The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story
Hardcover | Kindle
By Theodora Goss
Quirk Books
Release date: January 17, 2012

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, fantasy author Theodora Goss gifts us with her beautiful new book, The Thorn and the Blossom. (Check out the book trailer below.) This enchanting love story unfolds on two-sided accordion-bound pages.

Evelyn Morgan, an American college student studying abroad, recounts her story on one side while Brendan Thorne, son of a Cornish bookseller, tells us his on the other. Each makes us privy to the secrets they can’t share with each other.

Evelyn is studying at Oxford when she decides to take a week’s vacation in the Cornish town of Clews, where her father’s family is from. She wants to be a poet, while her father wants her to go to law school. As if that weren’t hard enough, she also receives nothing but discouragement from her Poet Laureate professor, which is what prompts her to leave town to do some serious thinking about her life. On her first day exploring Clews, she meets Brendan Thorne at Thorne and Son bookstore, who sells her a very significant book and offers to give her a tour of the town, including the ruins of the fabled Gawan’s Court.

During the tour, Brendan recounts the mythical story of how Gawan and his beloved Elowen bravely fought the giants at Gawan’s Court and won, but were then cursed by the evil sorceress Morva and could not be together for one thousand years. You can easily see the parallel Goss draws between Gawan and Elowen and Brendan and Evelyn and it keeps you hoping they’ll all wind up together again.

Brendan and Evelyn spend that week getting to know each other and their mutual attraction culminates in a long, sweet kiss in a lush green forest. The kiss is more than they’d both ever wished for and dreamed of – but there’s a catch, natch. Evelyn’s “˜second sight’ – or hallucinations, as her shrink calls them – keeps tripping her up and making her run away from Brendan. Though they’ve loved each other apart for over a decade, they get the chance to try again.

Will they ever get together long enough to allow their love to flourish? You’ll have to buy the book to find out – or better yet, buy The Thorn and the Blossom for your sweetheart and take turns reading it to each other. The romantic presentation is a delight to behold, like a sweet treat wrapped in a pretty package, and is perfect for an intimate Valentine’s evening.

Theodora Goss is the author of several fantasy stories. Learn more at theodoragoss.com

Trailer