I didn't really know what to expect from the description of this book. But I found the idea of a teen assassin intriguing. After reading the book, I feel as though I experienced the most exciting vision. This has a dreamlike quality that reminded me of movies like Pan's Labyrinth in both style and horror. Add to this a wonderful, non-binary character, and other diverse representation, and you get an imaginative book that was highly entertaining.



What I Liked:

World-building:

Eli travels between two world: The City of Eyes (the world of witches), and The City of Ghosts (Earth). While the City of Ghosts is mostly like our contemporary world, it also has ghosts. The City of Eyes is the world of witches, labyrinths, and terrifying creatures. As most of the action takes place in The City of Eyes, this is the world that is presented most vividly.

I loved the way time and space are not linear in this world. Eli can be talking to her witch mother in one moment, and then playing hide and seek in The Children's Lair. It's a place where young witches learn games of trickery and cruelty, waiting for the day they will be admitted to the Coven.

There are so many unusual places, and creatures that it felt like a nightmarish version of Alice in Wonderland.

Characters:

Eli is such a wonderful character. While she is strong, she is also vulnerable. She is constantly worrying if she will be unmade if she makes a mistake. She's actually like a child who worries that her parents' love is conditional on their being who their parents want them to be. Can she ever be her own person?

Tav is a non-binary human who Eli meets on earth. For some reason, Tav is able to see ghosts, and maybe even use magic. This is the first reason Eli is drawn to Tav. But, Tav is even more complicated than having unusual abilities. They are kind, and have strong friendships and loyalties with others. Eli yearns for these things too.

Cam is Tav's very likable friend. I love that this is a fully developed character who is given an interesting story line. As we get to know Cam, we see a kind and loyal friend who's optimism is much needed. He's the one in the group who keeps their spirits up, and never gives in to dispair.

Story:

The book is a coming of age story, at least to begin with. Eli has a lot to prove to her witch mother as she tries to find her place in the City of Eyes. She is an assassin. But, when something goes wrong with an assignment, Eli begins to question why she is tasked with killing these ghosts on Earth?

This is where the novel shifts to more of a heist story. Someone wants the Heart of the Coven. What is that, and what do they intend to do with it if they get it? Eli needs to determine each person's motivation and what side she will take.

Diversity:

This book is important because it presents non-binary representation as a normal variation on the human experience. This is not a book about someone coming to terms with their gender identity. Tav's gender identity is a given. I loved this. Tav is a tough, loyal person who deserves an adventure story! And this book gives them that, plus an electrifying romance.

Unfortunately I won't be giving proper feedback for The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass as I DNF (Did Not Finish) it. This book and I turned out to not be a good fit for each other. I found I wasn't able to get into the story, or even be interested in the protagonist. I found her creation, abilities, and the fantasy world she traveled to rather confusing. There was a lot of information presented in the first few chapters that quickly lost my interest.

I won’t be posting this on my blog, nor will I give it a negative rating on Goodreads.

I just knew that I would enjoy “The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass” by new author, Adan Jerreat-Poole . Sadly, that was not the case. The book started off strong and I was all in. That soon transitioned. I needed more worldbuilding. The worldbuilding that was there was lacking as well as confusing. It just needed to be a little more cohesive. The characters themselves were underdeveloped and I do not feel like I truly knew who they were. I really had to push myself through this book as I felt detached from the storyline as well as the characters. I absolutely love the cover though and it was one of the things that pulled me in.

**ARC provided by NetGalley for review**

This book suffers from the opposite of what most books are critiqued for. The author chose to show two different worlds and tell the reader nothing about either. I ended up reading segments of this book to my partner to find out if I was just reading too quickly to pick up on key information but he was equally as confused. To be fair, this book is exactly the reason I would never write a book, I don't have the patience to make any type of writing flow and neither does this author.
This book read like amateur fan fiction or one of the self-published e-books that are advertised to me on Facebook and exist solely on cash grab apps. Like these ads, the writing had all the tropes and awkward speech of a teen novel from 2005.

I do genuinely believe this author had an interesting world and I appreciate an author that will create an inclusive cast of characters. However, reading this book was a chore and read like it was an unfinished work in progress. Hopefully the finished product is superior to the ARC.

Magic is meant to be chaos. Chaos is beautiful!

Meet Eli, a made-thing assassin the witches created to hunt and kill ghosts in the City of Ghosts (Earth). But when two missions went wrong, Eli starts to question her purpose and the Coven.

Unable to return to the City of Eyes, Eli met a group of teenagers led by a witch outcast asking for her help in exchange for her passage home. Their mission: to get the Heart of the Coven.

This book is amazing!!! It's full of adventures, well-paced, magical, and would stimulate your mind to imagine the setting, the actions of the characters, and the events transpiring. You can really feel that the author has put her heart and soul in writing it! I love the main characters and the story itself is very compelling. It is well written, beautiful prose.

Although there are some questions that come to mind after reading this book, I guess I will have the answers in the next book.

I thank the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review the eARC of this book. I can't wait to read The Boi of Feather and Steele.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ebook ARC free of charge in exchange for an honest and unbiased review
This book's first few pages were a little slow but the pace picked up quickly. The world building and character are handled well and fleshed out nicely and I loved the elements of magic that were entwined throughout the book.

“Finding you like that - like you’d walked out of a storm, or maybe a story - an you were crawling with this kind of energy. I just knew you needed to be here.”
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I have received an Ecopy through netgalley. I’m not going to lie.. it has been difficult to finish this book. I really didn’t find myself interested in the story and I couldn’t feel a connection with the characters. Eli is a weapon created by a witch to let her gain more power and kill ghosts. But when a new mark is given to her, Eli is unable to kill it and she starts helping humans, mostly because she feels as if for the first time she is seen for what she really is: a person. She has feelings, very strong ones, that cannot be ignored and she just deserves to get some love. I appreciated her awareness as the story develops and the fact that queer characters are present is something that doesn’t happen often in fantasy book. However I really found the third person plural used for Tav very disturbing and confusing during my read even if I can understand the choice.

* Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. *

Sometimes a pretty cover can be deceiving. That's how I feel about The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass. There was a lot of promise in the synopsis and the cover, but it didn't come to fruition in the read.

This book is all over the place, with a jarring narrative movement and a lack of backstory that left me very confused in several instances. You are thrown into a new world without a lot of explanation. Sometimes this can work for a fantasy if the world is slowly explained through the movement of the plot. In this case, that didn't happen. The world-building is severely lacking, leaving large pieces unexplained and making the story very confusing.

It reads like a slightly dark, magical fever dream. There is no central thread to pull everything together and the narrative moves as a series of disconnected pieces with a lack of smooth transitions and explanations of the how and why. There is magic sprinkled in here and there and a loosely explained goal for the characters to strive for. It's a quest without a solid purpose. Sure, they have a goal and they're attempting to save the world, but it's very lightly described and the intensity just isn't there. I didn't care enough about what they were trying to do.

The characters themselves are the best part of this book. They are diverse and vibrant with good personalities. They are interesting and unique and I did want to know more about them and understand their backstories and their motivations. But they don't move coherently in the narrative and I felt like I was left hanging.

All in all, a very confusing and disappointing read.

I really connected to the characters in this book. The first half of the book is quite good and then it seems to fall apart. I felt like I was missing something, there was a lack of works building and I didn’t feel like I could get a grasp on where we were. The pacing slowed and it got complicated with information I didn’t need. I’m not sure what happened to the second half but it was disappointing and I had trouble finishing

Well that was a bit of a letdown, There was a girl who was literally made of thorns glass and other materials which only a few come to mind when books about main characters being built with such sharp things, I was really excited, but I found Eli to be lackluster as a main character. The world building could use some work, not a lot is explained. And I honestly could not really care about the other characters. I will say though that this has a great LGBTQ representation and the cover is stunning, but overall that all tat seems to be going for it.

The characters were so strong and they were the best part of the book for me. The world building was a bit lackluster and needed some work, I felt a bit lost in the latter half. The pacing was another factor that made the reading experience somewhat slow and I would have liked to see more development of the world itself to keep me more engaged. I liked it overall but there is room for improvement!

Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole follows Eli, a made thing created by a witch to be a perfect tool and assassin to hunt and kill ghosts in the real world. I was immediately drawn in by the cover, description, and foreward/author’s note at the beginning of the book, which spoke of strength and diversity and empowerment.

The first scene of the book was gritty, atmospheric and I was immediately drawn in, and over the course of the book there were many more scenes like that which were artistically crafted and really enjoyable, but unfortunately those scenes were like small islands in a turbulent sea of other sections that were either choppy and hard to follow or overly descriptive of things that didn’t seem to be very important, paired with under development of the magic system and characters.

I found myself reading and rereading sections, trying to understand exactly what was going on, and even when I finished the book I feel like I didn’t understand the large majority of it. I am normally someone who loves magical realism and fantasy as a lens to explore oppression, and I loved some of the parts of this book that did that, but overall it just felt messy and under-developed.

All that being said, I think that this was an incredibly adventurous debut book, and I will still be keeping an eye out for what this author writes going forward. While this one didn’t hit the mark for me I liked the idea and I think with a bit more polishing Jerreat-Poole will be the kind of writer to put out a book that perfectly fits my taste for magical realism/fantasy and activism.

3 stars (CAWPILE: 5 8 3 5 7 2 5)

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a free early copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

After reading the description I was really excited for this book. The cover is also what drew me into this book. For me it ended up falling a little flat, I didn’t hate it but didn’t love it either. It started out a little slow and never really picked up.

This was alright. I definitely wouldn't say it was a bad book, but it wasn't a great one either. A solid 2.5 stars.

I was super interested going into this book; the premise sounded incredible, and I did enjoy it to an extent. Unfortunately the plot just didn't work for me. It started out pretty slow, and it never fully picked up. We got snippets of excitement and parts that had me reading intently, but they never lasted long enough to turn around the overall pacing of the book.

The characters were pretty likeable, and I appreciated the lgbt+ rep, but it wasn't enough to carry the story to that next level.

A decent read overall, but not likely to be something I'll remember for very long.

Big thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the review copy!

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately I did not.

I do want to say that the cover is gorgeous, and even the writing is beautifully descriptive. However, the storyline was a little all over the place, and I found myself confused from the very beginning. While the premise of the book is interesting, it is not executed well.

I hardly ever put down a book once I start reading, but I couldn't make myself finish this one.

I enjoyed this book. It wasn't my favorite of the year, but the writing was strong and i enjoyed the storyline.

Thankyou to netgalley for providing me with this e-arc.
First off, just look at this beautiful cover. I was so excited when I got accepted to review this book but unfortunately I just couldn't get into it.
The characters felt bland, I couldn't connect with them and I definitely didn't care about the world or the characters' journey.
I tried to read this twice, after the second try I i just had to give up and dnf this book.

This was a middle-of-the-road read for me. While I liked a lot of aspects, there were some things I disliked, and overall, I just didn't feel strongly enough about the book to really warrant adding an in-depth review to the blog.

I do not consider myself to be an avid Sci-Fi and Fantasy reader. However, I have read and enjoyed several in the genre. This was not one of them. It does not really fall into the category well. I feel it's going to grab an audience solely on being a cover buy because the cover is indeed gorgeous. And that is where the beauty ends for me.

I was drawn in by the cover of this one, but unfortunately the plot just didn't do it for me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood, so I might give this another try later on.