Not having heard of Thornfruit prior to reading it, I don’t know if it was aimed at a particular audience, but while it’s still enjoyable for adult readers, I’d argue that it’s best described as YA or new adult. Why do the Laalvuri think magic doesn’t exist? Are there more people in the world with gifts like Alizhan’s? And what does any of it have to do with the medusas-giant jellyfish-whose deadly venom is as rare as it is valuable? In a decade of quiet association, they’ve never once spoken aloud to each other-but when Alizhan learns something about Iriyat that shakes her faith in her patron, it’s Ev she turns to, and Ev who helps her. Her only friend is Ev, the girl she sees in the market. Though Alizhan is faceblind, unable to read or interpret facial expressions, she reads the minds of everyone around her, using her power to steal secrets from Iriyat’s rivals. Raised in secrecy, Alizhan both causes and experiences pain whenever she touches anyone other than her foster-mother, the powerful Iriyat. When a chance encounter with Alizhan, an enigmatic runaway, gives Ev the chance to act like a hero, she takes it, forming a curious friendship with the silent girl by passing her stolen thornfruit. So Ev, the daughter of a thornfruit seller, has always believed but Ev has a passion for stories. Though the occasional strange child is branded Unbalanced and abandoned for the priests of the Balance to raise, actual magic exists only in stories. In the city of Laalvur, magic is viewed as nothing more than superstition.

Thornfruit by Felicia Davin