faerie queen that controls him. If this isn’t enough to contend with, Kaye’s faerie friends admit to something they have kept from her, her entire life. This secret explains so much for Kaye, even as she reels from its implications.

Throw in one life threatening situation after another, Kaye’s new found skills and a loss that cuts her to the bone, and her life will never be the same.

Tithe is the first in a dark faerie trilogy dubbed a modern faerie tale. There is an interesting lead in to this novel, showing Kaye’s back story of upheaval and uncertainty in life. Only when she returns to her home town with her rock star wannabe and alcoholic mother, does the real story begin.

Answers that come with a revelation that blew Kaye sideways (along with me) just bring more questions as Kaye is introduced to the dark world of the faerie and the two distinct factions. There is lust and love, friendship and murder. There are creatures that torture for pure amusement, and trickery everywhere.

Watching Kaye navigate this new world to save herself and her new friends was a little choppy plot wise to begin with, but persevering showed me Kaye’s cunning and determination to survive.

(Thank you to Harper Collins and Net Galley for the advance audio version of Tithe.)

Author – Holly Black

Age – 14+

(2023, Harper Collins, Dark Faerie, Supernatural, Creatures, Witch, Spells, Pixies, Dwarves, Torture, Parties, Underground, Controls, Sacrifices, Changelings, Lust, Alcoholic mother, Rock Star Wannabe, Family, Trailer homes, Action, Conflict, Fantasy, Friendship, Grief, Horror, Magic, Murder, Revenge, Secret, Series)