Baker opens in first person POV inside the mind of a woman who had attempted suicide. I love how she did this because it makes Millie more than a narrator or a patient or a character in the story. She becomes vulnerable. Human.
This helps provide a genuine contrast between the humans and the Fae. It also allows a unique perspective of mental illness, suicide, and the stigma attached. Since she wrote in first person, Baker was able to analyze not only Millie but those she comes into contact with through the lens of Millie’s Borderline Personality Disorder. No narrator is perfect, every writer is unique. But this is the first contemporary fantasy novel I’ve read that openly acknowledges and addresses a mental illness.
I applaud Baker on her blended style of contemporary fantasy and am truly grateful there is now fiction literature set in first person that steps boldly into the world of magic and the world of mental illness simultaneously.
