Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz: Review and analysis (contains spoilers!)

Stars: 4.5/5

Teacups: TBD but high

Age range: 18+ for 1½ well done sex scenes

Trigger warnings: Emotional abuse, parental deaths, serious accidents, grooming

Disclaimer: Most Iridescent Inkwell reviews get somewhat analytical and contain mild spoilers, but if they don’t make you want to read the book even more, I’m doing it wrong.

I bought my copy from Viewpoint Books!

Up until recently, Violet was the Thorn Witch, a henchman of Guy Shadowfade, who terrorized the continent and ruled for decades. Now, Shadowfade is dead, and Violet only wishes to start a flower shop and live a peaceful life. Her grumpy landlord/neighbor isn’t sure the town needs a florist, but he finds her captivating.

As she gets to know the various townsfolk and Nathaniel gradually softens his attitude, she finds a place to belong, but the power vacuum from Shadowfade’s disappearance seems to be causing more trouble.

You might look at the adorable flowery little spine of this book and wonder how it covers a full-blown romance and complete fantasy plot, but it does, replete with character development, change, healthy trauma, and favorite tropes done well. This one is surprisingly difficult for me to talk about without entirely spoiling everything, so I’ll keep this review somewhat short.

For example, though, Krempholtz cleverly uses point-of-view to create some meaningful plot twists.The “surprise reinforcements at the last second” trope is one of my favorites of all time, and this one is very cleverly done. I won’t say more than that for now.

Traits of cozy fantasy

I tried an experiment with this book. I’d recently bought some Garden Annotation Sticky Notes from Wild Geese Bookshop in Franklin, Indiana at one of their Artcraft Theater events. I assigned them matching highlighters and the following meanings:

Grass: Description, cozy imagery, or pacing moderation

Sunflowers: humor and themes of redemption

Roses: Pacing moderation and other cozy stylistic choices

Violets: Mentions of violence and turning from it

My copy of Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain anymore with goached page edges and floral sticky tabs from Wild Geese Bookshop.

The story was so rife with all of these themes and qualities that I realized I would run out of sticky tables in no time, so I only covered the first couple of chapters. Much of this text is highlighted. The garden is dense and fruitful, indeed.

Now I think it would have been more suitable to group themes of violence and redemption together and to leave roses for moments of emotional processing; basically I’d need more flowers to track everything I’m thinking of. We all need more flowers in life in general. That’s kind of the point of the book.

This won’t be the last of the garden-themed sticky tabs, though.

This grouping/condensing/organizing challenge is the primary roadblock toward putting together the Teacup Scale I’ve been working on–a way of judging the coziness of stories. This is, of course, objective, so it will be evolving with feedback. If we can use a pepper scale to measure spice, why not a teacup scale for coziness? And while I’m at it, why not a scale for tracking how violent books become, as well?

Oh, and I also used gouache watercolor to paint the edges of my copy. It's my favorite one I've done so far. Isn't it pretty?

The sequel, Prudence Marsh is Not a Nobody Anymore, will be out on November 10!

Complex trauma, grooming, and emotional and mental abuse

As a healing narrative, this particular cozy fantasy represents some unique and important facets of abuse survival. My fellow survivors of lifelong grooming and indoctrination will resonate with Violet’s emotional journey through this story. She struggles to reconcile her guilt and secrets with community acceptance; her love for her abuser with the facts of his evils; and what her past deeds mean for her skills, passions, and identity.

After Violet discovers Shadowfade’s true nature and he dies, her emotions churn regarding her relationship with magic itself. He was the one who taught her everything she knew. She comes to an understanding that her magic must come from different sources–dark magic and natural magic–and so she turns away from magic that feels too passionate or similar to the past. She finds a new way to cast magic that feels more separated, distant, safe.

She is wrong. The new way of casting magic causes harm to the environment around her, just as dissociation itself eventually does. Emotions are not the enemy, not even the stronger and darker ones like rage. As she heals and experiences more positive passions, her old form of magic comes back to her without her even noticing. Nathaniel is the end of the blight in more ways than one.

Emotional repression, self-denial, and in ways even self-harm overlap beautifully with Violet's mistake. These types of psychological traps and gymnastics after surviving something like she has, and they always have profound consequences. In this story, the consequences affect the entire community by nature of the land, but no lives are directly threatened, so the stakes remain manageable.

Even more gorgeous is the reaction of the community around her. Like many real-world victims of evil levels of manipulation, she is not as alone as she might think.