Audio review first: Really enjoyed the chosen narrator's performance. Bea Holland was engaging and brought nuance and high characterisation to the narrative.





Main Review: Initially, I found the style a little off putting. Yes it was clear and the prose was plain and perfect, rather than heavy or flowery. However, it read a little like it was intended for the very young end of the YA market and tbh I have not been enjoying YA fantasy of late. Three chapters in, this didn't matter. I was fully invested in the twists and turns of the story and the careful world building. I will say that sense of who the book was aimed for versus who it actually served didn't ever entirely go away, and was occasionally jarring. But compared to what the book delivered, it was a minor consideration.



Threadneedle is set in our world. This is London as we know it now. The one difference is that there are witches, this is real magic. Most people no longer believe in such things and witches do not advertise their presence to the cowans (non magical folk), but there are groves across the UK who practice magic. Our introduction into this magical world is not a pleasant one. Anna has always known she was different. Wrong in fact. Her parents are dead under tragic circumstances and she lives with her strict, authoritarian aunt who teaches her that magic and love are sins that will destroy you. Her intention is to raise Anna to become a binder - a witch whose magic is bound so that she cannot use it. There's a lot of the fundamentalist religious zealot in Aunt and not a little Mother Gothel vibes.



As events unfold, Anna finds herself drawn to Effie, a girl her own age who is also a witch but has experienced magic in a far more free and enjoyable way than Anna. When Effie starts to attend Anna's school, Anna begins to rebel against Aunt for the first time in her life. That's really all the plot you need going in. If you're a regular fantasy reader, there won't be much here that you haven't seen before but you're unlikely to have seen it in quite this way. Shades of the Craft (the original not the recent bloodless travesty), of Grimm fairytales and even dabs of contemporary YA and a hint of the kind of magic you find in midgrade fiction are all mixed here. At times dark, Threadneedle is a book about power and who can be trusted with it. Does power corrupt or does it merely attract the venal?



This feeds into the female friendship aspect. The friendships here are great but they're never flawless, which is to be expected from 16 yr old protagonists - or anyone for that matter! There are a group of 'mean girls' who get their comeuppance, but even that is a look at power. I imagine some people will read shallowly and cry 'girl on girl' hate - and yes there is some but can we please stop pretending it doesn't exist and need addressing in real life? Being a teenager is about experimenting with power and that includes power in your interpersonal life. It also interrogates ideas about familial abuse, bullying, ostracism and neglect. And it explores these ideas well.



The heart of Threadneedle is a magical adventure story about learning to claim your own power and use it well. It's intelligent, engaging and addictive. Highly recommend.

Anna has magic in her blood, passed down from generations of witches, but she has been taught to believe that magic is evil, it killed her parents after all. Now, nearly sixteen, Anna is awaiting the Binding ceremony that will render her magic useless. But her desire to have her magic taken away takes a backseat when she meets Effie and Attis, who show her the magic places in London she never knew existed. All of a sudden, Anna isn’t so keen to have the Binding. Her friendship with fellow young witches has opened Anna’s eyes to a world of possibilities…and the chance to discover the truth about what really happened to her parents. I loved this book, a sort of teenage, female Harry Potter and I can’t wait for the next book in the series

“Goddess of Silence and Secrets: Seal our mouths, so we can’t speak. Pierce our eyes, so we can’t seek. Knot our hearts, so we can’t feel. Bind our spells; to you we kneel. What is forgotten, can’t be known. What isn’t planted, can’t be sown. Lock the door and turn the key. We bear our magic silently. - The Binders’ Blessing”

My thanks to HarperCollins U.K. Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the unabridged audiobook edition of ‘Threadneedle’ by Cari Thomas in exchange for an honest review. The audiobook is narrated by Bea Holland and has a running time of 20 hours, 25 minutes at 1x speed.

This is Cari Thomas’ debut novel and is the first in her four book ‘Language of Magic’ series, set in contemporary London. This was a smashing novel, brimming with magic.

Anna is a fifteen-year old orphan, gifted (or cursed) with magic. She has been raised by her Aunt Vivienne, who has always warned her of the dangers of magic. In a year’s time Anna will undergo the Knotting, a ceremony that will bind her magic and she will become a Binder like her Aunt. Then Selene, an old family friend of Anna’s mother and aunt, moves to London with her daughter, Effie, and Attis, a young family friend, who has been living with them in New York.

Effie is enrolled in Anna’s school and while Anna has been lectured her whole life about not exposing her magic, Effie delights in being provocative with her magical talent. Anna reflects that “sending Effie into the ordinary, humdrum corridors of St Olave’s was surely like throwing a live firework at a haystack?”

Effie identifies two other misfit girls at the school as having latent magical talent and before long she’s encouraged them to form a coven and then we enter ‘The Craft’ territory. Teen witch shenanigans follow and all the while Anna has to evade her Aunt’s surveillance. No further details to avoid spoilers.

I enjoyed this novel very much. Cari Thomas clearly knows her subject and I was delighted to discover that the magic in ‘Threadneedle’ was grounded in traditional witchcraft and Wiccan practices rather than the more fantasy based magic found in much fiction of this type. I was especially impressed by the structure of the rituals. Such authenticity carries a lot of weight with me.

In terms of the audiobook, I have enjoyed Bea Holland’s reading of a few audiobook titles and felt that her narration on ‘Threadneedle’ was excellent. She has a clear confident voice, which is something that I always appreciate in an audiobook reader. Even with the younger characters she didn’t voice their dialogue as ‘squeaky’.

This was undoubtedly a long novel though I felt that this gave the author the space to develop her characters and world building including the hidden London populated by magical folk and esoteric locations. There’s a great deal of potential within and I can hardly wait to see where Thomas takes her readers in the future books.

Just to note that while ‘Threadneedle’ is a coming-of-age story with young protagonists it has not been classified by the publisher as a Young Adult novel but as Occult Horror/Fantasy Horror/Urban Fantasy. So, no need for more mature readers to feel guilty.

On a side note, its cover design is simply gorgeous and I am happy to add the hardback to my bookshelf.

This was exactly the kind of magical-themed novel that I love and I am planning to recommend it widely and also look forward to further books in the ‘Language of Magic’ series.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the early access to this audiobook!

4.5 stars overall.

I really enjoyed everything - the narrator, the story, the characters!

Although some parts of the plot were painfully obvious (Anna’s poisoning, the binders being crazy, Attis being a (sort of) golem), and I wasn’t a huge fan of all the high school drama, I still didn’t see certain plot twists coming up and I throughly enjoyed this book!

I’m not sure a series is necessary, this would have worked well as a standalone, but I’m looking forward to receiving my gorgeous Waterstones copy soon!

If you love magic, this book is for you.

Threadneedle - Cari Thomas

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review thanks to HarperCollins UK and Netgalley.

Within the boroughs of London, nestled among its streets, hides another city, filled with magic.

Magic is the first sin. It must be bound.

Ever since Anna can remember, her aunt has warned her of the dangers of magic. She has taught her to fear how it twists and knots and turns into something dark and deadly.

It was, after all, magic that killed her parents and left her in her aunt’s care. It’s why she has been protected from the magical world and, in one year’s time, what little magic she has will be bound. She will join her aunt alongside the other Binders who believe magic is a sin not to be used, but denied. Only one more year and she will be free of the curse of magic, her aunt’s teachings and the disappointment of the little she is capable of.

Anna, who was made an orphan as a young girl, is from a family of witches who believe that magic is evil. When Anna is given a chance to join a coven she is unable to resist the call of magic, however she is convinced that she is a witch with no magic.

London is alive with rumours of witchcraft surrounding the mysterious death of six faceless women. The author manages to use magic to bring a group of misfits together, even though they all have very different personalities.

A fantastic debut novel and the only negative I could find to this book is that I have to wait for the next one to be released.

Rating 5/5

A great opening book to the series.