The Bone Brides

by Marley Rose-Teter

Hayao Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro in this Sapphic YA portal fantasy in which a girl must save her changeling girlfriend from a terrifying faery realm.

Nola James can handle it. She can handle that her father is dead. She can handle that her friends, bored with her grief, left her behind. Nola James has to handle it because Lumi—the love of her life and a faery changeling—is in danger. Not only is Lumi's human mother trying to kill her, but she’s being hunted by veiled monsters that want to return her to the fae. Hiding out in an abandoned cabin with only a skeleton-rabbit for company is hard, but Nola can handle it. And she does.

Until Lumi is abducted.

In order to save her, Nola must enter the faery realm: a boggy world in which eyeless horses parade as brides, ghost-bees produce transformative honey, and skeletons dance in skin-colored cloaks. Aided by a witch-girl with uncertain motives, Nola uncovers the realm’s terrifying power over changelings. If Nola can’t outplay an abyssal faery queen and find the courage to let the world see her own pain, Lumi will be trapped—not only in faeryland but in a skin that’s not her own.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Lesbian, LGBT, Queer, Fae, Gothic

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2026

About the author

Marley Rose-Teter lives in the Santa Cruz mountains with her partner, child, any number of house-rabbit friends, and a garage full of Halloween decorations. When not writing, she can be found directing local theatre or speaking at anime conventions. She goes at everything she does with her whole heart and strives always to be a bride married to amazement.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIVE F*CKING STARS.

🦌"It had been hard to put her energy into imaginary ghosts when thr love of her life had become a real one."🦌

🥀Another day, another great book tour/review. Today's book tour is for The Bone Brides by Marley Rose-Teter, OUT TODAY!

🐇SYNOPSIS🐇
In comments

🧠My Thoughts🧠
Emotional. Damage. That's it. That's the review....

Okay, I'm joking but not about the emotional damage. This book gave me strong Alice in Wonderland vibes buy a lot darker. It also haf a lot of spooky, creepy, grief-filled goodness. Honestly, this is a new favorite of mine and I will be taking my butt to the store today to pick up a finished copy with the pretty edges. I will also be rereading this in the near future so I can tab all my favorite parts and quotes. Oh, did I mention it's sapphic? Yeah, it's pretty much perfect.

"I will be happy... Sad people are boring. Sad people are toxic. Sad people limit themselves by wallowing instead of finding solutions and pushing on."

A huge thank you to @pagestreetya and @marleyroseteter for sending this book my way! And thank you to @coloredpagesbt for hosting! Even though the book was gifted, all thoughts are my own.

💬ⓆⓄⓉⒹ: What's the last book you read that had grief in it?

🏷#TheBoneBridesTour #coloredpagesbooktours #marleyroseteter #thebonebrides #booktour

[KMart Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dark, heartbreaking fairy tale about two young women who are utterly devoted to each other and just want to find somewhere safe. And WOW, is it sad. The fairy tale atmosphere is the book’s biggest strength. Strong Alice in Wonderland vibes with a strange, unsettling, AND whimsical world full of eerie imagery. It feels like a fairy tale meant to frighten as much as enchant.

Nola is dealing with grief, guilt, and the loss of pretty much every support system she should have been able to rely on, while Lumi has endured some truly awful abuse at the hands of her mother. Lumi’s story in particular was so upsetting. In flashbacks, we watch her be terrorized for something completely outside her control (being a changeling). It was heartbreaking. They’re two deeply wounded young women who are in love and run away together.

One of the things I appreciated most was the exploration of toxic positivity and grief. Nola has internalized the idea that her sadness is a burden to others. That she needs to choose joy and keep her grief out of sight because it makes people uncomfortable. That hit close to home for me. I also really appreciated seeing this explored in a YA fantasy because I haven't really seen it done before.

That said, the story could be quite meandering. My attention drifted WAY more than once, especially when the focus shifted to Kyteler. I wanted more of Lumi and more of Nola’s growth and their relationship. Instead, Kyteler kept taking center stage and I struggled to connect with her. I know that her role was important, but I wish it had been a little more sidelined instead of Lumi.

Beautiful, eerie, and SO sad, but a little too meandering for me to love as much as I wanted to. It struggled to hold my attention, even though it was also capable of breaking my heart and making me feel seen.

Thank you to Colored Pages Book Tours, Page Street YA, and the author for the complimentary copy. This review is voluntary and all opinions are my own.

[Rachel | fullybookedtbr · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Characters: 3.50⭐️
Setting: 4.00⭐️
Plot: 3.50⭐️
Themes: 3.75⭐️
Personal enjoyment: 3.50⭐️
Emotional Impact: 3.50⭐️
Overall rating: 3.75⭐️

Nola James is having a hard time. Her father has died, her friends abandoned her because of her grief and now she girlfriend is a missing faery changeling who's human mother tried to kill her and veiled monsters are hunting her. Nola enters the faery realm to find her and outplay the Faery Queen to get Lumi back.

The Bone Brides has amazing visuals in this almost Tim Burton like world with a skeleton-rabbit companion, eyeless horses, ghost bees and stolen skins. The world faery is not this mystical place of color, but a boggy world of almost despair and darkness. I think Marley Rose-Teter has done a wonderful job with the descriptions of the faery realm and built this world I would love to dive into.

However, I found that Nola was too depressing. She was too hard on herself and had a "woe as me" attitude throughout the whole book who latched onto Lumi without understanding if she truly loved her or loved the idea of her. I think Nola could have been a great character of overcoming from the depression that she had experience in her life, but she almost refused to. There are moments with Kittler, the witch, where she says why can't you just be happy and I was questioning that as well. I understand at the core of this story it is about acceptance and grief, but I felt Nola stayed in her misery a little too long when so many people are trying to build her up.

Jeffrey and Henry were my favorite characters; skeleton-like animal companions. The side characters were fun and filled with whimsy.

Would I recommend this book? Maybe.

Thank you to Page Street YA for a physical ARC of this book.

[Montes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a story about what you can overcome for and with love.

I thought Lumi and Nola were cute in the beginning but because I always feared for Lumi’s safety, her permanence in the human world and they got separated almost immediately, I kind of disconnected from their relationship pretty quickly, although I never doubted that they would be together in the end, they would have never stopped trying to find each other. I did enjoy Nola’s arc of acceptance of the all consuming grief for the loss of her dad and that she allows herself to feel and realize that she doesn’t have to hide herself from the people who truly love her.

Jeffrey and Harry were my favorite characters. The biggest shock for me was when an already dead bone rabbit died again, it didn’t cross my mind that could be possible and I missed him as much as Nola did. As much as I disliked Lumi’s mother, I could understand the grief and anger of having her child taken away and replaced, even if Lumi hadn’t had any choice in the matter. Attempting to murder her definitely crossed a line, that is unforgivable.

The world building of the fae world was very descriptive. For me, it was unexpected that some humans appeared to know of their existence. I, unfortunately, struggled a bit to keep up with everything, there were times I had no idea what was going on. I wish we could have had a bit more from Lumi’s POV, I think maybe that could have fleshed out the fae world and allowed me to understand their way of living better.

Thank you to Marley Rose-Teter, Colored Pages Book Tours and Page Street YA for providing me with an eARC.

[Cyd’s Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you the publisher for approving me to read this, I’m rating it 4.0 stars.

A very engaging YA read that had quite an eerie vibe to it.

The story follows two characters Lumi and Nola, this has a little sapphic romance to it which I loved. The story unfolds with quite a dark tone, the girls at one point are separated and this begins a quest to be reunited. There’s magic, bargains and trickery throughout with surprising allies and interesting side characters. Really enjoyed this for an autumn read.

[Bbecca_marie]

thank you so much to the publisher for the gifted copy.

I really thought I was going to love this one, but unfortunately, I did not. I feel like it had all of the makings of a book I would love however, it felt disjointed, and it was hard to stay present in the story. I attempted to eyeball read it, and when that wasn’t working, I switched over to the audiobook and unfortunately it was the same thing it just didn’t flow well and I’m not sure if it was the story or the pacing but something didn’t work..

happy reading 📖

[Tristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Toppling Stacks Tours for the digital ARC of The Bone Brides by Marley Rose-Teter. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Bone Brides by Marley Rose-Teter is a sapphic YA portal fantasy that uses its faery rescue premise to dig into something harder to name: the way grief warps a person so slowly they don't notice until they're standing at the bottom of a lake trying to outwit a queen who doesn't care if they make it back.

The setup is clean. Nola James's girlfriend Lumi is a changeling, something the fae have been trying to reclaim for years. When they finally succeed, Nola follows her in. What she finds on the other side is a world that operates on its own logic and has no interest in explaining itself: eyeless horses parading as brides, ghost-bees whose honey changes whoever consumes it, skeletons dressed in skin-colored cloaks. Somewhere in all of it, an abyssal faery queen standing between Nola and Lumi. Along the way she picks up Kyteler, a witch with sharp edges and a perspective that cuts through the strangeness in exactly the right ways.

I want to be upfront about the experience of reading the first half of this book, because it shaped how I sat with the whole thing. Between roughly ten and fifty percent of the way through, I was genuinely confused. Not frustrated, exactly, but adrift. I kept waiting for the plot to surface and give me something to hold onto. What I didn't realize until later was that Nola is just as lost. The confusion is doing work. Around the halfway mark everything starts connecting, the strange pieces lock into each other, and the story moves with real momentum from there. Knowing that going in would have helped me. So now I'm telling you.

Nola can be insufferable, and I think it's worth saying that plainly. There are stretches where her grief and her fixation on Lumi, the weight of her father's death, her mother's depression, the friends who abandoned her, all of it compounding, got exhausting. But this is a YA book that is genuinely about all of that, about what happens to a person who has been quietly drowning for so long she doesn't know what she actually feels anymore. Her growth lands. She earns it. Kyteler was my favorite presence in the whole book. Funny and strange and exactly the energy the faery world needed around it.

My one real wish is more Nola and Lumi together. They're separated almost immediately and spend most of the book apart, so the relationship driving every risk Nola takes is built largely through flashbacks. I believed in Nola's love. What I wanted was to feel its weight, especially by the end. As it stands, the relationship reads more as Lumi being the one person willing to absorb Nola's trauma than as something with its own gravity. There's a version of this book where their connection is the emotional spine of everything. I don't think we quite got there.

Overall, The Bone Brides is a stronger grief story and a stronger piece of strange world-building than it is a love story, and if you go in knowing that, I think you'll find a lot to love. The second half earns the patience the first half asks for. It's the kind of debut that makes you want to see what Marley Rose-Teter does next, earning it four stars from me.

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok @mythicalreadsreviewer.

[RollTide.Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 + 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 │ 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐲! 🔮𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 #Gifted 𝐞𝐀𝐑𝐂 & 𝐏𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬, 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞-𝐓𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐘𝐀 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 & 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲!

𝘛𝘓 𝘋𝘙; 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘛𝘰𝘳𝘰 𝘹 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘴𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘹 𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘺 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴), 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘠𝘈, 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘨𝘦 & 𝘚𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤!

𝘘𝘖𝘛𝘋: 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘵, 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩?

𝐌𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 💭

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 stars.
Story Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 stars.
📄Pages: 368
📚Format: Gifted eARC & Physical ARC from Colored Pages, Marley Rose-Teter, Page Street YA Publishing & NetGalley
🌶️ Spice Level: YA / None
📖 Standalone / Series: Standalone
🗓️ Pub Day: September 29, 2026

This read was beautiful & reminiscent of the changing season. The whimsical tone & haunting setting drew me in immediately, but the FMCs captured & kept my attention. Nola & Lumi were beautifully written & so endearing & adorable together. This sapphic YA portal fantasy was full of all the changelings, tragedy, coming of age wonder, & beautifully complex but easily understood world building I love in my YA fantasies.

Jeffrey was adorable (IYKYK) & I loved the innocence but quiet strength of Nola as she endeavors onward. This was an incredibly unique read.

𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐛 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞:

💀 Sapphic YA
💀 Portal Fantasy
💀 Heavier Topics in Your Reads
💀 Whimsical Language
💀 Strong FMCs
💀 Coming of Age
💀 Magic, Magical Creatures: Fae, Witches, Changelings, Portals

This was my honest, voluntary review.

🏷️ @coloredpagesbt @pagestreetya @marleyroseteter @pagestreetpublishing @netgalley #TheBoneBridesTour #ColoredPagesBookTours #PageStreetYA #PageStreetPublishing

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Reena's Booksta
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Blurb:

Hayao Miyazaki meets Guillermo del Toro in this Sapphic YA portal fantasy in which a girl must save her changeling girlfriend from a terrifying faery realm.

Nola James can handle it. She can handle that her father is dead. She can handle that her friends, bored with her grief, left her behind. Nola James has to handle it because Lumi—the love of her life and a faery changeling—is in danger. Not only is Lumi's human mother trying to kill her, but she’s being hunted by veiled monsters that want to return her to the fae. Hiding out in an abandoned cabin with only a skeleton-rabbit for company is hard, but Nola can handle it. And she does.

Until Lumi is abducted.

In order to save her, Nola must enter the faery realm: a boggy world in which eyeless horses parade as brides, ghost-bees produce transformative honey, and skeletons dance in skin-colored cloaks. Aided by a witch-girl with uncertain motives, Nola uncovers the realm’s terrifying power over changelings. If Nola can’t outplay an abyssal faery queen and find the courage to let the world see her own pain, Lumi will be trapped—not only in faeryland but in a skin that’s not her own.

[Karis · Rating 2 out of 5]

~~Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street YA for the ARC!~~

1.5/5 stars rounded up.

The way I barely made it out of this without DNFing it — I think I deserve a gold star or something to makeup for what I had endured.

The Bone Brides, while having a good message at its heart, was very much a mess. So much of it was disjointed faery magic happenings I could barely make heads or tails of. I believe that was Rose-Teter's intention, for the world of faeryes should be foreign and almost imperceptible to the average human. But the writing didn't help. Rather, the descriptions went too far in depth to the point of indescribable, if that makes sense. It just hurt my eyes trying to read and comprehend everything that was happening. I gave up three-quarters to the end in understanding anything concretely and just chugged along to get to the last page.

The characters are — there. The only thing I liked was not a person individually but the themes of grief and emotions they were meant to carry out to proper execution. That was supposed to be Nola's arc, accepting her emotions and not forcing herself to put up a front of happiness constantly, but it didn't quite hit as much as it should've for me. Lumi didn't have much going on either despite being the very person that drives the whole plot. Her backstory was interesting, and her abilities as a changeling should've been explored far more in depth, but that was all squandered in favor of her being Nola's damsel in distress. The very romance itself was held up on sticks. While their history is told nonlinearly, the two barely interact for most of the book. When they do, they're sweet, telling each other they love and support each other, but I barely know these girls. Tragic backstories and cute couple-y sappiness aren't enough to convince me to root for them. The only other significant character is Kyteler, who felt more like the main character than Nola and could've had an interesting dynamic with Lumi if the plot had given them that chance. Not gonna say anymore than that.

Overall, this was just a disappointing slog for me. So much potential, but I just couldn't vibe with it.

[Bee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review incoming tThe Bone Brides was a story I thought I would love, with changelings, magic and creatures from myth and legend all playing a part of the story.

However, for me, it felt very disjointed and I was somewhat confused as to what was happening and when to our main characters, Lumi and Nola. I struggled with how one of the main characters handled the grief she had over losing her father - and part is definitely on me as I’m close to it being one year since I lost my father and I should have thought about how it would affect me. (Honestly, I thought I’d be fine but grief is indeed awful and likes to creep up and knock you down to the floor when you least expect it.)

I loved the queer representation in the book, Nola and Lumi are clearly devoted to one another and I will always like to see a queer relationship in a book no matter the genre because representation matters. I firmly believe that LGBTQIA+ characters need to be a part of a story in the same way hetronormative ones have for decades so readers, especially young ones don’t regard it as ‘different’ and may see themselves in characters. My issue with the two girls is that there are times in the story where their personalities are so similar it’s hard to tell them apart in the maelstrom of what’s happening in the story. I also found it a little weird that they call one another darling - which is something Nola’s mum calls her daughter and again, it just didn’t seem right for them and was a little bizarre to me.

I found the fae world confusing and characters overwhelming and struggled with the storyline which did disappoint me because I’d wanted to enjoy this because as I say, the synopsis drew me in when the book tour came up for me. I deeply disliked Nola, she’s a character drowning with everything that’s been thrown at her but she also doesn’t appear to want to get any help and perhaps realise she’s carrying too much. Even when she has a chance to connect with her Mother, who believes she left for other reasons she admittedly tells the truth but to me the disconnect grows more rather than close it down.

I think this will be one many will like, but sadly it missed the mark for me and I’m genuinely sad about it. However, onwards and upwards - and I hope others love this more than me. omorrow.

[Alexa Blart, Library Cop · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street YA for providing an ARC of this title. All opinions are my own.

The good: at its heart, this is a book about grief, and the messaging there was very, very well done. Nola, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, lost her father to suicide prior to the start of the book, and has had her grief journey hampered by unkind friends who made it clear that her persistent grief was boring and annoying them. As a result, Nola feels immense pressure to smile and be happy all the time for fear of losing more people--all while her surviving parent is still falling apart in her own grief. It's complex, realistic, and has a satisfying arc with just a smidge of magic that's interwoven cleverly, and I thought the author did an excellent job with it.

Unfortunately, the good messaging in this book is weighed down by the uneven execution of the plot. Most of the time, I had no idea what was happening (due to the magical, discombobulated, human-world-rules-don't-apply nature of Nola's journey into the realm of the fae) and continued to struggle to find my footing. This is likely intentional on the author's part, since mythology surrounding the Fae often includes magic that doesn't make sense and locations where the rules of physics and logic don't apply; however, it just didn't work for my reading experience. Likewise, the relationship between Nola and her girlfriend Lumi, while very sweet, felt like it lacked sufficient substance. By the start of the book, they've already been dating for about nine months and are extremely in love--so much so that Lumi's casual bombshell of strange abilities and a murderous mother go almost unremarked on by Nola, who agrees to run away with her immediately. But I felt, by the end, like I had no clear understanding of how this relationship came to be so strong--only that it was.

I think fans of established authors who dabble in the realm of the fae (Holly Black obviously comes to mind) will find lots to be entertained by here. It just wasn't for me.

[Mila · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Lumi is magic. How could she be anything else— this sunflower of a girl, with her outsized gestures and airy way of carrying herself, as though gravity is an opt-in experience? Lumi, always swaying to music only she can hear, always loving the world so hugely, unashamed. Lumi, who couldn’t lie if she tried. Lumi is magic. Of course she is. Not one moment in the nine months they’ve known each other has given Nola reason to doubt."

In the bone brides, we follow Nola, who is trying to make it through life. Despite losing her father, despite being left behind by her friends who are "bored with her grief", despite her girlfriend being in danger. Until her girlfriend, Lumi, is abducted and taken back to the faery realm where she came from. Because Lumi is a changeling, and Nola is determined to follow her there and bring her back.

I loved this novel and I am so glad that kids gets to have this type of books nowadays because it was simply lovely. The world building was beautiful and the characters really well developed and written. I also adored the relationship between Lumi and Nola. My favourite aspect was certainly the way magic was written in this, the general magical aspects but also more specifically Lumi's magic that acted on bones. It was creepy in an eerie way and the way it was described made reading this novel a whole experience.

At core this is a novel about depression, about fighting against it and about trauma. I loved how it was treated and the way the author used her story to tackle those thematics. It ended up being a fascinating story and an absolutely charming novel.

If a eerie and charming sapphic YA fantasy novel that tackle on trauma and depression while having an intriguing world building sounds right up your alley then you are probably going to love this one. I would like to thanks Netgalley as well as Page Street YA for sending me an e-ARC of this lovely novel, it releases on September 29th.

[Chiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Bone Brides by Marley Rose-Teter is a sapphic dark portal fantasy. It had some things that I liked, but there were also parts that needed work, and some elements fell into both of these categories.

The absolute best part of The Bone Brides was Jeffrey, who is a skeleton rabbit!! He was adorable and a very fleshed out (no pun intended) animal companion! Was I worried the entire time that an already dead rabbit would die? Absolutely. Was I right to be worried? Absolutely 🙂‍↕️ Did it all turn out okay in the end for Jeffrey? Thank god, yes.

The faery realm itself was so unique, which I loved. Sometimes it gave me Alice in Wonderland vibes, which I am always down for! But at other times, I also wanted more. We are told that there is this ceremony that results in a new faery queen being chosen but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. And even though the ascension of the new faery queen was pretty integral to the plot, it also felt removed from the story because the main character, Nola, was not involved in almost any of it. Most of it was happening off page so it was hard to feel any real kind of urgency about it.

It was supposed to be urgent because Nola’s girlfriend, Lumi, could be chosen as the next faery queen. The girls are already in a relationship when the book starts, and spend most of it apart. Except for some random flashbacks, there’s really no development of their relationship, which made it hard to feel invested in their connection.

Nola is dealing with the grief of losing her father, as well as anxiety and depression. A large part of Nola’s character arc is her coming to realise that she is experiencing all of these things and that she needs to let herself feel in order to heal, which I thought was done well.

Overall I liked The Bone Brides, even though it didn’t quite hit the mark on some things. Would I recommend it? If you’re looking for a darker portal fantasy that’s a standalone and sapphic, then yes.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

"𝙄'𝙫𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙮𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙮𝙤𝙪."

My heart took a beating! This had ALL the trappings of a sweet first love you'd do ANYTHING for (before growing into a lame adult 😆).

─── THE MEAT ────────────────
When Nola’s changeling girlfriend Lumi gets abducted BACK into the fae realm, Nola dives in after her. Inside, you'll find:
🐇 A delightfully quirky skeleton rabbit companion
🐴 An unsettling fae realm packed with bizarre creatures
🧹 A sharp-as-hell witch who steals EVERY scene
💔 A heavy, painfully real exploration of depression + grief
🌀 Bizarre, mind-bending Alice in Wonderland style logic

─── THE VIBE ───────────────
Surreal dark fantasy meets deep emotional rot, bone magic, and sinister court secrets 💀

─── MY THOUGHTS ────────────
I will NOT lie: there's a cosmic, mind-bending element to the realm that might not be for everyone.

Personally, I saw Nola as such a gentle, naive, innocent kid dealt a TERRIBLE card in life. Her nervous system wasn't built to handle this much crushing grief so fast, and she lacks the support to process it and feel accepted.

Just because I found her so deeply relatable doesn't mean YOU won't find her insufferable at times, especially if you hate reading about a constant worrywart consumed by anxiety to absolute exhaustion!

The REAL star is Jeffrey the skeleton rabbit (and yes, I was stressed the ENTIRE time that an already-dead bunny would die AGAIN!). While I wanted more page time for Nola and Lumi together, this ends up being a FAR stronger grief story and piece of worldbuilding than a romance! 🕯️🖤

─── THE SAVE ───────────────
If you love weird fae folklore and grief explorations, save these:

The Redwood Bargain by Markelle Grabo
└─ High-stakes fae tale steeped in bargains and dark magic.

A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth
└─ Urban sapphic fantasy with queer chaotic energy.

Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
└─ Dark fae fantasy delving into court bargains and trauma.

[The Bookish Chimera - Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Why does she love Lumi? Nola has a million answers and also none.”

My favorite part of The Bone Brides was its atmosphere. It was foggy, eerie but also magical, and "gently macabre”, a bit like in a Tim Burton movie. The narrative choices and the characters are great, to begin with that awesome (skeletton) bunny companion <3.
Through Nola’s initiatic journey, the story explores the sacrifices we sometimes make for love, but also grief, in a literal but also in a metaphorical way. But what I loved most (beside the atmosphere), was that The Bone Brides is a YA book AND explores an established relationship. It questions what it is to love for a while, what does it mean, from “where” it comes. That’s not something we see a lot in books, and even less in YA ones. Nola has to go through a lot of challenges, and she doesn’t suffer because she’s heroic. She does it because she’s in love, and she wants the best for her girlfriend, a young woman she’d known for years and who isn’t “her newest attraction”. That’s beautiful, and, honestly, full of hope (and heartwarming).
The book also shows a beautiful (and full of challenges!) female friendship, and it contributes to the magic I felt while reading most of it.

Thank you to ColoredPages PR for the free access to the eARC on NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[RedReviews4You Susan-Dara · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a quiet, folkloric ache at the heart of Bone Brides — the kind of sapphic, myth‑touched storytelling that feels both tender and haunting. Marley Rose‑Teter builds a world where grief is a shadow you learn to walk with, identity is something you reclaim piece by piece, and love is a soft, steady flame that refuses to go out.

Here are five reasons this book worked so beautifully for me:

Atmospheric worldbuilding — soft magic, folklore, and a setting that feels ancient and intimate.

A quiet, powerful sapphic romance — rooted in connection, not spectacle.

Myth‑driven magic — woven into the emotional arc rather than layered on top.

A tender exploration of grief — honest, gentle, and deeply human.

Character‑first storytelling — Nola’s emotional landscape is the beating heart of the book.

The pacing is gentle, almost meditative, but the emotional stakes stay sharp. And the sapphic romance? Quiet, powerful, and rooted in genuine connection. This is the kind of book that speaks differently depending on where you are in your life — a beautifully atmospheric, emotionally resonant read.

[DoinBookishThings · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bone Brides was so weird and sad and kind of adorable?? A skeleton rabbit, ghost-bees, eyeless horses parading as brides… the faery realm felt like a nightmare fairytale, and I loved that it was actually strange instead of just another pretty fae court.

What really pulled at my heartstrings was Nola and Lumi. I loved seeing an established sapphic relationship where their love was never the question. They already chose each other, and the story is about how far they’ll go to keep choosing each other. Nola walking into this terrifying world for the girl she loves while carrying so much grief for her dad… ugh. The way this book handles depression and feeling like you have to pretend you’re okay hit way harder than I expected. And Lumi grieving the mother she deserved but never truly had hurt in an entirely different way.

The fae world became too confusing for me, which kept this from being five stars, but this was eerie, emotional, sapphic, and wonderfully weird. Also, I would die for the skeleton rabbit.

Thank you Page Street YA and NetGalley for the arc!

[Katie Wisecup · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25★
The Bone Brides is a haunting fairytale about two girls trying to find happiness and love after grief. Nola and Lumi are both battling their own types of grief when they run away together, Nola has lost her father and Lumi is a changeling whose human mother has been trying to kill her. When Lumi ends up in the faery realm, the place of her birth, Nola must travel their as well in order to bring her back.

The beginning of the book really hooked me with the dark fairytale vibes. The faery world itself was so different from what I expected and anything I had read before; it was at times confusing, but always captivating with its whimsical creepiness. I loved how devoted Nola and Lumi were to each other and I wish we would've gotten more time with them together. Kyteler, however I did want to see more growth from both as a character and with her friendship with Nola.

Overall, if you are looking for a spooky, sapphic fantasy, this one fits the bill.

Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street YA for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[E. McCoy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very rarely do not finish reading a book, especially if I have the chance to have an ARC. However, this book just isn't for me. I got about a fifth of the way in before it felt like anything meaningful happened. Even then there was a weird mixture of the pacing being rushed and slow at the same time. It was confusing to read on top of me struggling to connect with either of the main characters. Their voices were so similar that I often had to reread pages in order to figure out who was talking.

I read through other reviews and I believe that I am just not the right audience for this book. Still, I wanted to give it a chance until I simply could not continue.

I would say give this book a chance when it comes out and you can get a preview to read first. If you like the writing then dive in. If you don't then don't spend the money.

[Magen And The Moon · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

This sapphic, YA, dark fantasy, portal fantasy novel is super creepy, disturbing, and fantastic.

TW!!!! Post-partum depression, infant/child neglect, child abuse, parental attempted murder suicide, grief, homelessness, kidnapping, graphic descriptions of corpse pieces doing weird magical things.

Everyone in this book deeply needs therapy. That said, it was a wild ride that would make a great TV show one day! The magic was super beautiful and original and LUSH- just so wonderfully everywhere and so well thought out! The grief was profound, and the emotional disturbances never stopped. I will read whatever this author wants to write, their brain is magical and weird and I LIKE IT.

Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street YA for the free advanced reader ebook. I read and reviewed this book voluntarily.

[Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

First of all, thank you & Netgalley so much for sending me a copy of this book.

The Bone Brides is a Sapphic YA Fantasy novel about two girlfriends, one magical and one human, who run away together. They go into the magical realm and one goes missing.
I really liked the magical world, it was unique and well done. I have never read something like it.

The story is more about love and trauma. I didn’t expect it, but it was beautifully done. I love reading about two young queers in love. It heals the inner me, who was so scared to come to terms of liking women – let alone not liking men at all.

If you’re looking for a Sapphic YA Fantasy book with an unique fantasy world, that is more focussed about trauma and other issues: read this book!

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this one, 3.5 stars rounded down. This novel was beautiful and dark (like the cover!), and it was more heartfelt than I realized it would be. All of the elements are there for me to love it, but … I felt confused at times, which took me off guard and was both frustrating and a bit disappointing. I adore fantasy and read it often, yet for some reason I couldn’t quite understand the world and what was happening generally and plot-wise. Nonetheless, the atmosphere and the characters saved it for me, even if Nola wasn’t my favorite. Still happy I won a paperback ARC in a Goodreads Giveaway. This is an author I’m going to watch, as perhaps her next story will check all the boxes I’d hoped this one would!

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dreamlike in a way that hovers between beautiful and disturbing, but also captures the awkward intensity of first love in a way that felt very grounded and nostalgic. The author’s deep knowledge of folklore and love of the English language are very apparent: the Mari Lwyd imagery combined with the play on bridle/bridal was brilliant. I also loved the flooded-cemetery take on Fairyland, which I don’t think I’ve seen before.

This reminded me of Holly Black’s Cruel Prince series if it were told from the perspective of Viv’s human girlfriend—less of the political maneuvering, just a girl in love & in over her head in fairyland. If you liked the Cruel Prince you should read this, and vice versa.

[isi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for the e-ARC!!

The Bone Brides is a very anticipated fantasy for me with the concept of changelings and folklore myths! Unfortunately, the prose was very confusing to me, and I would find myself having to read certain paragraphs multiple times and suddenly feeling lost about what is happening. The beautiful, lush world building was definitely one of the book's strengths, but I could not connect to the characters or plot. I do however absolutely adore the lovely sapphic representation and how sweet their bond was.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the Bone Brides has great writing, it didn't extend to the world building. I found the world to be confusing, which affected my reading experience since so much of the plot was connected to the world itself. Additionally, the book started too abruptly; I had to check that this wasn't a sequel while reading the first chapter because it felt like I was missing a whole book of discoveries.

The author has a lot of promise, and I hope whatever books she writes next show that.

Thank you to the publisher and Colored Pages Book Tours for the copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[ㅤmelli ꧔]

𓏲࣪◜dnf @43% ♡ᵎ

I'm so sad to admit it but unfortunately the book wasn't what i expected.
At first i thought Hey how cool a spooky sapphic book perfect for the vibe right now. But i realized very quickly that it wasn't for me. I didn't really connect with the writing style and the characters didn't interest me. Although the story itself is cool and i really like the idea behind it. But overall i sadly didn’t vibe with the Book.

- still a huge thank you to the author for sending me the e arc in exchange for an honest review. -

started: 14.09.26
stopped : 20.09.26

[S. L. Hemmings-Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I loved this!
This book was creepy and beautiful and descriptive and lush and I absolutely loved the story! I fell in love with the characters and I truly found the story to be so unique and intriguing. I really struggled to put this book down! It was so interesting and gripping, and I just wanted to keep reading.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[mirella · Rating 4 out of 5]

rindo muito pois no final do mês passado fiz um escândalo como todo livro com fadas é uma grande merda e acabei pegando esse e GRAÇAS A DEUS!!!! adorei demais the bone brides, pois tem essa vibe mais "dark" e "esquisita" que eu gostaria que todo livro com temática fadas tivesse (sinto sempre que é uma oportunidade perdida, tem coisa mais sombria e esquista do que FADAS?) e tem SAFICAS, o que já ganha da maioria.

[Adelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick fun read. I found it kept my interest and that says a lot. There is some emotional depth explored, but it did not connect to me. The plot is interesting, but it felt unexplained. Left with more questions than I should. Overall I enjoyed this, but I am unsure if I would revisit it in the future

[Kate Brasington · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was incredibly hard to put down! I enjoyed the gothic/ creepy atmosphere. This book deals heavily with emotional trauma so do check TWS! I enjoyed that this is a YA Sapphic romance and one of the girls is a fae 🥹