A Hunger of Thorns

CBCA 2024 Shortlisted Book: Older Readers

WINNER: 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Writing for Young Adults


Selected as one of the Best Young Adult Books for 2023 - Readings Books


'Completely entrancing. I have never read anything like this book. It's full of magic - the real thing. And it's full of feminine power, dark mysteries and unforgettable characters. The luscious depth of the world-building and the effortless skill with which it is conveyed make me utterly jealous.' - Amie Kaufman
Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic - and her best friend. Storytelling is her only gift that remains.


Odette always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she's missing, and everyone believes she's dead. Everyone except Maude.


Maude is sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest -a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, nobody knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster ...


'A lush, spellbinding tale with dangerously enchanting characters, A Hunger of Thorns is filled with gorgeous emotion and sapphic yearning that will leave you breathless.' - CS Pacat


'Maude's quest will take you to deep, dark, festering places and bring you soaring back out into the light.' - Margo Lanagan


'Unlike anything else. Wilkinson creates a whole new kind of magic - enchantments woven from family, from living things, and from the marrow of Story itself.' - Scott Westerfeld



'Wilkinson crafts a lovely fairy tale of childhood fierceness, curiosity, loss and finding.' - Catherynne M Valente, author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making


'This is my kind of fairy tale: visceral and dark, lush and lovely, and filled with feral girls who know how to save themselves. A Hunger of Thorns is a beautiful, ferocious vine that will work its way inside you and linger.' - Kate J Armstrong