Has she broken you?
The Songbird’s Refrain is a YA Supernatural Adventure written by Jillian Maria and published on September 3, 2019. It follows Elizabeth Brighton, a young girl who gets kidnapped by an immortal, sadistic witch known only as the Mistress. Locked in a birdcage, cursed to grow feathers that suck the life out of her, and forced to sing in front of an audience every night, Elizabeth must learn why she’s been chosen as the latest victim of the Mistress. But the clues she has are … less than straightforward, including the words of a Cloudcuckoolander Fortune Teller and dreams of being in love with a beautiful woman named Alice.
Tropes in this work:
- Arc Words: “I don’t want to be a bird, if I cannot choose who flies beside me.” Also, "Has she broken you?"
- Body Horror: The feathers that the captured girls grow are very grotesque, to the point where they don’t even look human anymore.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The entire reason for the plot. Everything the Mistress does is to get revenge on her former lover and sister, who had an affair.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: Elizabeth’s dreams of Alice seem to take place in an old-fashioned setting. It’s revealed that this is the world the Mistress came from.
- Feather Motif: Elizabeth grows green and gray feathers, in the pattern of a gold finch. The girl before her grew white feathers.
- Reincarnation Romance: Played with. The first Alice and Elizabeth were in love, and our Elizabeth slowly comes to have feelings for the present-day Alice. But while Elizabeth [i]thinks[/i] this is a reincarnation romance, the first Elizabeth tells her that her heart is her own, and that she developed feelings for the present day Alice genuinely, not as a result of their connection.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: The Mistress ensures that the first Elizabeth and Alice cannot even be Together in Death.
