The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death. The hardcover edition features beautiful interior illustrations and a foil case stamp. "Half delicious murder ballad, half beguiling love story." —Holly Black • "An absolute must-read." —T. Kingfisher • "Every sentence sings!" —Sarah Beth Durst • "Utterly enchanting." —Fonda Lee • "A story that outlasts itself." —Alix E. Harrow • "Truly exquisite." —Zoraida Córdova • "A beautiful, musical, and loving story." —Emma Törzs “Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.” In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

We weren't very impressed by The River Has Roots as a club. No one faulted El-Mohtar's writing -- there were nice passages and the romance between faerie and human was an interesting exploration. The issue was that this story is essentially a simple fable about love and revenge and dealing with loss, but the key word here is simple. You could get through the plot in about 6 pages if you wanted to and there's not really anything else that's compelling to explore. El-Mohtar does a lot of world-building here which succeeds to different extents. The idea of the gateway trees and the use singing as magic were cool; calling magic 'grammar' was fussy and pointless. But the big issue is that the story didn't need any of that content. The novel presented so much extra stuff about its world and setting that it could have cut, which left us ambivalent about whether it should have been there at all. On one hand, the story we read could have been shorter; on the other, El-Mohtar clearly had more thoughts on this world, so why wasn't there a bigger plot in it? In the end, The River Has Roots just didn't make sense to us. It's stuck between being a simple fairy tale and an elaborate fantasy world, and that leaves it nowhere interesting in terms of our recommendation.