A Sorceress Comes to Call is a novel by Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher. It’s a retelling of the fairy tale The Goose Girl.
Finished on: 19.4.2026

Content Note: child abuse

Plot:
Fourteen year-old Cordelia lives with her mother Evangeline, a sorceress. Pretending to be a genteel widow, Evangeline has plans to marry herself off favorably so she can marry off Cordelia even more favorably – by any means necessary. After Evangeline scopes out a likely target for her scheme, she and Cordelia leave their old life behind, burning all bridges and end up at the home of Squire Samuel Chatham and his sister Hester. Hester has her suspicions about Evangeline, while Cordelia gets a first glimpse of not being under her mother’s constant supervision.

With each book more from Kingfisher that I read, I love her more. It appears, she can do no wrong and A Sorceress Comes to Call is definitely proof in favor of that theory.

A Sorceress Comes to Call has two narrators, Cordelia and Hester. We start with a lot of Cordelia who slowly learns who her mother is and who realizes for the first time that she is absolutely not a good person. Cordelia is at first all alone with that knowledge. When Hester enters the scene more prominently, she is a welcome contrast and relief from Cordelia’s almost hopeless perspective. Also, it continues the tradition of Kingfisher writing older women as protagonists that seems broken at first with Cordelia. It’s one of the things I absolutely love about her writing.

Here, Hester comes with an excellent (and hilarious) network of friends and a beautiful romance that seems to scream at Cordelia: look, this is what you could have in your life if you lived it right. You might end up with a fucked up knee that makes it hard to walk (yay, disability rep), but that doesn’t mean your life isn’t full and warm and fun. It’s wonderful.

At the same time, the book is filled with some truly frightening stuff. This is definitely more on the horror side of gothic, despite all the wisecracking and jokes in-between. It starts with Cordelia being „made obedient“, that is, Evangeline taking over her body and controling it while Cordelia, fully conscious, can’t do anything. That alone is horrible enough – and it is only the beginning of the book.

In any case, I was completely engrossed, I laughed, I cried, I shivered. And I am looking forward to the next Kingfisher novel.

Summarizing: fantastic.