In this sapphic Snow White retelling, if Snow is to save her kingdom from being ravaged by the Blight, she’ll have to kill the Evil Queen’s daughter…if she doesn’t fall in love with her first.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Andrea Hannah’s The Wildest Things, which is out February 25th 2025.
When her glass coffin unexpectedly shatters, Snow White awakens to anything but a dream. The land is rotting. The animals have mutated. In the twenty years that have passed since Snow bit into the poisoned apple, the kingdom of Roanfrost has transformed from a luscious wild land to a blight-ravaged nightmare. In search of answers and a way to restore her kingdom to its former glory, Snow sets out on a dangerous journey that will test the strength she never knew she had.
Friends will become foes.
New alliances will form.
The Queen with the blood red lips will stop at nothing to seize her power as well as her heart.
If Snow has any chance to survive and restore not only her kingdom, but all of Garedenne, her only option is to become the Seasonkeeper and access the life-giving magic that will heal the plague. But the path to becoming the Seasonkeeper is more treacherous than she could ever imagine—because the wild things have awakened and Snow’s darker impulses yearn to set them free.
Chapter 1
I heard the glass crack before I felt the first nick on my skin. The sound was soft and low at first, like the pattering of deer hooves on summer-sweet grass, until it wasn’t. The glass coffin groaned under the weight of an unseen storm. A single shard dropped onto my cheek, coaxing out a drop of blood.
I imagined lifting my hand to touch it, and to my surprise, my hand actually moved.
My fingers twitched as they found purchase. My skin. I could feel my own skin again. I smeared the blood across my cheek with my thumb.
I ran my fingers down my face, settling on the soft spot just below my chin. I carefully pressed into my skin.
A heartbeat.
This was different from all of the other dreams. In the past, when I’d open my eyes, I’d find myself staring up at a milky-blue sky. Sometimes, I could almost imagine the scent of the forest air—like a blanket of mist laced with the familiar sting of nettle. The promising growl of thunder.
But I never felt the rain. I only heard it as the sky darkened and the purple underbellies of the clouds hovered close to the treetops. The incessant pulse of weather, of seasons, of life, all on the other side of the glass.
In all of the dreams, I’d felt the passage of time. Even in my half-slumber, I tasted the change of seasons in the hollow of my jaw, from the full-blossomed swell of summer to the sharp bite of winter. But every time I opened my eyes—though I was never quite sure if my lashes were actually fluttering open, or if I was imagining it—the sky above me stayed the same. The same satin sky that had always crested over the tree line of the Enchanted Forest. And I could only stare, watching
the endless blue.
Nothing changed, and everything changed.
But there was no blue.
There was only darkness on the other side of the spiderweb crack above me.
Slowly, I reached farther. My hand pressed against the glass.
Several tiny shards fell like stardust, making a pat, pat, pat sound as they landed on the bodice of my velvet dress. I gasped.
More fell, larger shards this time. They pitter-pattered like summer rain on the thatched roof of an old cottage, catching in my hair and on my skin. The glass groaned as the crack grew wider, and the black pressed in.
My heartbeat picked up speed. Was someone out there, finally smashing the hilt of their sword into this delicate prison? Someone to finally free me after all this time?
An image flitted through my mind, not quite a memory, but a promise. There had been someone—a prince—who was meant to come and release me. I’d imagined the sound of hooves caressing the earth, the huff of a horse as the rider dismounted. I never heard him arrive. There had
been a face, however, that had peered in on me from the other side of the glass. That I was certain of. Dark hair. Olive skin.
But he never removed the lid.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the face had vanished. For long after, I dreamed of the almost-prince. The echo of his image haunted me as he watched me from the other side—the outside. His thumb would touch the glass just above my lips, as if he could brush it across them. As if his touch alone was infused with magic, the kind that could awaken me.
These were only dreams, though, and I always fell back into a restless slumber.
But something, or someone, was here now. Something was smashing the glass.
I reached toward the center of the crack. A large shard had fallen free, and some of the blackness from the outside had started to creep its way in. My fingers grazed it.
Moss.
“Oh,” I whispered. Moss. Something real and alive and from the outside. My whole body buzzed with the possibility.
The glass cracked, louder this time, and a large shard dropped onto my chest with a thump. More fell, sharp and deadly glitter that jabbed at my skin. I squeezed my eyes closed as glass rained upon me. My hands gripped at the thick blanket of moss above.
There was something wrong.
This moss, it wasn’t the same deep forest green that I remembered. It didn’t make my fingertips hum with life when I touched the earthy velvet.
This was a dead thing.
I inhaled deeply, my sluggish mind trying to piece together this new information. I had never experienced moss like this before, unless the life had been choked from it by overgrown roots. But this moss had created an inky-black blanket over my coffin. It must have been growing and spreading for years.
Why was it dead now?
What had happened to the outside world?
“This isn’t right,” I said, my voice croaking. “Wait—”
The boom of the glass vibrated in my ears as the whole thing shattered. I pressed my palms to my face and screamed.
The world was silent.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Where there should be an endless cerulean sky, there was only black. What was left of the glass lay around me in a constellation of deadly stars. The moss and foliage that had swallowed up my coffin remained, covering me in an intricate net. I lifted my hand and pushed against it.
A single vine snapped, shaking loose more glass. I pushed again, harder. This time, speckles of soil dropped onto my cheeks like ash, but the overgrowth did not budge.
I would have to dig myself out.
I gritted my teeth and began to claw through the black. Thorns dug into my skin as I yanked at the vines and pushed through the moss, coaxing more drops of blood to the surface. I paused, breathing heavily, and wiped my wounds on the bodice of my dress. I tried again.
And again. A guttural scream flew from my lips as I ripped and clawed, clumps of moss raining down into the coffin. The more I pushed, the more thorns found their way into my skin, and soon my arms were covered in slender rivulets of blood. I shoved my hands farther into the tangle and pushed again.
A sliver of light appeared.
I released a shallow breath. This was it; this was the outside. I could taste the mist again. The loamy scent of plant life. I brushed my bloodied thumb against my lips as I considered what was left of the overgrowth.
I remembered.
I knew where real magic came from, and it wasn’t from men. With one last feral scream, I thrust my arms through the opening and pushed. The moss made a ripping sound like a seam in a dress, one last final protest before it fell away.
There was nothing above me but empty sky the color of cobblestones. I winced as I forced my body upright. Tiny shards of glass dripped off my body like glittering gemstones.
Snow White, the long-dead princess of Roanfrost, was free.
From The Wildest Things, by Andrea Hannah. Copyright © 2025 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
