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Read an Excerpt From Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell
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Read an Excerpt From Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell
When Rory was lonely, his sister made a playmate for him—a girl woven from flowers and words.
By Bar Fridman-Tell
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Published on March 4, 2026
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell, a debut fantasy out from Bloomsbury on March 24th.
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.
Rory couldn’t remember running back to the house, or climbing up the stairs, or banging on Wynne’s door. One moment he was backing away from Daye, a roar of nononononono in his ears, and the next his sister was shaking his shoulders, calling his name.
“Rory, take a deep breath. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Though Rory could count on one hand the number of times they’d talked that summer, he threw himself into Wynne’s arms and let the hysteria close over his head.
“Rory, I need you to tell me—are you hurt? Did something happen?”
Rory struggled to draw enough breath to speak. It was useless. Every time he tried, he remembered the cracks in Daye’s skin, her finger lying in the grass, and his stomach roiled and fresh tears flooded his tongue and the words were gone. He tried once, twice, then took hold of Wynne’s hand and dragged her down the stairs, out the front gate, round the meadow. His sister protested all along, but never pulled her arm free.
Daye was lying where he had left her, outlined by the purple blaze of the heather. Her left hand was still lying outstretched where he dropped it, though Rory averted his eyes before he could see if any more fingers—
Soft brown shapes huddled around her. Bunnies nestled at the curve of her waist, her knee, her shoulder. A red leaf rested on Daye’s collarbone. It looked like a wound. It wasn’t moving. Rory couldn’t tell if she was moving. All the bunnies’ noses were twitching in unison, their sides rising and falling, and Rory couldn’t see Daye’s chest moving at all.
“Please.” Rory couldn’t look. Instead, he watched Wynne, the rapid-fire change of expressions on her face: hand-to-mouth horror, sliding down to dismay before falling away altogether, leaving behind only a patronizing sort of pity, a dash of guilt.
He might have gotten angry if he wasn’t so busy panicking, and if Wynne wasn’t the only one that could help.
“Rory—”
“Please please please do something,” he begged.
“Oh, Rory.” Wynne seemed torn. “She’s a flower girl. That’s just the way flower girls are.”
“What— What?” Rory asked through salt-numb lips.
“She’s out of her season. See? She’s made out of summer flowers, but it’s almost October already, and summer flowers can’t survive in autumn.”
“Can you fix her?”
Wynne pursed her lips like she was no longer certain that making Daye had been such a great idea. “Sure. But, Rory, are you sure you want me to? She’s not a person, she’s a flower girl. That’s what flower girls do. They’re not meant to last.”
“She is a person.” Rory’s hands balled into fists. “She’s my friend—my best friend. I don’t care if she’s a flower girl, I just care that she’ll be okay again.”
“Rory, maybe this isn’t—”
Rory cut her off. “You promised. You promised that if I stopped bothering you, you’d make Daye for me. Are you going to break your triple promise?”
Wynne sighed her most resigned sigh. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I won’t. Please, please fix her?”
“Fine. I’ll get the heather. You go gather as many fallen leaves as you can. And apples. And any autumn flowers you can find.”
Rory dashed away, bringing back a shirtful of apples, as many velvet-centered wood anemones as he could carry, and leaves—red and brown and yellow and speckled every shade of green. Handfuls of acorns with their jaunty little caps. Late harebells and clusters of yarrow. He kept bringing his sister more and more things, long after Wynne said it was enough.
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Honeysuckle
Bar Fridman-Tell
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Honeysuckle
Bar Fridman-Tell
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He didn’t want to watch. Didn’t want to see her untangling parts of Daye, replacing them with others. But no matter how much he tried, he kept catching sight of Wynne’s fingers moving inside Daye’s chest, her arms, her face. Each time he screwed his eyes shut and turned away as fast as he could. It was never fast enough.
He really did try not to cry—Wynne kept telling him to stop, that there was no need and Daye was going to be okay and “Really, Rory, stop with the crying” and “Don’t be such a baby,” but tears kept falling from his eyes.
Finally Wynne called him to her. “Look. She’s fine. Stop crying and look.” She grabbed his hand and pointed.
But it wasn’t Daye lying before her. The girl was Daye-shaped and dressed in Daye’s sweater and pants, but she had red hair, like the dogwood leaves littering the grass around them. Her cheeks were apple red and her lips dusty pink like the heather behind them. She was pretty, but she wasn’t Daye.
“It’s not her.” Rory’s voice hitched.
Wynne heaved a sigh. “Yes, it is.”
“No it isn’t. She doesn’t even look like Daye.”
“It’s her. The exact same flower girl, different season.”
“But—”
“Trust me, Rory, it’s the same Blodeuwedd.” Wynne sounded impatient now. “It’s only the flowers she’s made of that are different. It’s like changing clothes—you can change what you wear and still be the same person, right?”
Rory mulled it over for a moment. “But,” he said, voice small, “will she remember me?”
“Y-yes. Just, next time, call me before she starts falling apart, will you? It’ll be easier that way. Just come and get me the first week of winter, and I’ll fix her up.”
“But why doesn’t she open her eyes?”
“Oh, yeah. That.” She looked down at Daye. “Wake up, Blodeuwedd.”
And Daye opened her eyes, and smiled.
Excerpted from Honeysuckle, copyright © 2026 by Bar Fridman-Tell.
The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Honeysuckle</i> by Bar Fridman-Tell appeared first on Reactor.