Let’s Read Good Books

My Thoughts:

May contain spoilers

I loved Once There Was. Marjan, an Iranian American teen, has inherited her father’s veterinarian practice after he is brutally murdered in their home. She chafes at the responsibilities thrust on her, resenting her father for getting himself killed and for keeping so many secrets from her.

Marjan soon learns that her father, who was full of stories about magical creatures until the untimely death of her mother, secretly works for the Fells, an ancient family responsible for keeping track of creatures of myth. The descendant of a girl who helped an injured unicorn and was stabbed in the chest with its horn in payment, Marjan soon learns that when touching a magical creature, she can sense what’s wrong with it. Now she struggles to save animals with no training or understanding of the world her father kept hidden from her.

I loved this story. I listened on audio, and the reader was fantastic. Marjan came to life, all of her resentment towards her father for his emotional distance coloring everything she did. Emotionally remote herself, she wonders why her father couldn’t love her more, and why she’s seething with rage instead of sorrow.

Some aspects of the story require suspension of belief, but after getting past that and just going with the flow, I found this to be one of the best reads of the year.

About the Book:

Title: Once There Was

Author: Kiyash Monsef

Publisher: Si

Pages: 432

Format: Audiobook

Source: Local Library

Rating: 5 Stars

From the back of the book:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them meets Neil Gaiman in this “striking and heartfelt” (Kirkus Reviews) novel about an Iranian American girl who discovers that her father was secretly a veterinarian to magical creatures—and that she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.

Once was, once wasn’t.

So began the stories Marjan’s father told her as a little girl—fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunter’s snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Tales of mythical beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder.

But Marjan’s not a little girl anymore. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, she is trying to hold it all together: her schoolwork, friendships, and keeping her dad’s shoestring veterinary practice from going under. Then, one day, she receives a visitor who reveals something stunning: Marjan’s father was no ordinary veterinarian. The creatures out of the stories he told her were real—and he traveled the world to care for them. And now that he’s gone, she must take his place.

Marjan steps into a secret world hidden in plain sight, where magical creatures are bought and sold, treasured and trapped. She finds friends she never knew she needed—a charming British boy who grew up with a griffon, a runaway witch seeking magic and home—while trying to hide her double life from her old friends and classmates.

The deeper Marjan gets into treating these animals, the closer she comes to finding who killed her father—and to a shocking truth that will reawaken her sense of wonder and put humans and beasts in the gravest of danger.