Published: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Pantheon
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 352 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 2.5 Stars
Synopsis:
From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of House of Roots and Ruin, an irresistible blend of dark fairytale and romantic fantasy set in the beautiful but brutal Canadian wilderness.
Like everyone else in the settlement of Mistaken, Greer Mackenzie is trapped. Founded by an ambitious Scottish lumber merchant, the tiny town on the edge of the American continent is blessed with rich natural resources that have made its people prosperous—but at a cost. The same woods that have lined the townsfolks’ pockets harbor dangerous beasts: wolves, bears, and the Bright-Eyeds—monsters beyond description who have rained utter destruction down on nearby settlements. But Mistaken’s founders made a deal with the mysterious Benevolence: the Warding Stones that surround the town will keep the Bright-Eyeds out—and the town’s citizens in. Anyone who spends a night within Mistaken’s borders belongs to it forever.
Greer, a mapmaker and eccentric dreamer, has always ached to explore the world outside, even though she knows she and her longtime love, Ellis Beaufort, will never see it. Until, on the day she and Ellis are meant to finally begin their lives together, Greer watches in horror as her beloved disappears beyond the Warding Stones, pursued by a monstrous creature. Swiftly realizing that the stories she was raised on might be more myth than fact, Greer figures out a way to escape Mistaken for the very first time. Determined to rescue Ellis, she begins a trek through the cold and pitiless wilderness. But Greer is being hunted, not only by the ruthless Bright-Eyeds but by the secret truths behind Mistaken’s founding, as well as her own origins.
Playfully drawing from Scottish folklore, Erin A. Craig’s adult debut is both a deeply atmospheric and profoundly romantic exploration of freedom versus security: a stunning celebration of one woman’s relentless bravery on a quest to reclaim her lost love—and claim her own future.
A Land So Wide is a book with an interesting premise that caught my eye last year during my book perusing. I liked the idea of a brave young woman wandering into the wilderness to chase down her missing love, particularly when the dangers weren’t just mundane ones. I also loved the idea of a town founded on some dark secret. Unfortunately this book had a lot of really good ideas bound up in a lackluster execution.
This follows Greer Mackenzie, the mapmaker daughter of Mistaken’s wealthiest man. Greer believes in the Bright-Eyeds – monsters that supposedly live outside of the town’s borders, only kept out by the warding stones that also keep her and everyone else trapped within. Much of the beginning of this book centers around Greer’s desire to marry her love, Ellis Beaufort, despite her father’s wishes. Leading up to the strange marital practices in Mistaken, several unsettling events occur that leave the town shaken. The warding stones moving from their longheld places, a family slaughtered in their fields. Then Ellis disappears during the event that should have seen him finding Greer in the woods and then marrying her. She watches him cross the warding stone boundary after dark, which is something that should be impossible. Rather than write him off as dead, Greer sets off after him once it becomes clear her father had orchestrated his self-sacrifice to the Bright-Eyeds.
What follows should have been interesting, or at least more interesting than it was. Greer sets off through the forest with a map of the wider area she was gifted by Ellis and finds herself soon in the company of a strange man. This young man seems to know an awful lot about Greer and her deceased mother (red flags!). Information about her mother’s past and Greer’s own unusual gifts comes in dribs and drabs, though I figured it out long before Greer herself. It was frustrating to read of her slowly coming to the same realization that was so obvious to me from early on. The culmination of the story was also mostly unsurprising in its blandness. I want characters to lean hard into either their monstrousness or their rejection of it and this just felt… a little too much of a compromise. I wanted either a monstrous queen or a girl who tragically sacrifices herself because of her awful and unavoidable heritage, not the blandly happy ending that occurred here.
A Land So Wide could have been a very different tale, but what actually happened was generic pining, daddy issues, and then a man rescuing her and carrying her along to the unsatisfying final battle. Also, if you think you might get a cool woodsman vibe from any of this, you would be wrong. Greer doesn’t even venture on her quest until about halfway through the book. Before this is village drama. I’m unsure of the source material of this Scottish folklore retelling, but surely it’s more interesting than this.
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