A fairy falls in love with a king’s son doomed to die by the hand of his older brother in the land of stories. A troll sends him to the land of humans in banishment rather than kill him, allowing the fairy to follow with the caveat of never contacting him. She watches him age as she maintains the appearance of a teenager. He spends his entire human life trying to return to the land of stories. The fairy monitors his transition to the son of a kindly couple who own a marshmallow shop in order to enter the military. In his old age, he is encountered by a young boy who meets him again as a young man when he is fighting again for his life. The fairy elicits the young man to record their tale for proof.

The outsider witness is rarely, if ever, done well, and is a bit distracting from this complex and heartwrenching love story. The ending is left open for the reader to speculate a reunion.

I was fortunate to receive a digital ARC through NetGally of this complicated fairytale.