The Loom Tree, Angela Mi Young Hur [A Book Review]

The Loom Tree is a book that resists being pinned down into words. It’s a complicated, twisted tale of family relationships, identity, friendships, magical abilities, and the fundamental power of stories.

Dark academia or grotesque takes on ancient fairy tales — The Loom Tree asks: why not both?

The story is woven like a tapestry. A young woman goes through a surprising transformation that sends her and her mother into a tailspin of the past neither of them could have anticipated. We move quickly to a story-within-a-story structure as we re-experience V’s mother’s story of her strange time at a mysterious, exclusive college, which ends up being a good 75%+ of the book.

To be honest, a majority of the time I wasn’t sure if I liked it.

The first thing that bothered me was that the mother is supposed to be writing this story out by hand in a notebook, and that’s how the royal We get to experience it. On that fundamental level, it lost me quite a bit. There’s magic involved, okay, but the level of detail, the kinds of observations, the speed at which she’s apparently writing it…it felt like a stretch.

The voice is slightly abrasive (brace yourself for profuse use of the words ‘tits’ and ‘ass’), the tone is gloomy, baroque…maybe gothic? I’m reaching for a word that captures the level of unsettled I felt while listening. It was almost horror-adjacent with the twisted fairy tales and obscure magic and mystery.

However, I think a certain kind of reader would absolutely eat this story up.

It was written with generous detail and patience for exploring feelings and observations throughout. It’s a slow, mysterious, melancholy sort of book that will suit many readers well, especially as they curl into their darker sides for the colder, darker months.

I also learned a few things from the obviously well-researched inclusions in some of the tangential passages. Some unfavorable history about the Dewey decimal system, for example (though I feel like the narrative takes the least charitable view possible of the facts there).

Overall, if Firenze in his divination teacher era was your favorite part of the Potter series, this book will be right up your alley. I feel like the book it most reminded me of personally was The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, if that helps anyone decide whether or not it’s for them.

Beautiful cover. Decent narration. Kind of tortured story.

Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Details

Title:: The Loom Tree
Author:: Angela Mi Young Hur
Genre:: Fantasy
Publisher:: Erewhon Books
Length:: 455 pages
Published:: June 30th, 2026
The Litertarian Rating:: 3-Stars (rounded up)

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If you liked this book, check out…

The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow
The Book of Lost Hours | Hayley Gelfuso
Awake in the Floating City | Susanne Kwan
Sublimation | Isabel J. Kim (review coming soon)

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