Honeysuckle Audiobook By Bar Fridman-Tell cover art

Honeysuckle

A Novel

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Honeysuckle

By: Bar Fridman-Tell
Narrated by: Catrin Walker-Booth, Geraint Rhys
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Bloomsbury presents Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell, read by Catrin Walker-Booth and Geraint Rhys.

The Bear and the Nightingale meets Weyward in this enchanting, deeply compelling debut about love and power, autonomy and consent.

Named a Best Book of March 2026 by Barnes & Noble and Apple.

Once upon a time, on the edge between meadow and forest, there was a lonely child with only his older sister for company. In exchange for being left in peace, his sister made him a playmate—Daye, a girl woven from flowers and words. And for the first time, this boy, Rory, had a friend.

Rory couldn’t be happier, until he learns that Daye is a short-lived creature. At the end of each season, she must be woven back together or fall gruesomely apart. And every time Daye falls apart might be her last.

As Rory and Daye grow older and the line between friendship and romance begins to blur, Rory becomes desperate to break this cycle of bloom and decay. But the farther Rory pushes his research and experiments to lengthen Daye’s existence, the more Daye begins to wonder just how much control she really has over her own life.

As a loose reimagining of the story of Blodeuwedd from Welsh mythology, Honeysuckle is an entrancing, inventive, and unsettling debut.©2026 Bar Fridman-Tell (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Fairy Tales Fantasy Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Feel-Good
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Critic reviews

Lush and romantic with a hint of darkness, this unsettling tale of desire, power and fear is inspired by ancient Welsh mythology.
Fridman-Tell's gorgeous debut fantasy luxuriates on the border between romance and horror . . . Fridman-Tell uses her eerie fairy tale premise to masterfully unpick all of the squirmy ethical implications of the created-lover trope, spinning a story that is as powerful in its human aspects as in its magic. This stuns.
The novel is composed with brittle, devastating lyricism. Its horrors flutter beneath intoxicating layers of nature references . . . A flower girl magicked to life to be a boy’s playmate comes into her own in the exquisite fantasy novel Honeysuckle.
A fascinating combination of magic and science . . . Tackles issues of consent, bodily autonomy, and codependent relationships. Fridman-Tell has crafted a truly genre-defying story here, one that’ll fit perfectly next to Helen Oyeyemi and Carmen Maria Machado.
I’m a sucker for a dark fairy tale, and Fridman-Tell’s gorgeously rendered debut - featuring a Blodeuwedd, or woman made of flowers, from Welsh mythology - blew me away. Come for the lush prose and horror-tinged romance, stay for the incisive examination of autonomy and agency.
A lush, dreamlike, wholly intoxicating novel with the elegant lyricism of modern fantasy and the deep, dark roots of ancient folklore. Honeysuckle is a fever dream that I won’t soon forget.
Bar Fridman-Tell effortlessly conjures a lush, shadow-filled world. Daye begins as a girl woven from flowers and grows, page by page, into something far more powerful. Honeysuckle builds with increasing urgency toward questions that linger long after you set the book down: about autonomy, about control, and about what we owe the people we claim to love. Visceral, stunningly told, and impossible to forget. An applause-worthy debut.
Fridman-Tell’s debut joins the growing collection of soon-to-be gothic classics that have come out this year. Here, she reimagines Welsh mythology in a refreshing way, bending time, physics, love, and the emotional power of a fairy tale.
Before reading Bar Fridman-Tell’s grand debut, I’d never come across the word Blodeuwedd . . . Fridman-Tell takes the concept and conjures a world that contains both whimsy and abnormal desire.
A haunting reimagining.
Lush . . . eerie and oh-so-relevant.
[An] emotionally raw exploration of feminine interiority . . . examin[ing] desire, control, and psychological unraveling.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Honeysuckle since I read it. A Frankenstein-esque spirit haunts the pages through Daye’s love for Rory, which is woven and tangled with her existence. Fridman-Tell writes characters whose thoughts, worries, and flaws spill off the page into people and experiences I’m sure most readers know in some way. This was a simultaneously familiar and altogether unique reading experience. I highly, highly recommend!
Unique Storyline • Excellent Characters • Emotional Depth • Original Concept • Beautiful Writing

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A fairy tale style story with addresses themes of consent, autonomy, and the role each of us plays in obtaining and maintaining our own.

Beautiful story

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The writing and voice acting was beautifully done. You follow a sweet beginning to a sad and troubling immoral middle to the end of what is supposed to feel freeing and yet I feel a sadness. What lines dangle between love and manipulation and trust to codependency?

Point of view between characters

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This book captivated me in a unique way. I really felt compassion for Daye throughout the entire book. All in all this book really did a great job in making me feel a range of emotions from empathy, to curiosity, and ultimately that unsettling feeling of wanting to get away.

First time reading a Gothic Horror

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Started on Wednesday. Couldn’t keep out. It’s a greate and fantastic tale. So many subjects and deepness real surprise. Way to go Bar Fridman Tell.

Best book ever.

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A lot of people are criticizing the narrative for being very uncomfortable and full of aspects that feel morally problematic. That is the point. The reader feels that way because they're experiencing empathy. It isn't a flaw in the writing or scenario, it's the point.

You should be uncomfortable

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