With the first few chapters of the book I felt as though I had stepped into a movie midway through. Who are the Coven? Why do they need an assassin? What are they hiding? I yearned to know the story of Eli’s making and to save her from the COven’s manipulations. The author did not disappoint, The changing timelines allowed Eli’s story to unfold as she struggled with her own inner demons and turmoil. The authors use of genderless names and fluid sexuality gives the reader the freedom to imagine the details for themselves. I found the character of Eli and her personal narrative to be the heart of the story. Her inner dialogue and drive to understand her place in the world mirrors the anxiety felt by many. The characters of Tav and Cam are perfect in their role of friend, the author giving them enough detail and depth of storyline to Make the reader care about their fate. The ending suggests an opportunity to learn how Eli, Tav and Cam will fare on Earth in the future (I hope this is true!). I would recommend to those readers that enjoy Deborah Harkness or Kelley Armstrong.

I enjoyed this new world and am eagerly awaiting the second book to find out what happens next! The book has several LGBTQ characters who know who they are and are accepted for that. Some discrimination and violence associated with that is mentioned but it happened before the events of the book. I like that they attribute the nastiness in the world to magic gone wrong. Much better than the current reasons everything seems messed up.

Eli isn’t an ordinary girl. She was made by the witches, a deadly assassin using her seven living blades to help them and the coven by completing her missions. But when one mission goes wrong, she begins to question everything. And she ends up on a journey she would never be permitted to take.

Honestly, I loved this book, so so much. It’s unique, it’s creative, and I love the underlying messages of feeling like you don’t belong, or going against all you know, when all you know isn’t really what you think. It’s an new world, a new fantasy, I’ve never read a single book like this before and trust me when I say I will not forget about it soon. It’s enticing and magical and all I could ask for from a book. The description and actions are perfectly balanced so the imagery I see is amazing.

It’s a superb, inclusive, book and I love it!

Yeah, this didn´t work out for me. I ignored the used to oblivion name of the girl of something and something and went for it because of the beautiful cover and the nice blurb. Unfortunately, the characters felt flat and the plot seemed something haphazard put together from a thousand other fantasy books. It feels like the author still didn´t find their own voice, It would be an A+ as a school project but it not feels like a professional, interesting work on its own. I did not finish.

This was a pretty good book. I am honestly very conflicted with my feelings for this book. The story was pretty scattered, hard to follow, not fully developed, and contained one-dimensional characters. However, it had beautiful prose, a fascinating concept, a beautiful world, good diversity, and lyrical writing that I fell in love with. I think people getting into YA would really enjoy this book especially if they find themselves liking the vengeful assassin trope. I think the book had phenomenal potential, it just fell flat on the execution. I wanted so bad for this book to land on my top reads of the year, unfortunately that wasn't the case.

Thank you, NetGalley for a free copy of the ARC for my honest opinion in exchange.

--3 stars --

For fans of Sarah J Maas who don't like to buy YA here is a book for you! Assassins, witches, fae. This novel has everything---including a breathtaking cover!

This was not a story for me. After saying that, Eli is someone I can understand. Her anger is justified and understood. I just could not enjoy the story as much as I would’ve liked. It was had to follow and understand at times. Things didn’t compute in my brain. It’s a good concept and storyline.

I've been really torn on my thoughts of this book. On one hand, The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass was beautifully written with diverse characters and unique world-building. On the other, this book was confusing, emotionally distant, and the world-building and characters seemed to be mostly surface level. I wanted to connect to these characters and this world so much, and while the story is compelling, it felt like we never quite got there.

The prose was lyrical and the world was haunting, I just desperately wished for a little more substance. The City of Eyes and the witch council? These things are so incredibly intriguing, yet never felt fully fleshed out. The characters themselves all seemed to be quite interesting, and I was hoping the whole way through that the barrier I felt between us would crumble, but again, I never quite got there with these characters.

Overall I think the concept of this story was brilliant, beautiful, and incredibly compelling, but the execution left me wanting more. Still, I was impressed by this story and am curious to see where this could lead!

There are very few books that I've started reading and never finished, unfortunately this was one of them. I tried very hard for several weeks to get into this book but I just couldn't.

You can find this review and all of my others over at www.readbookrepeat.wordpress.com

Actual rating of 2.5

Eli is a made thing. A witch's tool. An assassin. She is sent into the human world by the coven that resides in the City of Eyes to hunt ghosts, so when the mark she was sent after turns out to be a human, she realises there's something not quite right. She ends up embroiled in a plot with the help of two humans who need to reach the coven, with the promise of answers as her driving force. In a bid for the truth, Eli takes on the task of escorting two humans into the City of Eyes in order to steal the heart of the coven, but what she discovers along the way will force her to question everything that she's ever known, about herself, the coven and the human world.

I was SO excited to read this book. That cover. That title. THAT SYNOPSIS! It just screamed a magical adventure that I wanted to fall into and be wrapped up in a little bubble while I devoured it. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly what I got, and I'll admit, I was a little disappointed.

I would pin this story as a young adult, coming of age fantasy. Eli is an assassin, she's not a real being as she is made up of various things such as hawthorne and glass and granite and given life by the witch who is also known as her mother. Her job is to be the perfect killing machine in order to catch wayward ghosts that are lingering on Earth and disrupting things. The place where the coven and witches live is called the City of Eyes, because they literally see everything that is going on. There wasn't a lot of description about the human world because, lets face it, it's the human world and I feel like we're all pretty well versed on what goes on here. On the flip side, I feel like there was too much obscure description about the City of Eyes. I'm gonna put it out there now, this story is filled with so much flowery metaphorical prose that at times I found I became lost and confused because I actually had no idea what was being spoken about anymore. This happened throughout the entire book. And when I felt like I was just getting the hang of it? Nope, it slipped out of my grasp. The City of Eyes sounded so intriguing because it was described as being so fantastical and fantasy and just all around crazy weird, but we don't really get any explanation as to how the world works or what is going on in said world, so this really detracted from the story for me because I JUST WANTED TO LEARN ABOUT THIS MAGICAL INSANE WORLD!

The author's voice, I could understand what they were going for, and I honestly appreciate what they were attempting to do, but it just fell so flat for me. Think Laini Taylor, the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, or the Strange the Dreamer duology, this is what I believe the author was going for. Whimsical prose that danced across the page, while painting a stunning picture of colour, sound and emotion that just made you fly through the story on a fluffy cloud of imagination. Instead, it ended up being a convoluted, confusing splash of every single colour of paint on a thousand different canvases that made the story incredibly difficult to follow and become engaged with. I feel so sad because I can SEE what Jerreat-Poole was trying to do with this story, but for some reason, which I can't quite work out, it just did not translate to me - the reader - at all. I'm not sure if it was an editing problem?

The characters, Eli is an okay protagonist, but I felt like she was really easily accepting of things even though she's meant to be a made thing that works for the coven and only the coven. She was so accepting of Cam taking her to meet some strange witch that resided in the human world, and I felt like she was sort of funneled into joining their rebellion or whatever you want to call it. It was almost like "Yes, I am a killing machine, I work for the coven I assassinate ghosts....oh okay, now I'm working for this witch who wants to steal from the people I work for, okay, we're doing this now." There didn't seem to be any suspicion or questioning of what was happening and this really bugged me because Eli was meant to be this top notch, created being who was flawless, at least, that's what I got anyway. Tav was probably the best character, they are a representation of gender fluid and I love that they were included, I do however believe that this character wasn't explored to the greatest ability of the story or the plot and it made me question the point of having this amazing gender fluid character in the story. I feel like Tav's story should have had a major impact on everything and I just didn't get that at all it almost felt like the author just threw this character in to be 'trendy' and with the times? I'm wrong, and I know that I am, I'm just hoping that this character's story gets expanded upon in future installments because otherwise, as said before, I feel like it was just an excuse to be able to class this book as LGBTQ+ for marketing purposes. Cam was okay, he was fairly meh for me, I don't quite understand his point in the story to be honest. Clytemnestra was incredibly interesting, and I'd like to learn more about her. I guess I just feel like this was a lost opportunity to really delve into what life as a gender fluid person is like, this was a chance to help people understand, and it just wasn't taken.

I just felt like I didn't connect with any of the characters at all. We got rough backstories and stuff that was loosely connected to the reasoning behind why they were following the Hedge-Witch in the human world on her rebellion, but I just didn't care. I felt like all of the dialogue, interactions and narrative of these characters was so cold, detached and emotionless. It was almost like "Oh no, they are drowning in the sand. Oh phew, they are now safe again. I was so worried" if you can picture that in a robotic voice devoid of any emotion at all. I don't understand how the dialogue and actions and pretty much everything elicited absolutely no emotion from me whatsoever. It was as though these characters were going through the motions and it was just so robotic and clunky and unfeeling that it left me feeling annoyed. It's almost as though the sentences that would have helped connect the characters to the reader were all edited out and all that was left over where the 'doing' sentences. Instead of "I felt my heart shatter as her fingers slid out of my grip" it was more like "My heart broke as she fell away" It just feels like there was something huge missing from it all and it made me really sad.

I wanted to badly to love this book, maybe that was my problem? It sounded right up my alley and I was pretty keen to get into it, but it just didn't deliver for me. I feel like a different editor may make a huge difference to the story, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure whether I will continue at this point, unless the writing style and the authors voice can evolve and develop rather quickly between this book and the next, I probably won't because I feel like I'll just be disappointed again and be left feeling frustrated because I can understand what the author was going for, but they just did not make it.

I tried to like this book. I truly did. The witches and science behind it was what made me want to read it in the first place. The story telling was chopping and I never figured out the point of the story. It was a jumbled mess of what many think have to be in a story to be successful and it had poor execution.

There are books I think I'll like based on the description. There are books I think I SHOULD like based on the description. And there are books that I downright expect to like, whether for the tropes involved or the plot description. This book was the latter. And it is, I believe, to-date the lowest rated book on this blog.

As has become a common thread at this point, I rate books that confused me lower than those that didn't, regardless of whether or not I enjoyed them. And, y'all, I really didn't understand this one at all. From the synopsis, I expected a Scapegracers-like tale of witches, assassins, and ghosts. What I got? I - erm - fantasy, I think? The worldbuilding was so flat and vague that I didn't understand the mechanics of anything. What exactly are witches? Where do they live? What are ghosts if not the souls of dead humans? Why do witches kill ghosts? What is the Heir Lord, and why is it Kite?

Moreover, this was the sort of book where everything was happening and yet, at the same time, there was no plot. The main character, Eli, an assassin made by witches, spent more time describing her blades than expressing any kind of emotion whatsoever. The side characters were so strange and yet somehow boring that I couldn't tell you a single thing about them. No, really, even stereotypes are too nuanced to encapsulate the sheer boredom of our side characters - these were characters who were little other than their names.

I wanted DESPERATELY to like this book but I just.... didn’t, at all. I appreciated the casual way LGBT rep was incorporated into the plot, but beyond that, I have no compliments. I felt nothing for the characters, was not invested in the plot, and felt absolutely nothing whatsoever other than confusion or mild disdain. That's it. I can barely string together enough emotion about this mess of a novel to write my review.

Just skip this one, okay?

Title: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass
By : Adan Jerreat-Poole
Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy | Teens & YA
Pub Date: 06 Oct 2020
Review Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3215082475

Eli is a.... well in someways she is a girl but nothing about her is normal. Eli may look like a human but she is in fact a witch's daughter. A being made form stone, fruits, and Hawthorn. These creatures are not treated in a loving way, Eli was created for one thing, to kill ghosts on Earth.

Life, if it can be called that is almost mundane for Eli. Until she makes the worst possible mistake, can her mistake mean the Coven will undo her? in essence killing her.

Using fantasy as a backdrop it is clear that this book is showing the reader what it is like to be part of the LGBT+ community, How people fear what they are not used to and how damaging the effects of abuse and phobia can be. Not just homophobia but also racism and much more hate in the real world.

Spoiler Warning

Though the book began with a good hook and very little "telling" that did change. By the end of the book I did feel like we were being told a lot instead of being shown, it didn't spoil the book I just noticed the difference in style.

It is a crucial part of the book that Tav is gender fluid/non binary how ever I felt the lack of description quite annoying. Firstly anyone who is either gender fluid or non binary still has a physic. Also it ruined the twist in the book. I could tell that if the author was holding this back, we only got a description of Tav's face almost half way into the book, then I knew it was for a reason and I guessed it quite quickly.

Over all I enjoyed the writing style and representation. I felt the morality of Kite and Eli's mother to feel believable.

The mishandling of the big twist and the love triangle were the only two downsides for me.

I think if someone wants to read a story of betrayal and self discovery, with a diverse bunch of characters in a fantasy setting this would be it.

Already looking forward to the squeal, Hedge-witch needs to pay!
Shipping Eli and Tav aka El-tav (No matter Kite's reasons)

I have to admit I requested this book based on the cover and the title! I mean it sounds so good! Only after being approved did I read the synopsis haha, but that also sounds good!
In this book we follow Eli, a perfect assassin. I always love books about assassins haha! She got this assignment to kill someone, but something goes wrong. One thing that I missed a little is that we kept being told that she is this perfect assassin, but we never saw her kill someone?! The books starts with her assassination going wrong, so we don’t have any proof that she is a very good assassin.
In the first chapter we read about Eli failing her assassination, which was very intriguing, and really made me want to continue reading! But then the second chapter was quite info dumpy. Part of her are these 7 blades and this chapter explained what each one did in one paragraph. ‘the bone blade, good for this, the glass blade good for this..’ And here I was like wait, you expect me to remember all these 7..?! Luckily it wasn’t that important, only some of them, and they are named again!
Okay but moving on from the first two chapters..
This was such an interesting world, you have the human world and this world were all these witches and other weird creatures live. The witches are not able to travel between these worlds, but Eli is since she is ’made’. This is why she keeps getting assignments for which she needs to go to the human world. And learning about this witch world was so interesting since it was really weird and non sensical. Non sensical worlds can really throw me off sometimes, but for this book it really was part of the charm! I also feel like this world made the book quite original!
The cast of characters in this book is very diverse! I’m not really sure about Eli’s sexuality, maybe lesbian or bi, but we have a gay main character and a non-binary main character! Eli as a character was just okay to me, but I absolutely loved Tav and Cam! They were so funny and I just loved reading their comments and conversations!
I really thought this was a standalone, it wraps up quite nicely. But if you go to the authors page on GoodReads there is another book, with as description that it is the sequel, but it is not listed as a series haha. I have no idea how many books there will be in this series.

***I received an uncorrected proof of this ebook from netgalley in exchange for an honest review***


Magic is meant to be chaos. Chaos is beautiful.✝


⭐ 1/2

This book was a tangled mess. It gets a bonus star for nonbinary and queer rep but... that was the only positive thing I got out of this reading experience. What was the point of any of it?? The premise behind the world is SO cool, but it's not used in a very intriguing way. Things magically happen in a *poof* sort of way that just feels so lacking. Parallel plane of existence? Hop into the mystical Vortex. Need to travel somewhere new? Just grab the 'threads' and pull. WHAT. IS. HAPPENING. I feel like the blurb of this book is a lie. The ghost-assassin plot was essentially used as an opening to the world, and then it was more or less dropped.

The new relationship between Eli and her non-witch friends Tav and Cam was very strange. It came out of nowhere... I find it hard to believe Eli was ready to abandon her entire way of life (and die??) for a nice 'Uber driver' and a hot boi with a motorcycle (both of whom SHE JUST MET). I really, really wanted to love the budding relationship between Eli and Tav, but it just seemed too pat and contrived. There was absolutely nothing there for me to hold onto within the text beyond sheer physical attraction (and even that was weakly expressed).

And the title... the TITLE. Oh my god, publishers, can you STOP. This title matches with the line of fanciful 'and' titles that every YA book seems to use now. But this title is so wrong for this book. Sure, the words describe two of Eli's, uhm, ingredients, but that does not a title make. (City of Eyes would have been cooler, just saying).


✝check against final text

***Thanks to NetGalley and Dundurn Publishing Company for providing me an ARC of THE GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS by Adan Jerreat-Poole in exchange for my honest review.***

1.5/5

I found this book to be a common trend that I have seen lately: I love the author, but dislike the book itself. At the beginning of the book the author talked about their experience being non-binary and that they wanted to create a book that had characters with different identities and sexual orientation, I love this! The diversity in this book was great, yet what fell short to me was the plot. I was very interested to read about an assassin who was created by witches, has to deal with a crisis of faith and two different worlds, but ultimately I found it to be a bit lacking.

Writing style:
The writing style did not quite sit well with me. From the beginning of the book you are thrown into Eli's world and it is a bit disorienting (This is a personal preference for me). In addition to being thrown into the book there is almost no world building which can be kind of confusing when Eli is balancing her life between two worlds.

Pacing:
The pacing was a little bit all over the place. The beginning throws you right into the action, while I found other parts of this book to lag.

Characters:
This is what ultimately led to a higher review. I love the two characters! Eli was pretty interesting, but the star of the show for me is Tav the non-binary character (I love them). The representation was great!

I most likely will not be continuing this series, but I will definitely read more books from this author. (There is a lot of potential and I LOVE the diversity.)

I received an eARC from NetGalley and Dundurn in exchange for an honest review.
It’s hard for me to write this review because most of the time I was reading this book I was very confused about what it’s happening. I don’t know if I didn’t pay enough attention or if it just was written in this way.
The book tells a story of Eli who is a young assassin, created in the City of Eyes by the powerful witch. She was trained to eliminate the ghosts on the earth, also called the City of Ghosts. The ghosts are pictured in this book as a danger to humanity. Once she is ordered to kill one of the marked ghosts and it turns out to be a human. She’s terrified that she is the one who made a mistake, however, when it happens the second time, she doesn’t complete the mission and try to figure out what is happening. That’s the moment when she meets Tav and Cam, who introduces her to the high witch who runs away from the City of Eyes and lives among the humans. She is the one who asks her to join their next important issue and lead Tav and Cam to the Coven. In exchange she would receive the information on her human mother.
That’s as far as I understood this story. It sounds interesting but I honestly had a very hard time finishing reading this book. There are many wrong things with this story. A lot of things repeat more than twice, the characters are very dull, and I can’t even say anything about their personalities. The story itself was very boring and nothing big happened. I didn’t feel any connection to the story and its characters. I was really trying to like this book, but it just didn’t interest me as I expected it to do.
Another unclear aspect of this fantasy story was the powers of the main character. Until now I still have no idea who has what power because it was changing so many times during this book that I just lost the track. Moreover, I couldn’t figure out where they are. They were just jumping from place to place thanks to the Tav’s new magic, and I didn’t know when it was happening. That could be also my fault because I didn’t pay much attention to it.
I thought a few times about just DNF this book because I wasn’t enjoying it, but I wanted to give it a chance to change my mind. However, until the end of the book it didn’t change. It sadly wasn’t a book for me, and I feel bad to write this review, but I just want to give an honest review to express my thoughts on it.

The Girl of Hawthorne and Glass was a confusing novel. It started of well, setting the scene, building the plot, creating a the atmosphere but lost me somewhere in between. The writing is at times poetically beautiful but sometimes feels clogged. It doesn't match up on every page and every chapter.

The story follows Eli, a weapon made by witches whose duty is to assassinate ghosts in the human world. This is what interested me in this book, the promise of a teenage assassin traveling between worlds to kill ghosts.
This story was lacking. It dragged for an incredible long time. The story didn't have much drive, it's a quest type of vibe but with unclear motivation. The characters didn't have a strong motivation for their actionsand decisions and there were a lot of plotholes (continuation issues???) that left gaping holes in the worldbuilding and that didn't make sense. Like Eli apparently didn't know much about humans but she knew a whole lot about Earth and human things and songs - like where did she hear human songs? How is she a fan of coffee? At some point we're told she doesn't need to eat so we have to assume she doesn't drink either.

It's not the worst book I've ever read but it's nearly there.

Wow. And that’s not even a good wow.

This was a literal hot mess and I don’t even know where to start.

The plot had real potential but it was all over the place and too confusing for me to follow through. The world-building was non-existent, LGBTQA representation was great but there wasn't much else to rave about, and the writing style wasn’t to my liking. I can literally go on and on but I’m sure you got the gist with all the other low ratings for this novel.

Nevertheless, there is something we can all learn from this: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Nuff said.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass was an okay book. Not going to lie, I was really excited to dive into this because so many people were reading this on GR. Plus, I've had some friends say they like it or dislike it so I really wanted to form my opinion.

Okay, so, this book started off slow for me. Really really slow. I wont even say it picks up because the entire book just dragged for me. Which, again.. honestly, disappoints the living hell out of me. First off, you meet Elle and she is kind of an interesting assassin. She is probably the only reason I kept reading because I just wanted to know more about her and her little missions. Then there's the whole LGBTQ+ representation which intrigued me as well. I wont lie to you about it one bit - this book did a great job with all of that love. Yet, I was still so bored. Beyond bored maybe.

Besides her, we got to meet some side characters. They were okay and kind of interesting but nothing could redeem this book for me. If I could give you some suggestions as to how this book could be better - my brain just couldn't give you the answer. It's complete mush right now and I'm just so sad. I really wanted to like this book and I'm sad that I couldn't.

In the end, it had so much potential but just crashed and burned for me.