Honeysuckle
by Bar Fridman-Tell

Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted March 13, 2026

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Bar Fridman-Tell's debut novel will publish March 24, but I read it early thanks to a digital review copy courtesy of Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. I will try to be as honest as possible, noting things I liked, but there are also a few problematic elements for which some readers might appreciate a trigger warning. It has to do with consent, or rather the lack thereof, along with the conceit of those who wish to control others. I may have to reveal a few spoilers to explain that, but I will try to limit them. I have never been the type to say fictional characters have to be sympathetic and noble, because that would not be true to real life. Just because a story has fantasy elements doesn't mean we should view the characters differently than we do in real life. I'm not sure if the author had a particular time period in mind for this story, mainly because it is a secondary world with slight alterations from our own. The most notable difference is the notion of "constructs" utilized for a lot of repetitive tasks, along with other minor magic endeavors. The constructs are more organic than robotic, usually made from plants, but some may incorporate metal, glass, etc. As for the humans, there are mitigating circumstances that might help to understand some of their behavior.

Wynne and Rory lived in a remote house in a rural area. Their parents had divorced, and both lived elsewhere, their mother having remarried and moved to the Continent. Rory was about six the last time he saw his mother, even younger for his father. Letters and birthday cards stopped coming shortly after that. It was never explained why the parents neglected their children, and several times I expected them to show up, but that never happened. Perhaps being raised by such thoughtless people would not have been much better than the very little adult supervison they did receive, but it might be a key to understanding some things. Wynne is more than six years older than her brother. That age gap didn't matter much when they were younger, but as Wynne entered her middle-teen years it was more pronounced, especially when Rory continually begged her to play with him. They had little contact with other people. There was a housekeeper/cook, but Mrs. Matthews did not live with them, and neither did their shared tutor. Both of them came a couple of times a week on staggered days. Otherwise, there were infrequent trips to the local village, but they didn't attend a school, and neither had close friends, certainly none that came to their house to visit and play. Wynne had been studying about various aspects of constructs, hoping to gain a chance at university study. She grew frustrated with Rory's constant demands for attention, so she decided to make him a construct to be his companion.

The type of construct central to the plot is based on a Welsh legend, that of a Blodeuwedd. The Wikipedia article linked to says the word means "Flower-Faced." Within this book they are called flower girls, and also living dolls. I am not positive as to how to pronounce it, with several variations found in a search having just two syllables, but others were three. Rory apparently pronounced it with three, the middle syllable sounding like "day," which he says is the reason he named his companion Daye. Rory was eight at this time, Wynne nearly fifteen, a year before she could take entrance exams for university. She created Daye by weaving together flowers, leaves, twigs, and branches, then spoke a few spells to create a girl, about the same age and size as Rory. The spells created the illusion of a real girl, with skin and hair and teeth, but there were limitations. Daye could not speak, and she did not eat or drink, but drew nourishment from the sun, rain, and the soil, as all plants do. Because of her nature, she was at home in the garden and fields, the woods and streams that were on the land surrounding their house. Apparently the spells also created something like a brain, since she had her own thoughts, and feelings, and she must have had ears since she could hear Rory and others, but she had to learn to speak to him through sign language. Daye was created at the tail end of spring, and throughout the summer she and Rory had the grandest time playing. They built a treehouse, which they called the fortress, and had adventures pretending various scenarios. The first problem arose after summer, as autumn arrived.

Since she was derived from plants, Daye began to break down, deteriorate, her hair changing color as leaves do, her skin showing blotches of mold and decay. Rory panicked because he had not anticipated it, didn't know what to do. He was lucky to find Wynne in the house, and he led her to where Daye lay dying. Wynne was able to do a transition spell, weaving autumn flora into Daye. Wynne didn't really care, since she knew Daye was just a construct, a thing, but Rory thought of her as a real person. They had already argued that point on several occasions, and would do so again going forward, but it was of less importance when Rory learned how to do the transitions himself. He had to, since the next year Wynne was at university, a three hour train ride away. Apparently everyone else thought of Blodeuwedd as temporary things, dolls made for a child, who would soon outgrow the need. It was different for Rory. He had never had a friend, and Daye was such a joy to be with, to play with. He did not want to be without her. When he needed to learn more to extend the times between transitions, Wynne agreed to let him visit her at university, where he read some books she had from her classes, plus she escorted him to the library, checked out a few he could take home, as long as he returned them within a month. That continued for a while, into the next year or two. Rory learned techniques of plant weaving, and the spells to animate them, and experimented with other constructs to perfect those techniques. He became a Blodeuwedd expert, which amused some of Wynne's friends. After a few years of his visits, he had also impressed some of her professors, and librarians, and was encouranged to take the entrance exams. Rory was grateful for the opportunity to learn, but he also missed the time away from Daye, and she was sad when he was not around. He wasn't yet eligible for the exams due to his age, but he eventually was accepted for study.

His time away from Daye increased, but he promised he would always return. The changes he had made to her transitions ensured she would be safe for longer periods of time, and he also promised her he would learn how to do those transitions better, possibly even eliminate the need for them. Here we come to the problems of consent. Originally, Daye would do what Wynne said since she is the one who created her, but later Rory was her guide. She is obligated to do what he says. Before this, she hadn't even thought of it as obeying Rory, it was only natural to do so. Then something happened to change the way Rory felt about Daye. He went through puberty, and couldn't help but think of Daye as something more than just a friend. But that necessitated him learning how to change her to accomodate his inclinations. She went along with it of course, since at that time she was unable to object, so she became Rory's girlfriend in every sense of the word. What could have become a beautiful love story turned into a tragedy, for both Daye and Rory. For him it was being the butt of jokes and rumors about his pet flower girl. For Daye it was further physical changes he made to her, one of which enabled her to speak. She was outraged when she learned what he had done, how he had made that change. But it also allowed her to learn more, to become more independent, and she later learned how to change herself, performing her own transitions, the last of which gave her the power to reject Rory, and leave him. There are many stories about man creating creatures, where the creatures turn out to be more human than their creators. This is one of them. Rory was an ass most of the time, mainly because he knew, or at least thought, that Daye had to obey him, no matter how many times he told her he was doing it for them, not just for himself. She was smart enough to eventually see through that.

Once she could speak, it didn't feel natural to her at first, so she still signed as she spoke, for emphasis. As she became more comfortable speaking, she came into her own as a real person, more real than Rory ever thought she could be, as opposed to how he always argued that she was. No matter what he said, he was never concerned about her, only his own needs, which unfortunately is the case for how a lot of men view women as objects for their own pleasure. There were several points along the way that were unpredictable, and some that could have been even more horrific if Rory followed through with some of his ideas. Daye might not have been a real person, but she was real no matter what form she took, and deserved to shape her own existence. She was finally able to tell Rory, "You don't get to decide I need to be fixed. You don't get to choose only the me that's the most comfortagble for you and call it love." Beyond Rory's conceit, the biggest mistake he made was informing Daye of how he made the changes, something he learned at university. I will reverse the order from what he read in a book, so what a construct engineer needed was: Knowledge, Will, Materials, Hands, and Voice. Once he gave Daye her voice, she used it with all the other elements to recreate herself. Sort of like "I am Blodeuwedd, Hear Me Roar!" I doubt there will be a follow-up to this story, but if there is it better be about the further adventures of Daye (or whatever else she chooses to call herself), with absolutely no mention of Rory. There is some beautiful, poetical prose here, a lovely story of a lonely boy who unfortunately becomes a monster, and the girl who once loved him, but left to her own devices learns it is best to love oneself. So, not a strong recommendation due to some trauma, but in the end it is an inspiring story.

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