The Wide Starlight is a fantasy novel about a girl named Eli; whose mother, Silje, disappeared after being taken into the sky by the Northern Lights in Norway. Ten years later, a series of strange occurrences follow, including finding mysterious notes, the reappearance of the Northern Lights, and Eli’s mother eventually returning. Silje then leaves again, and Eli finds a note from her that says “find me where I left you”. Eli and her father fly to Norway, where the former searches for her mother. The author includes characters from Norwegian folklore, such as a lindworm (a snake-like monster), and the three princesses from a Norwegian fairytale called “The Three Princesses of Whiteland”. (To avoid spoilers, I will not say how they are connected to the plot.) She also includes excerpts from Eli’s stories about her childhood and her mother’s disappearance throughout the book.
The combination of Norwegian folklore with Eli’s quest to find her mother helped the book feel original and unpredictable. While I have read a few books based on folklore from other countries, I appreciated that the author created a plot for this book by combining several stories, rather than a modern-day adaptation of only one. Along with the beautiful art on the cover, this book initially drew my attention through its originality. Although I rarely read fantasy, the majority of books in the genre that I remember are about generic heroes with “special” powers in a made-up, medieval European or Asian-inspired world. Although Eli’s mother, Silje, does have some form of powers, the main character has none and lives in the modern world.
Unfortunately, I felt the author added an overwhelming amount of subplots to the book. For example, there was also an issue regarding Eli’s best friend potentially moving for school, which did not move the plot forward and it distracted from the main storyline.
