Threadneedle by Cari Thomas
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Mental Health Representation, Plus Size Characters, Magic Users, Witches, Modern Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Curses, Thread Magic, Various Magic, London, Coming of Age
Series: Language of Magic #1
My Rating:
Published on: 27th May 2021
Pages: 576
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones / BookBeat Audio
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Anna’s Aunt has always warned her of the dangers of magic. Its twists. Its knots. Its deadly consequences.

Now Anna counts down the days to the ceremony that will bind her magic forever.

Until she meets Effie and Attis.

They open her eyes to a London she never knew existed. A shop that sells memories. A secret library where the librarian feeds off words. A club where revellers lose themselves in a haze of spells.

But as she is swept deeper into this world, Anna begins to wonder if her Aunt was right all along.

Is her magic a gift ... or a curse?

Content Warnings:

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Threadneedle was a book that I’d heard about but wasn’t that interested in until I attended the Cymera Book Festival online and attended a panel with Cari Thomas. Listening to her talk about the book and her research for it stoked my interest. It was one of the few books from the event that was actually at my local library, so I popped a hold on it.

I enjoyed this book and found myself drawn to the group of characters. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was set in my old stomping grounds of South East London. That, combined with the fact that it’s set during their sixth form years, a time in my life when I left my old high school and moved to a different school to start a new life, means that it was a very formative time for me. Just as it is for the girls in this book. Like them, I grew as a person, and experimented (nothing exciting or particularly daring, but I was more social), and it was the start of me becoming the person I am today. Thomas has successfully captured everything I felt during that time and put it into Threadneedle. It’s a book about growing up, finding yourself, pushing boundaries and becoming who you are. It’s, therefore, also a book about lies, friends, heartbreak and betrayal.

Alongside all that, there is a wonderful magic system that is intoxicating, very British and as destructive as it is creative. This is a very dark novel, and there is a core theme of abuse throughout it, especially the abuse of power. It is not used as a plot device, though; it is written with thought and care.

While I liked and enjoyed this book, I realised after finishing it that there are some issues with it. The first is that this is a book set in South East London, which is culturally diverse; Threadneedle is not. The school the girls attend in the book, St Olaves School for Girls, actually exists and is in the borough of Southwark. To give you an idea of just how badly inaccurate the ethnic minority representation is in this book, I decided to check out the demographics for Southwark. In 2018, 46% of the population of Southwark was non-white (statistics are here). There was at least one non-white character, a minor male character who is a Muslim, and that is the only one that comes to mind.

The other issue I had was with one of the main characters, Rowan, who is bullied and cyber-bullied throughout the book for her weight. At first, I was impressed with Thomas’ inclusion of a plus-sized character and for broaching the subject of fat-shaming. Again, it was only afterwards that my doubt began to set in. Rowan is a wonderful character with a fantastic personality and interesting background, however, she is not given any chance to blossom into her full potential.

For the purpose of the book, she exists as the fat girl. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but once I realised it, I couldn’t shake it. It felt as though Rowan exists to be the girl who is ridiculed by the popular girls first and Anna’s friend second. She spends more time in the book as a victim of their bullying than she does being Anna’s friend, which seems a bit backwards to me. Rowan felt significantly less developed to me as a character. Even a religious zealot who was as dull as dishwater ended up with more character development.

Overall, Threadneedle has a great storyline and fantastic world-building, but it is sorely lacking in diversity. The story hooked me enough for me to check out the second book. I just hope that it corrects the mistakes of this one.

Thanks for reading my book review for Threadneedle by Cari Thomas!

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