Like no fairytale retelling I have read before.

Snow White is my least favourite fairytale. Where other people see beauty and purity, I see simplicity and oppressiveness.

So it’s a good thing Melissa Bashardoust has written this feminist retelling of it, in which powerful women are not solely represented as villainous characters and where choices truly can be made.

I hope you’ve noticed how many original fairy tales there are that illustrate young girls needing to be calm, pure, beautiful and available to be loved by a stronger, more self-assured man, because it’s problematic.

In GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS, Mina (the stepmother) and Lydia (the princess) are both women made out of thin air, metaphorically-speaking, with the purpose of being controlled by men they trust.

However, they slowly discover their powers within and use them to keep control of their lives. They may have been made of a single element—meant to be simple and bendable—but Mina and Lydia will discover being underestimated might just work in their favour this time.

This truly is a splendid, lush tale. The writing is absolutely spellbinding. It definitely felt like a fairytale retelling—not too close, and not too far from the version we all know. Just the perfect amount of twists and surprises.

My only complaint is regarding the ultra slow pacing. Not much action lies in the chapters. Conversation and thought are at the heart of this novel. Fortunately, the author’s thoughts are deep and the dialog powerful.

I didn't formally review this because, unfortunately, I couldn't get into it. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it though!

PLOT

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is THE modern Snow White re-telling I’ve been waiting for since the day I realized I didn’t need a Prince Charming to come rescue me on a horse. When I started questioning fairy tales & the incompetence of Kings all the while they had a kick a** intelligent Queen sitting on the sidelines. With an almost entirely female cast, GMOSAG gives the classic fairy tale a unique and fresh spin that will leave you feeling empowered by the very last page. Perhaps most importantly it shatters the cliched belief that women in leadership roles cannot co-exist. In our cast we get a new Queen to a widowed King, a female Surgeon in service to the King, and a court council run by women. The men in this re-telling play the role of secondary characters.

Told in third person POV, we get both Mina (new Queen) & Lynet’s (King’s daughter) stories in past and present times. Mina’s story unfolds in an earlier time when she first met the King at the age of 16 & decided she wanted to be Queen. Living in a village with her Magician father has been no easy feat, feared by the townspeople in the South for her father’s abilities. Mina herself is walking talking proof of his abilities. Having died & been brought back to life with a heart made out of glass, Mina has been raised by her father to believe she neither has the power to love or be loved & that her beauty is her only asset. Mina however proves to be resourceful & intelligent, always observing human behavior. She studies the King and soon realizes that his daughter is all that he cares about. Never once did she expect to get attached to the Kings young daughter Lynet or what that could potentially spell for her future as the present Queen. We follow Mina as she helps raise Lynet from toddler to young adult all the while thinking that their future rivalry is inevitable.

CHARACTERS

Each of these characters came to life on the page. Well fleshed out, complex, and flawed they rope you into this cold tale of love, loss, grief, and ultimately defining what family is to you…

Mina- I love my villains, they often bring the most meat to a story & such is the case with Mina. She comes from the South where everything is warm and lush with life & the transition to Whitsespring castle in the North is the total opposite. This however doesn’t stop her from fulfilling the role of Queen & stepmother to young Lynette. Although she lacks a beating heart, a part of her wants so badly to feel loved. Her marriage to the king isn’t what she expected but she never once takes it out on Lynette. I don’t want to give away too much but this is one character I really enjoyed seeing develop. She isn’t the evil Frost Queen we all come to expect from fairy tales but I can appreciate that since women in power are already thought of as Frost Queens in real life & I can do w/out that in my books ;)

The King- My least favorite of the characters for oh so many reasons! but the biggest one being that he’s down right selfish. Yes, he’s a wonderful doting father but once you read this book you’ll see a man who just couldn’t let go.

Lynet- Besides Mina, I actually really enjoyed Lynet’s character. She knows her father sees her late mother in her & that he’s raising her to one day be Queen. Trying to fill her mother’s shoes however isn’t something she wants. Far from it, Lynet enjoys scaling castle walls & s spying on people…particularly the new Surgeon *smiles* there’s also more to Lynet than meets the eye but that would be spoilery so I’ll leave you to find out that interesting secret on your own 🙂

Nadia- new surgeon in service to the crown, Nadia spends her days in her laboratory poring over her books. The friendship to romance progression with Lynet was on point! I was rooting for these two all along

The Magician aka Mina’s father- Adding this guy to my list of most hated villains of all time! I’m beginning to see a trend with Magicians being this nefarious. This man seriously takes the prize though! playing all his cards close to his chest, he is one to keep an eye on.

WRITING & FINAL THOUGHTS

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is easily on of my favorite Snow White tellings of all time. I was the kid who had no interest in Prince Charming. No, my interest was more with ingenuity…always asking why the princess had to wait in the tower instead of finding a way out. This is the Snow White story that I’ve been waiting for with messages of female empowerment & Queens that don’t need saving. I LOVED the fact that this was a mostly female comprised cast & that we got LGBTQIA+ representation. The only reason I docked GMOSAG 1 star is because of the very slow pacing all throughout. There aren’t fast paced action sequences, this is a story told primarily through dialogue and stream-of-consciousness. That being said, I was invested in these characters til the very end. The last line in this book is PURE PERFECTION!

When I requested this book on Netgalley I didn't really know much about it. I knew it was a retelling and that's about it. It wasn't til later that I started hearing hype and murmuring in the community so I went into it completely free of expectations. I was so glad I did. GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS is a feminist LGBT retelling of the Snow White tale. Add a dash of Frozen and some pretty awesome world building and you've got yourself a book.

I think what I liked most was the fluidity of the magic system in this world. The author doesn't spend a lot of time laying out the rules and so your imagination is left with all this room to play. This is usually not something I like but for this story it works and lets you focus more on character.

The characters in the story are delightful. You've got Princess Lynett, your typical "I don't feel like I belong" character. She is the Snow White of the story, and yet she's so much more interesting than that. Her powers are great but what I liked more was her relationship with her love interest Nadia.

Lynett's relationship with Nadia starts with a little bit of curious voyeurism, builds into friendship, and then into attraction. I could have done without the "liar reveal" subplot but I can tolerate it for the sake of the ship. And I do really love their dynamic so I can put up with that trope-iness for it. Nadia as a character doesn't get as much page time as I'd like. We mostly get Lynett's impressions of her to drive the relationship. I would have preferred a bit more character building for her but that's really not a deal breaker for the story.

Finally we have our "evil" queen. First, I adore the fact that she's not really evil at all. This character is probably the best written of the whole novel, and her mother-daughter relationship with Lynett is superb. I could talk about her all day. She's powerful, clever, and incredibly sympathetic. The author somehow follows the Snow White tale without demonizing or even making her all that evil. And yet it doesn't collapse the narrative it only makes it stronger.

There are plenty of other side characters and most of them don't get a lot of character work done. Lynett's father is rather bland but I think the time spent of the Huntsman instead really worked more to the advantage of the story so can let that one pass. The Pigeons, high influential court members who control a lot of the politics of Whitespring really interested me. There was the potential for so much more politicking that I think may have been missed but with so much else going on it was another thing that I could let go of.

All in all I really enjoyed reading this book. There were certainly a few missed opportunities throughout but what was crafted was so good that I didn't feel they were necessary. The book was so different from other retellings I have read and I loved reading it. I'll be interested to see what this author does next.

I recommend this book for fans of fairytale retellings or anyone looking for a good LGBT read.

I liked this book but it took me forever to get through.

Touted as a feminist fairy tale that is essentially Snow White meets The Snow Queen, Girls Made of Snow and Glass definitely lives up to its promised premise. However, while the book succeeds in exploring the roles women are expected to play in society and the combination of the two tales, it falters in its pacing. I particularly had trouble with Lynet’s POV — which pales in comparison to her stepmother Mina’s — and the novel’s final act.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

5 stars

“There are worse things in the world to be than delicate. If you’re delicate, it means no one has tried to break you.”

Mina’s father is a magician in the South. Her father is feared by everyone and as his daughter she is guilty by association. Mina grows up isolated and alone; constantly told by her father that she is unlovable and the reason her mother killed herself. Mina learns that she isn’t truly human. She died and her father kept her alive by turning her heart into glass. When Mina moves to the Whitespring Castle after her father saves the King’s daughter, Lynet, she decides that the king will allow her to experience love and be loved. Lynet looks like her mother, an exact copy in every way. It’s magical—she was created through snow and the magician’s blood. Lynet doesn’t want to be like her mother and she wants to have her own path. The person she wants to be like is Mina, but how can she be like Mina when Mina tries to kill her? AHHHH! I totally loved this book. I am genuinely pleased and surprised. I knew I would like this book because 1) it’s a Snow-White retelling and I’m a sucker for retellings 2) the blurb compares it to The Bloody Chamber, which I haven’t read, but know I’ll love 3) feminist fantasy I’M SOLD. This book had so much potential and it lived up to it for me. I don’t know if everyone will be obsessed with this book, but I recommend that everyone should check out this book and here’s why.


Bashardoust creates a beautifully cold and bleak world with little emotion within the walls of a kingdom. The tone feels chilly and the characters resemble that because they struggle to show their true emotions—either for political power or because of not knowing how to show them. I loved so many quotes in this novel. I highlighted so many great passages and I was moved to tears at simple scenes between Mina and Lynet that had no weight to the plot, but showed how important their relationship is. Bashardoust does a fantastic job at creating an intense world with intrinsic descriptions and emotionally captivating characters. The writing is wonderfully introspective and cunning in painting the character and the world without giving away too much at one time.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 5

“Made, created, shaped—all those words meant the same thing: she was something artificial. She was a duplicate, created to live out all the days that had been stolen from her mother.”

The characters in this are so amazing. They are all layered and at times frustrating… humanly frustrating. The story is told in alternating PoVs and timelines— present Lynet, past Mina, and present Mina. This worked out so well and intertwined to create such a riveting plot that had me on the edge of my seat no matter the timeline. This novel is important because it shows that stepmothers and daughters can have a strong bond that is as strong as a real mother-daughter bond. I was so invested in their relationship and resolving the misunderstanding that occurs because I wanted them to be on the same page and be the fierce dynamic duo I knew they could be. These two characters were absolutely lovely. On their own, they have flaws and while I didn’t always root for them at times because of their choices, I always enjoyed reading from their perspective seeing their characters grow. While this is a Snow-White retelling, the core story here is the strength of a mother-daughter relationship that isn’t familial and it’s a theme that isn’t present in YA, much less YA fantasy. It’s so refreshing to see an author—especially a debut author— flipping a typical trope in fantasy that has passed down for generations. Even my favorite fantasy novel, Daughter of the Forest, adheres to the evil stepmother trope, but Girls Made of Snow and Glass shows that the villain doesn’t have to always remain the villain because sometimes the villain wasn’t trying to be one.


“She was her father’s daughter, and what she didn’t have, she would create.”

Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: Mina- 5 Lynet- 5

The Villain- It’s known pretty early on that the magician, Mina’s father, is the villain. He’s kind of stereotypical, but I was not expecting him to get as twisted as he did towards the end.


Villain Scale: 4

There’s a romance in here and it’s not with a prince. It’s with Nadia… a female surgeon within the Castle of Whitespring. I think it’s great that there is more representation in YA fantasy, especially since I have a sneaking suspicion that Lynet is bisexual due to a scene with a random boy later in the novel, but regardless of whether she is a lesbian or bisexual, I’m sure her confusion and acceptance over her attraction to a girl will be understood by many young female readers. I personally didn’t feel a strong connection to romance. I also didn’t particularly like Nadia’s character and that’s because she was a little too-faced in certain scenes and I never felt like I was able to truly gather her real intentions until the very end. However, I’m really happy to see a different take on romance in a YA fantasy retelling.


There are other romantic leads with the King and with Felix, Mina’s creation from glass. There were times when I loved the King’s lines, but he was wishy-washy and obsessed with his dead wife. Trying to recreate the past with his dead daughter is too Gatsby for me and that’s why he ended up getting shanked while hunting like Robert Baratheon (a-la-Game of Thrones). Felix was an interesting character and he had similar parallels to Mina’s struggle with being emotionless and being made of glass, but he understood who he was quicker and was able to decipher and discover emotions early on and it made his love story with Mina sweet, but I didn’t really ship it.


To be honest, the only thing I did ship was that Mina and Lynet would realize how much they loved each other and all would be well.


Romance Scale: 3.5

I loved the plot for Girls Made of Snow and Glass so much. The fact that these characters are both strong women, but in different ways, and have magical powers is so awesome. I love stories with magic powers, castles, strong characters, and politics. This novel was so much fun for me and I looked forward to walking around campus and reading this on my phone. If you are going to pick one 2017 debut, make it Girls Made of Snow and Glass because it spins old-age fantasy tropes on their heads and turns a simple story into a breathtaking read. Also this kind of feels like Game of Thrones because it’s cold, there’s a lot of are you the villain or am I?, and it’s fantasy with the occasional court politics thrown in.


Plotastic Scale: BROKE MY SCALE

Cover Thoughts: I love this cover because it represents both Mina and Lynet. It’s ice shards. Obsessed.

Thank you, Netgalley and Flatiron Books, for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book that I thought I would love but it just wasn’t meant to be, and it’s not because the book was badly written, but I wasn’t a good match for it.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a beautiful re-telling of Snow White and the Evil Queen that breathed new life into the tale and gave it something extra I haven’t seen before. For the first half of the book, the story alternates between past and present, and the points of view of the princess Lynet and her stepmother Mina. These eventually merge in the timeline and continue alternating in present time. At first I actually didn’t care for this format but it proved not only helpful for the context of the rest of the story but all the little pieces of each of the characters’ histories came together and made this story rich and vibrant. Add to the fact that this book emphasizes the power of women, that the primary characters are women, made it all the better.

This is one of the most well executed Snow White re-tellings I’ve ever read.

Which probably makes zero sense if you remember I said that it wasn’t a great fit for me as a reader.

While the story itself was beautifully written and given the depth that I don’t see often enough in young adult fiction, I wasn’t hooked. My rating comes from an entirely entertainment perspective and I didn’t feel engaged in this book. Much like a fairy tale, I felt distanced from the characters and I found myself either skimming sections or putting the book down in favor of a different one.

But I don’t want to dwell on that too much because it’s such a individualized view of the book. Now I mentioned two characters and I’m sure you can guess from the synopsis which one represents their fairy tale counterpart. Oddly enough, I didn’t have a favorite between the two. Mina’s desire to be loved above all else drives her every decision even when it doesn’t seem to be at the forefront. I loved that Bashardoust showed this in a number of ways and used varying degrees of expression to really bring out the theme of love not only in Mina’s storyline but Lynet’s as well.

Lynet had all the confusion of a teenager and it was perfect. I think my fifteen-year-old self could have really related to her because she’s dealing with so much but you can see how her focus shifts around between who she is and what she wants in life. I liked that she didn’t know what she wanted because how many teenagers actually know? How many adults know? It’s great to have a protagonist who’s sure of themselves but it’s nice to see one that isn’t too. I also loved her relationship with the surgeon, Nadia. The inclusion of the F/F/ romance felt like a perfect fit, not forced for the sake of calling a book “diverse” (yes, I’ve read stories that seemed like that but this was definitely not).

In short, this is a wonderfully written book that just wasn’t as entertaining as I would hope, but I can’t fault it for anything else. I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoy fairy tale re-tellings and rich characters in a beautiful new imagining of a classic!

This book was marketed perfectly, it was definitely a fairytale retelling with a feminist twist. I definitely got a feel of Snow White with twists, and feminism. I found it was pretty slow paced, which personally I liked. I also liked the magic elements in the story a lot. The story talks about family and accepting who you are as a person, and did it extremely well. I will say for most of the book I was wondering where the romance was coming in (since it was marketed as having romance), but when it finally did I was pleasantly surprised. It was worth the wait.
It had one of my favorite things in multiple points of view, I really love when novels do this because I feel like I get much more of a sense of who each of the characters are. The character building in this book was in no way lacking. I felt like I knew each of the girls personally, and loved it. I really like when books focus on characters, which I haven’t normally encountered in a fantasy book. Most fantasy books I’ve read focus on world building, which works for them, but this book focusing on character development really worked for it.
Overall I thought this was a wonderful, enjoyable fairytale retelling. I feel like the main focus of the book was all about the characters and I loved that. Another thing that makes me so happy is it is a standalone, which is very uncommon in fantasy. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a fairytale retelling.

It isn't fair for me to provide much of a review as I felt like this just wasn't my genre.

I dont know why I didnt pick this up sooner. Maybe Im not as excited for retellings lately, but a dark feminist retelling of Snow White sounded like something I might enjoy. I dont always like it when a book switches from past to present, but I felt like it worked for this story. I would have liked for the world and magic to be developped a bit more. The simplistic writing was easy to get into, but the pacing didnt work for me. I also didnt feel completely immersed in the story but I loved the message and how everything wrapped up at the end. The second half was better than the first half, but some parts seemed too convenient.

The plot picks up a bit after the halfway point, but before that not much happens while we're getting to know all the characters. It also didnt help that this was mostly a character driven story and I prefer books that have more action. This story is mostly about these 2 female characters Mina and Lynet. It focuses on their interactions with one another and their struggle against what people expect from them. I appreciated how they were both complexe and flawed characters. I was able to relate to the daughter and stepmother rivalry. I enjoyed how magic effected both of the main characters and the bits that linked to Snow White.

I thought the characters and their relationship were well developped, but I wasnt as invested in them as I wanted to be. I did like the female surgeon Nadia despite her bad decisions, and I wish I would have gotten to see more of her and Lynet together. I wanted them to make plans to meet up somewhere if things didnt go as planned. I enjoyed seeing Lynets journey in the south and getting to explore a new culture. I found that most of the men in this book were selfish in their own ways. As flawed as he was the one I ended up liking the most was the Huntsman. I still think this novel will appeal to a lot of people. Id still recommend giving it a try if you like retellings and books that focus mostly on the characters.

I’d give this book 4/5 stars, and here’s why:

Characters- Personally, I really liked Mina (stepmother) and Lynet (the princess). Watching them grow and change throughout the book was awesome to read about! Throughout the book they learned lots both about themselves and about each other. Most retellings don’t have the stepmother and stepdaughter relationship that’s positive, its almost always negative. Having a Snow White retelling with magic and unique relationship between the stepmother and the princess was just fantastic! This book was dual perspective, and it worked very well for the novel. Another thing that was good was that this book had diversity as the main character, Lynet, was LBGTQ. The King was just strange and I guess creepy. His motives always confused me. Gregory was not good either, he was creepy too in his own way. Overall, I loved how our two main characters, Lynet and Mina, were strong 🙂 I

Plot: At the beginning it felt a little slow however as the novel progressed I found myself wanting to read it more and more! When I finally got into it, I kept wanting to know what happened. The final 100 pages were about my favourite because they were so action packed and heart breaking because I was like nope, this can’t happen! I loved the magic implemented in the novel as well as the idea of love. Of what love meant! Although the beginning was slow and definitely not my favourite, the book picked itself up in the second half.

Who I’d Recommend To: I’d recommend this book if you’re in the mood for a unique Snow White retelling featuring a close relationship between Mina (stepmother) and Lynet (the princess). The first half-ish of the book wasn’t the best but throughout the novel, as the characters grow and learn, I started to get more captivated in reading it!

<b>4.5 stars</b>

Retellings have been coming out of the woodwork these last several years, with SNOW WHITE being a crowd favorite, but as much as I love fairytales (and I really, really do), there are only so many ways a story can be retold in a short period of time before it gets tired.

Which is why if I'd more carefully read the blurb, I probably wouldn't have requested GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS by Melissa Bashardoust . . . And that would have been a mistake.

SEE?? Sometimes my habitual neglect works in my favor.

<b>You:</b> What's so different about this retelling?

<b>Me:</b> So. Many. Things.

I hesitate to call it feminist in nature, b/c I'm a literal person, and feminism--BY DEFINITION--is the opposite of chauvinism. *googles <I>feminism</I>* At least it used to be. The definition appears to have shifted into a more egalitarian meaning, so I guess I <I>do </I>call it feminist in nature.

But not in the heavy-handed way that made me reluctant to brand this lovely story as FEMINIST. *men cower everywhere*

It's about a woman married to a man who doesn't love her the way she deserves to be loved finding her own happiness. It's about a girl refusing to be stifled by expectations.

<blockquote><i>Lynet smiled and nodded and thanked them until the Pigeons were finished. Perhaps it was flattering to be fussed over, but she knew their fondness wasn’t for her own sake. They loved her mother, and Lynet looked like her mother, so they thought that they loved her, too.</i></blockquote>
It's about two women, traditionally at odds with each other, finding a way to coexist . . . <I>More</I> than coexist.

And it's so natural, so elegant, it makes you wonder: how am I only hearing this version now?

GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS from debut author Melissa Bashardoust is a retelling apart from others. You may think you know this story, of Snow White and her Evil Stepmother, but you would be mistaken. Bashardoust manages to retain the integrity of the original tale, keeping it easily recognizable, while simultaneously turning this often told story on its head. The end result is nothing short of remarkable. Highly recommended.

I love fairy tale rewrites, especially when they stay true to the original tale enough to make it recognizable but at the same time give it a new life and direction. This book was the prefect combination of both.

Mina is beautiful and has been told all her life that her beauty is her greatest power. She finds herself trapped in a marriage with a man who doesn't love her, a court that fears her and her only family is her magician father, who is obsessed with his craft. Lynet is the perfect reflection of her dead mother and has been held to that standard for as long as she can remember. She longs to find out who she is to herself and to be free. The only person who seems to understand her is her stepmother but when the new surgeon appears at the palace things begin to change.

Mina is the evil queen and Lynet is snow white and yet both are so much more. Told in alternating points of view, Lynet's in the present and Mina's sixteen years earlier until they meet and twine together. The writing is lush and captivating. The pacing is a little slow, but this story is about Mina and Lynet and their reactions and actions to what is happening.

This book is about the relationship between Mina and Lynet in all its complicated glory. There are secrets, on both sides. There is hate and love and trust and forgiveness. Its about the expectation placed on them by those they trust.

I had two quibbles. This is such a female book. All the men are manipulative or bad and I just wanted at least one nice guy. I'm not sure Felix counts. My second was the pacing. It was slow enough that I could pick up and put down this book easily. But I'm not sure that a faster pace would of done this book justice so I'm okay with it.

I loved the ending and how everything wasn't quite wrapped up in a neat little bow. So overall it was wonderful.

(also there were no dwarfs, which I didn't miss at all)

DNFing at 20%

This review will be very brief. I stopped reading this book because it falls into a genre that I do not read. When I had originally requested an ARC on Netgalley, I didn't realize that it fell into these genres. While I personally have nothing against feminist and same-sex relationship books, they discuss morals that I do not practice or agree with.

Because I didn't finish this book, nor am I a reader of books with these themes, I'm not going to give it a star rating because I don't feel I can.

I'd like to point out that I really appreciated the idea behind this story, and how creative it was!

Anyways, it simply is not a read for me.

A big thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book!

Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass is intriguing Snow White reboot

GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS, by Melissa Bashardoust, Flatiron Books, Sept. 5, 2017, Hardcover, $18.99 (young adult)

Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale that pays homage to source material but makes a mark of its own.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass features two girls — Mina and Lynet. Both lose their mothers at a young age and both are deeply connected to their fathers, but in very different ways.

At 16, Mina finds herself the outcast of her town. Her magician father is cold and calculated, creating a natural barrier from Mina and the people who live around her. And then Mina discovers the reason her own heart is silent, why she feels no love for anyone. Her heart isn’t even hers. Her father cut the original, damaged organ out and replaced it with one of glass.

Love is limiting, her father says. But beauty, true beauty like Mina’s can get her places. When the two move to Whitespring Castle, Mina heeds her father’s advice and aims high — the king. If she marries him, Mina believes she will finally know love.

Lynet is 15 and looks just like her late mother. It’s a fact she can’t escape; she looks exactly like her. There’s a good reason for that. A magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, and he did it on the king’s orders. Lynet’s father expects Lynet to follow exactly in her mother’s footsteps, but just because she looks like her, doesn’t mean she wants to be the queen.

What’s the point of living up to memories of a dead queen when there’s a perfectly good one to learn from? Lynet would much rather be like her beautiful and fierce stepmother — Mina.

The two have a bond, an understanding that Lynet’s father can’t understand. In fact, it makes him nervous. But that doesn’t matter anyhow. Lynet is almost 16, and her father decides it’s time for her to become queen of the southern territories. The move displaces Mina and drives a wedge between daughter and stepdaughter.

Lynet can’t bear the thought of losing the only mother she’s ever known. But she never knew the anger and hatred Mina has been carrying inside. Lynet must make a choice — win back Mina or destroy her.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass has all the elements of a great fairy tale — magic, love, great quests, strange beings and characters that you want to root for. In fact, what makes Girls Made of Snow and Glass work so well is that the character of the evil stepmother is multifaceted.

The story is told through different time periods and alternating viewpoints that intersect later on. You come to realize how Mina became cold and distant, and that her apparent austerity has little to do with her glass heart. The lines between good and bad are nuanced and make for an intriguing read.

For the most part, Girls Made of Snow and Glass features strong plotting and world building. There was a part, however, about halfway though, where the pacing slows to a standstill. At this point, I almost put the book down for good. I’m glad I stuck with it because the book became much stronger later on. Tighter editing through that middle section would have made this a 5-star read. Instead, it’s just a 4.

Here is the review I have also posted on Goodreads:

I think Bashardoust's idea for this book was creative. I really liked the idea of a girl made of snow and a girl with a glass heart. And the powers that Lynet and Mina had were pretty cool. The way the huntsman is created is a unique take on that aspect of the fairytale. I also liked the girl-power aspect, with Lynet, Mina, and Nadia trying to define themselves and be their own person despite the role other characters may want each of them to play. That is an admirable trait.

However, I think the book's ideas could have been better presented; the pace of this book seemed very slow and felt dragged out. I think part of this may stem from how soon a lot of information was presented to the reader. Within the first few chapters, we already learn how Lynet is created and also what happened with Mina's heart. But then there is a very long period of time before we start to see something like Lynet learning how to use her powers - not until the halfway point in the book.

It was also difficult for me to relate to the characters. Mina seemed a bit shallow at times; her purpose for creating Felix was originally just to use him. She also appeared very desperate, throwing herself at Nicholas the way she did; her love didn't feel genuine enough. And it was hard to see her as fitting with either Felix or Nicholas because of the way she kept switching between the two. For most of the beginning, Lynet also seemed to act like a spoiled child, lashing out at other people for not telling her about the secret of her creation. And, because of social status, it didn't seem quite realistic how Lynet and Mina are able to just talk with Nadia freely; realistically, there probably would have been more barriers between a court surgeon and a princess and queen. Perhaps those types of rules could have been clarified more. But overall, the idea behind the story was creative. Perhaps other readers would enjoy it more.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

While, maybe not for everyone, given the slow pacing, I really enjoyed it. I prefer books that show the story from all angles where you can empathize and/or at least have understanding for both sides. I think "Girls Made of Snow and Glass" does that well. One thing I would have liked more of was the romance. A lot of times in YA, I feel, there is almost too much but in this case I wanted more. Overall, a beautiful, enticing, escape.

I was anticipating something aimed at older youth, but this felt much more like a middle grade novel from the beginning. Since that's not something I am interested in, I stopped reading it.

4.5 Stars

I don't know what it is, but Flatiron Books is seriously killing it with the YA titles they've been publishing. I can honestly say I don't think I've read one yet that hasn't been at least 4 stars. The latest novel, from a fantastic new voice, is another one to add to that list. The description "Frozen meets The Bloody Chamber in a feminist fantasy re-imagining of the Snow White fairy tale" is certainly an apt one. While fairy tale re-tellings aren't something new, particularly in the YA world, there is certainly something special about this one in particular. Perhaps it's the heartbreaking origin of our not so wicked queen, maybe it's the fact that all of the women are positive role models for young girls, maybe it's how they're able to stand up to a male driven society, perhaps it's all of these things and more. The unique way that the story is told as well as the ability for the author to so seamlessly tie in the glass and snow metaphors into the story not only create a compelling story but one that is truly and utterly beautiful.

So excited to add this to YA collections and share it with teen readers.