Reposted by Lindsey
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ARC Review: Fallow by Sarah Anderson
★★★★ Read: July 21st – 25th, 2026 Format: Kindle ARC Source: Netgalley View this book: Goodreads | StoryGraph Publication date: September 15th, 2026 Goodreads Blurb: Slyly funny and disarmingly ten…
![The first page of E.M. Anderson's The Lord of the Wood, with the heading, "30 years ago." Text reads:
It had been an awful day. Most days were awful for twelve-year-old Arthur Throckmorton. In the seaside fishing village of Seacliff, where most boys his age were already strapping and calloused from working the sea with their fathers, Arthur was a slender pink thing with soft hands, a mop of golden hair, and watery blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles that never sat quite right.
This late summer evening, his spectacles were more crooked than ever, having been forcibly removed, peered through, jeered at, and stomped on. The frames had bent; miraculously, the lenses had not broken. Arthur had been walking home from the convent after lessons, forgetful of his usual care because Mother Superior, aware of his deep interest in timepieces, had given him an old clock that no longer worked. He’d been trying to figure out what was wrong with it when a group of boys hardly older than he had accosted him. It was difficult to say what, precisely, their gripe with Arthur was, but almost everyone in the village found him odd. He didn’t understand why, except for his bastard status and a vague feeling of difference.
He’d snuck past his mother on the way into the house, bruised, bloody, with bent glasses. If she saw him like that (again), she’d fuss and worry. Rather than joining her in the [text cuts off]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7wdc4zowcyzk6nuoqkvyhyu4/bafkreidqcvok5r2i4nlz2x4psnelwdgl2lpimwwiao37mz6c3sqbcsw6jm)
