The Peddler - Elyssa S. Schwendy - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Elyssa S. Schwendy

GENRE: Short story Collection, Retellings.

PUBLICATION DATE: February 25, 2026

RATING: 3.2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A fantasy story collection with known fairy tales in a different presentation. The stories ranged from decent to great, but the structuring of the individual tales and of the overall book didn't work for me, though this might be more a ME problem.

This story collection contains eight main stories, each of which is supposed to be a modified version of a popular fairytale or folklore. I could recognise some of the source material, but wasn’t familiar with a couple of the titles.

What I thought would make this collection stand out was the presentation framework - using a storyteller to tell us stories. The titular peddler, whose name is Verre, is the narrator of the tales. During a storm, she enters a tavern, feels that it's a "good night for telling stories", and sets up some exotic objects on a table. When curious customers walk to her and ask her questions about a specific item, Verre goes into the story of how the object came into her possession.

On paper, this sounds like a good way of collating disparate fairytales under a single collection. However, the implementation of this concept didn't click with me. But I also know that every reader won't feel the same way as I did.

You see, I'm a fusspot when it comes to writing formats. If something is said to be a newspaper article, I want it written in the tone of a newspaper article. A diary/journal should not sound like a commercial novel; a letter should not sound like an interview. So for this book, when I was promised stories narrated by a woman at a tavern, I expected a talented raconteur who would offer a delightful storytelling session. This structure necessitates narrative flamboyance and interactive listener experience. None of this happens. What we get instead is stories written in standard structure that simply don't sound like someone was narrating them to an audience.

Furthermore, while Verre's interludes are in third person, each story is written in first person. This should actually have been the other way around. Verre as the narrator of the whole book should have had the first-person voice, and while recounting stories, she should obviously have used third person the way most folktales do. My head simply couldn't accept the swap.

To top it all, each story has multiple sections (like chapters), which is impossible in oral narratives. One story is even written in the epistolary format!

I tried hard to forget that the stories were meant to be narrations and tried to enjoy them as typical short stories. This improved my experience somewhat but not enough to make the collection a memorable one for me. While I appreciate the creativity of the retellings – most stories are impossible to recognise from their base material, having just some components in common – I didn’t like how extended the tales felt. Many of the tales meandered in such a way that it was tough to figure out the destination of the plotline from the initial paragraphs. Plus, the first-person gets really repetitive after a while, resulting in all the stories blending into each other.

Every story is sandwiched between chapters containing Verre’s interactions at the tavern where she is narrating the stories. So after each story, we get to see her chat with the customer who queried about that object, and a build-up to the next story that focusses on another item in her collection. These interludes don’t add much to the plot except to provide a bridge towards the next story.

Verre’s name intrigued me. I had the feeling that it held significance, and my guess proved itself right in the final chapter containing a bonus ninth story. This was the only story in the entire book that actually sounded like a narration, perhaps helped by the fact that it was the only story written in third person. Though the shortest of the tales, it was a brilliant narrative, and the only story that won all five stars from me. Most of the other tales earned between 2.5 to 3.5 stars. Other than the final story, I liked ‘The Tale of the Brooch‘ (a modified version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’; started very confusing but ended on a good note) and ‘The Tale of the Fang‘ (one of the darkest stories in the collection, with the ending being most impactful.)

If you can just forget that these are meant to be stories narrated by a raconteur in a public setting and instead read them like you would a typical short story collection, you might enjoy the book more. There’s no doubt that this debut author has some really creative plot ideas. I just wish I hadn’t found it so tough to accept the contradiction between promised structure and actual implementation.

Recommended to fans of atypical fairytale retellings in short fiction format.

3.2 stars based on the average of my ratings for each story.

My thanks to SnowRidge Press for providing the DRC of “The Peddler” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.