The Thirteenth Child

• Author: Erin A. Craig
• Genre: YA Fantasy
• Publication Date: September 24, 2020
• Publisher: Delacorte Press

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: parental neglect, blood, death, parental death, grief, murder

This is the story of Hazel, a young healer navigating a ruthless court to save the life of the king, grappling with a pantheon of gods with questionable agendas as she fights for agency and true love in her own life as the goddaughter of none other than Death himself.

All gifts come with a price.

Hazel Trépas has always known she wasn’t like the rest of her siblings. A thirteenth child, promised away to one of the gods, she spends her childhood waiting for her godfather—Merrick, the Dreaded End—to arrive.

When he does, he lays out exactly how he’s planned Hazel’s future. She will become a great healer, known throughout the kingdom for her precision and skill. To aid her endeavors, Merrick blesses Hazel with a gift, the ability to instantly deduce the exact cure needed to treat the sick.

But all gifts come with a price. Hazel can see when Death has claimed a patient—when all hope is gone—and is tasked to end their suffering, permanently. Haunted by the ghosts of those she’s killed, Hazel longs to run. But destiny brings her to the royal court, where she meets Leo, a rakish prince with a disdain for everything and everyone. And it’s where Hazel faces her biggest dilemma yet—to save the life of a king marked to die. Hazel knows what she is meant to do and knows what her heart is urging her toward, but what will happen if she goes against the will of Death?

From the astonishing mind of Erin A. Craig comes the breathtaking fairy tale retelling readers have been waiting for— what does a life well-lived mean, and how do we justify the impossible choices we make for the ones we love?

I first became familiar with Craig’s writing with the release of House of Salt and Sorrow. This is the fourth book I have read by her, and it’s a solid bet that I’ll enjoy anything she writes. I’m especially likely to enjoy a book by her if it is a fairy tale retelling. House of Salt and Sorrow was based on Twelve Dancing Princesses, while this book is a retelling of Godfather Death, but I wasn’t familiar with either fairy tale beforehand. If you aren’t either, have no fear, you can still fully enjoy the story without knowing the fairy tale.

Craig creates an exceptionally compelling cast of characters, starting with young Hazel Trépas. As the thirteenth child to be born to her parents, who were already struggling to care for their brood of children, she wasn’t exactly a welcomed addition. Instead, she is promised to the god of death, known as Merrick to her but the Dreaded End to everyone else. But no one knows when he would actually come to take her, and she suffers for years in a home where she is openly neglected. My heart broke for Hazel, and I was so angry about the way her family treated her. Some of the other characters really stood out, in particular one of her siblings and Merrick himself. 

Hazel’s life changes dramatically when she leaves her family to go with Merrick. It’s obvious that while he has extensive abilities, knowing what a young girl was not one of them, and Hazel deserved an award for explaining so much about what humans need on a daily basis to him without losing her patience. He offers her an opportunity to change the course of her life, and she wisely takes it. She is trained as a healer and is given the gift of not only knowing what is wrong, but how to cure it … except for the people marked for Merrick, and she is tasked to end their suffering.

Things seem to be going well for Hazel—she moved from the barn to a cottage of her own, and from there to astounding heights due to her successful care. She struggles with being a healer but having to end the suffering of those who are destined to die at that time. I can understand where she’s coming from, because that would be tough for me too; anyone trained in some kind of health care is tasked to first do no harm. A healer who follows their own moral compass could easily have had difficulty ending a life, which brings to mind the topic of what is actually doing no harm to someone who is dying a slow, painful death; is it releasing them from their suffering or trying to intervene to manage their symptoms as best as possible? I suspect that everyone would have their own ideas, based on their own experiences, beliefs, and morals.

It isn’t until Hazel starts making poor choices that I wanted to reach into the book and shake her. She starts down that slippery slope of doing what she feels is right rather than heeding the will of the gods, and learns a really tough lesson. For so much of the book, she really demonstrates wisdom beyond her years and good judgment, making the times she makes poor judgment calls stand out as a significant change in behavior. While I sometimes didn’t love the choices that she made, but I respected that she was willing to accept the consequences for doing what she felt was right.

Overall, this is an outstanding story that stands up to my expectations from her other books. A good fairy tale retelling is irresistible to me, and I loved what Craig did with the story here (however the original goes). I think what appeals to me about fairy tale retellings over the actual fairy tales is because retellings flesh out a tale that takes up a couple of pages, and breathe life into the characters and the story, making it feel more realistic (at least as far as fantasy can), populated by a cast who jumps off the page. Although it is a YA book, it never felt overly YA. I highly recommend this one if you’ve enjoyed any of Craig’s other stories, if you’re a sucker for fairy tale retellings like me, and you love seeing strong female characters take charge of their own life and whatever comes along with that.

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