This is a story of St. John Fox, a well-known writer. St. John cannot help but to write stories in which the female leads get killed off. Enter Mary Foxe, his muse, an idea of a woman Fox conjures up. Mary is tired of the female killings and challenges Fox to write other kinds of stories. St. John and Mary become active participants in these new tales and the overlap in stories/characters leaves you guessing as to who is actually writing the stories Mary or St. John? Daphne, St. Johns wife, senses that something is off - that St. John might be having an affair. St. John comes clean about his muse and Daphne gets to the bottom of what makes St. John tick in an attempt to save the relationship. In doing so, she also becomes an active participant in the stories, and the stories take on a different kind of feel when Daphne enters the scene (which make me wonder if it is she who is writing the tale).

Like I said, the stories overlap and might seem confusing at first, I know another read-through will serve me well. Its not until I got to the acknowledgments at the end of the read that I discovered that that the book is based on the tale of Bluebeard and other tales Ive never read (but will now!). Whether you are familiar with the tales or not, this book will leave you in a state of magical wonder. I loved guessing as to what was real and imagined. And the overlapping of characters in tales that were very different from one another gave this book a dream-like quality. Ive never read anything like it before and know that this is a book I will go back to time and again as I am sure I will discover something new with every read.

One of my favorite quotes from this read is "The fox was philosophical. From the moment he had recognized loveliness he had known it couldn't last. And he returned to fox business...

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