Story
This book is weird. Like, Maggie Stiefvater levels of weird. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, I like weird books. Reading The Girl of Hawthorne and Glass was like falling into another world where nothing made sense but because nothing made sense everything made sense. Understand? It’s like one of the worlds from the Wayward Children series, and I loved it.

The story itself was average. Nothing about it was really bad or really good. In fact, I’m having trouble pinpointing the actual plot. But the core message of the book doesn’t really lie in the plot. It’s more character-driven, and I really enjoyed that.

Writing
The writing was very straightforward, but once again that’s not a bad thing. I love straightforward writing. A sentence has a much bigger impact on me when “ordinary” words are used to make something extraordinary. I like them short, sweet and with a punch, and this book did it for me.

Characters
The characters were the real interesting ones. First of all, we have some amazing rep in this book (LGBTQIA+ and POC), and the main protagonist is literally a monster. I love a good morally grey character, and the “assassin turns on her organisation” trope will never get old for me.

I enjoyed Eli’s journey of self-discovery, even if the romantic relationship between Eli and Tav fell a little flat for me. It felt like insta-love, and I would have liked them better as friends. Cam was hilarious for the most part, and his friendship with Tav was really sweet and well portrayed.

I would recommend this if you have a preference for weird books, nonsense and chaos.

The description of this book made me so excited for it, not to mention that the cover is beautiful.

One of the strangest things about this book for me is the fact that the title is literal. There is literally a girl made partly of hawthorn and glass. The girl was literally built by using things such as hawthorn, glass, and other stuff. So, this is the first time I’ve read a book where the title is literal.

This story and world have the potential to be amazing. It’s weird, it’s different, it’s fantastical.

So why didn’t I like it?

The characters were way too flat and underdeveloped, I can barely even remember all their names. We only have descriptions for the world, no history about the place or people at all. The story had no time to settle and was incredibly rushed, which mean that it had terrible pace. The writing was different, and I liked it, but at times it was too metaphorical, and I had no idea what was going on.

The few strong aspects of this book were its diverse cast and unique setting.


Good Underlying Themes/Messages:

-Homophobia is wrong.
-There is always more to a person than meets the eye.
-History is written by the winner.
Half a star for this category.


Interesting Story:

As I mentioned above, this story really does have the potential to become something amazing. Ignoring all the bad things, it was an interesting story. If the author had taken some more time to explain the story and make sure that the pacing wasn’t too fast, I would have loved it.

Half a star for this category.


Fantastic World-Building:

The pacing was too fast for worldbuilding. There were no breaks for the author to build a solid world and I’m disappointed because I would have loved to find out more. The City of Eyes is Coraline-level weird.

And I love Coraline, which says a lot about the comparison.

I want to know the history. I want to know about the hierarchy because at the moment I have absolutely no idea about how it works. I want to know more about the people living in the city; are there many people? I don’t know since it felt like only the children, Eli and her mother lived there.

I can sort of understand why the author left out so much of the world-building. There is lots of advice saying cut out the boring stuff and yes, world-building can sometimes be an effort to read through, but its necessary for a book to have it. I’m not sure what genre this book is, urban fantasy I guess, but fantasy book are supposed to be long. They need substance. At the beginning, I felt that this book was too short and I was right. It barely reaches 300 pages, which is definitely too small for a fantasy.

But once again, it does have the potential.

Half a star for this category.


Realistic Characters and Growth:

The main character is called Eli. She’s a made-thing belonging to the witches and is employed by the witch council to hunt down rogue ghosts. She’s supposed to be tough, merciless and focused. Pretty cool.

Instead, she’s bland and boring. When she’s around her mother, her narrative is written in ‘formal’ way, but when she speaks to Cam, she’s uncharacteristically witty. It just comes out of nowhere and doesn’t fit her character.

Tav, at least, is pretty consistent. They are cool and calm, and toughened by the world. If anything, I would have liked to find out some more about them. Cam was the comic-relief, and he reminded me of Chubs from The Darkest Minds. He was sweet and awkwardly funny, which I appreciated.

There is definitely something to be said for diversity and LGBT+ representation in this book. Nothing is forced, but rather everyone feels like they fit well into the story.

Half a star for this category.


Emotion:

Since there were no pauses in the story and the characters were flat, there was no one I could become attached to. I didn’t really care about the story or where it went, or whether these characters would make it to the end.

The writing was different from anything I’ve ever read, and the descriptions were weird, which fit with the weird setting but at times it was too metaphorical so I couldn’t really understand what was going on.

0,25 stars for this category.


That’s it!

This book was definitely a disappointment for me, but I’m sure my next read will be better!

Have you read The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass? What did you think?

Till we meet again!

Xx Alexia

3.5 STARS


The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is, at its, heart, about anger.


I'm distinctly reminded of The Hazel Wood in a lot of ways. This, I think, is the better book of the two, but the similarities are hardly insignificant. An angry teenage girl discovers her world is more lie than truth, and she finds herself questing to set things right. In this case, there are more witches than fairy tales, and more queer characters than not. Plus, the anger isn't carried by a single character. This time, everyone has a reason to be angry. 


Everyone has a reason to demand change.


"'You want to fix the city, or break it?'
'Sometimes, it's the same thing.'"


The world Eli lives in is a strange one. Ruled by a chaotic magic and witches who seek to bend that magic to their whims, it's not a conventional world. Walls shift, pathways change, and magic has a price. More often than not, magic requires an exchange, a bargain, and nothing in the world is without some degree of life. As a result, walls that swallow people whole are not uncommon, and endless wastelands with shifting, elastic concepts of time are perfectly within the realm of possibility.

To accommodate these fantastic elements, The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass has to exist at a disconnect. On the one hand, I loved it. It allows the reader to decide how they feel for themselves, while also crafting a world at once familiar and uncanny. On the other hand, in a book where anger is the driving force behind all change that the main characters push for, that disconnect lessened the effect of that anger. 

Eli, Tav, and Cam find themselves acting as pawns in some larger scheme. They've endured all manner of lies and abuse, and they have every right to be angry. But the nature of the prose, locked in a rather distant third person, makes it much harder as the reader to share that fury. Believe me, I want to. And in some aspects, I do. But I can't help but imagine how much stronger that emotion would be in first person instead.


The queer rep, on the other hand, is delightful.


Adan Jerreat-Poole is queer, an enormous relief to me, and they don't shy away from broad representation. Eli is obviously queer, taking into account the previous love interest and the current one, while Kite could safely be described as sapphic. Meanwhile, Tav is non-binary and Black, and Cam is an East Asian gay man (though there are no further cultural specifics than that). I really enjoyed this, especially since stories featuring queer anger are rather personal to me.

That said, I do think that Tav and Cam missed the mark, not in their queerness, but in the way the author handles race. If Adan Jerreat-Poole had not described their physical appearances, there is very little to clue me into the fact that these are not white characters. That's not to say they needed to be cultural stereotypes (because they absolutely shouldn't be!), but it does feel like they're simply white characters with a coat of paint slapped on for diversity's sake. 


If this book might be for you, there's still time to place a pre-order!


While originally meant to release May 2020, The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is now publishing on October 6th, 2020. Hopefully in the next few months, the existing issues will be addressed. As it stands, however, it's still an interesting read, curious and somewhat unsettling. It's also a duology at the very least, leaving on the cusp of upheaval. You won't have to wait years and years to see the conclusion, but you'll have time to digest it all the same.


CW: violence, gore, graphic injury, racism, transphobia, homophobia, deadnaming, animal death mention, self-harm

[This review will go live on Hail & Well Read at 2 pm EST on 5/18/20.]

A huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

I was excited to start this book when I got approved to read it. I’ve never read a novel solely around witches and I wanted to read one. However, I was rather disappointed by The Girl Made of Hawthorn and Glass.

In the very first chapter, we’re welcomed by action, something I really liked as it gained my interest almost immediately. It started raising many questions. It was the perfect start for the book. But then, my interest slowly started decreasing. I wasn’t able to really grip onto the story and really get into it. I merely read it, but didn’t very much enjoy it.

To be honest, I didn’t really like the main character, Elliot, or some of the secondary ones either. I was not able to connect with them in any way. There were come comedic remarks that this book desperately needed but it wasn’t quite satisfying. However, I did like the friendship that was created between the three most central characters. I also loved the diversity. Elliot had a possible love interest who was queer, and there were characters of colour. I enjoyed this aspect of the story. Although, I wasn’t too fond of the romance in the beginning because I felt it was really rushed, like they met three minutes ago, but it did get better when reading more of the story.

I personally found the writing a bit confusing, which caused the story to be a little confusing for me. It may have to do with the fast pace, but this is one of the reasons I wasn’t able to really get into the story. I wasn’t very fond of how The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass ended, I was hoping for something much more thrilling but was disappointed.

I did not enjoy or like this book. I would’ve DNF’d it but decided to just finish it and be done with it. I heard there will be a sequel for the book, but I don’t think I will read it.

I think people might really enjoy the story, however, I was not one of them so I do not recommend this book. But if the story interests you, then give it a try. Overall I rate this book 2 out of 5 stars.

An interesting premise that soon fizzled out from a weak plot, poor characterization, and lack of worldbuilding. There were some pretty blatant plot holes and questionable MC decisionmaking driving an almost indecipherable narrative. I was drawn in by the LGBTQ representation and witch assassin concept, but unfortunately the story itself was lacking in structure and polish and I couldn't get over it. Most of the plot was set up by cringe-worthy exposition and superfluous banter that did little to nothing to reinforce any sense of personality. Everyone sounded the same, I had no idea what anyone looked like, the magic system was not explained, and the action sequences were too abruptly begun and ended to enjoy. By 30% I was counting pages and trying to talk myself down from skimming the rest of it just to be done. Unfortunately, this one was just not for me.

Thank you to netgalley for providing a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

DNF'd @ 15%

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole sounded like it could be a new favorite YA fantasy. I mean, it's described as Nevernight meets The Hazel Wood which are a couple of favorites of mine. Unfortunately, this novel just ended up falling flat for me and it lost me pretty quickly. It's trying much to hard, but at the same time it doesn't feel like it's trying to distinguish itself right when it needs to the most.

I received The Girl of Hawthorn a Glass as an eARC, so thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review it.

I was excited at the concept of the story - a girl who wasn’t totally human, created by her witch ‘mother’ from granite and blood and hawthorn and glass and human bones, as a weapon essentially, an assassin who can travel between worlds, and also between the creases in each world. Along the way she finds a soul and a conscience and makes some human (or maybe not so human) friends, in an attempt to save the human world from the witches.

So....an exciting and novel concept, but some of the world building was lacking and rather confusing, and I feel there’s a lot more for the reader to discover still. Some of which would have been helpful in this book😋. There is a second instalment coming out, so hopefully more will be revealed then.

Lots of LGBTQIA representation which was great, and I liked the characters enough that I would probably read the next in the series - The Boi of Feather and Steel - probably.

3 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

DNF
Unfortunately it didn't work for me the way I expected it to. Maybe I went with too many expectations.
Some parts don't make any sense.

I hate leaving a book unfinished -- I've only done it to one other novel in the past -- but unfortunately, I really didn't enjoy this one and had to stop reading at page 70.

I requested this novel because I love all things witchy, and the premise -- a teenage ghost-hunting assassin made by witches -- sounded so fun! In the first couple of pages, the author includes an insightful, heartfelt message to the reader, telling them that their anger is acceptable, and that their life and body belong to them. To me, this gave the impression of a book that had a lot of heart behind it, and carried a strong feminist message -- especially given the symbolic nature of witches as feared, powerful women. This becomes relevant as the novel opens and we meet our protagonist, Eli, who, as a made-thing, is in possession of neither her life nor her body. At any moment, her creator, Circinae, could unmake her, and this turns out to be the fate of many made-things.

The strong point of 'The Girl of Hawthorne and Glass' was the chaotic, imaginative world-building and description of certain characters. Our protagonist has sharp teeth and reptilian eyes, another character has eyelashes like an insect's antennae, the glamours the protagonist uses while in the human world are described inventively (there's a part where Eli "unfold[s] the glamour that Circinae had left on the steps" and it gives the impression of being knitted like a woolly jumper or scarf), and names can be stolen or lost -- like all witches, Circinae was "born nameless" and "had to travel to the human world to steal a name". Ghosts bleed iron, smoke, or scales, and our protagonist reflects upon killing a ghost that burst into a cloud of perfume. All of these things had a lot of potential and felt very unique!

However, I found myself unable to get attached to any of the characters or feel truly interested in the plot, which seemed to meander amidst the stilted narrative style, and characters like Eli and Tav felt more like sketches than fully fleshed-out people. Others, like Kite and Clytemnestra, who shows up like a creepy child and explodes a taxidermied vulture in a fun display of "wow, what kind of world is this?" had great potential, but they, too, could have used more development.

This is a debut novel, which means that I fully expect Jerreat-Poole to improve as they continue writing. With more editing to ensure cohesiveness and more realness (for lack of a better word) imbued in the characters, this could be a really interesting book, sure to delight readers with its inclusiveness and fantastical takes on magic.

Well, I hate to bail on a book halfway through, but this YA fantasy novel really doesn't work for me. The general premise is interesting, which is what makes this so disappointing. Eli, the titular girl made of found materials, comes from a witch's world that can access the human world, as she frequently does to kill ghosts at the instruction of the witch's coven that controls her. But, the world building isn't firm enough to bring any of this really to life... The "human city" as it is called is both vague and oddly specific in its modernity - there's Advil, Uber, smartphones, motorcycles - but without a firmer footing, it just never feels very real. And while it's fine that the witch world doesn't follow logic, it simply needs more detail to support the shifting nature of the world itself. A reader just can't find a solid footing, and while that can work in fantasy, it just doesn't here.

The characters are also hard to connect with. Feeling separate from Eli, who is a being made of some human material, witch's familiar objects and works as an assassin, isn't that surprising. She sounds cool, but there's not enough to connect with in her relationships. It seems like some of her history is overly implied and leaves the reader feeling like she is quite unknowable herself. And the witch world characters are so alien that even Eli doesn't grasp their motivations - which aren't intriguing enough as plot points to make me want to learn more. When human characters are joined into the mix, though both come with their own motivations, these are just told and don't really feel actually motivating... One of the characters, Tav, announces upon first meeting Eli that "they/them" is their preferred pronoun. And while I am sure that the inclusivity is greatly appreciated by readers and publishers, when Tav is in a group setting, this preferred pronoun proves quite disruptive to the text and pulls the reader out of the action. This is more of a flaw of the English language, but to add confusion to a YA novel seems to be at cross-purposes. I would hate for a reluctant reader to be frustrated with a text that otherwise appeals. I think there has to be a better way to handle this in fiction!

But there is so much here that works to disconnect the reader from the story, that after making it halfway through, I realized that with the lack of concrete world-building, characters that feel real and motivation and unsupported by a plot that intrigued me, there was just nothing to keep my turning the pages. I couldn't find a reason to continue reading, despite its cool cover and interesting sounding premise. Disappointing.

I really struggled to get into the story line. The style of writing is incredibly distracting; it’s over descriptive in an immature kind of way. The writing is all over the place and the world building lacks clear description, while simultaneously being too descriptive over other aspects.

I had to DNF.

I really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately I just did not. It had potential to be something great - a 'made' being, created to be an assassin of ghosts? But there was so much going on, and the story flipped between current and pasts events without a clear break, and I felt confused a lot of the time.
I did enjoy the characters themselves, I just couldn't get into the story and finished it not feeling a great desire to continue to the series.

There was something about the writing style and the worldbuilding that made it hard to care about the book. I felt removed from the story, like it didn’t matter, even after we finally met side characters with personalities. The book was also confusing, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t user error—I followed the plot easily enough, just not the rules or the shape of the world. The chapters in the human world were much easier to process, but I still didn’t care. The random flashbacks didn’t help matters. Maybe this one just wasn’t for me 🤷‍♀️

I'd like to begin by thanking NetGalley and Dundurn. I recieved this ARC in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

This review can also be read on Goodreads.

Where to begin with The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass? It appears to be Adan Jerreat-Poole's debut, and for that reason, I'll try to be gentler, though honest, in the opinions expressed in this review.

I wish, frankly, that I had better things to say about this book. I'd settle for having anything positive to say. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.

Readability - 3/5 Overall, the novel is an easy read. However, there are frequent grammatical errors and misspellings. This took me out of the narrative more than once, in part because I found myself having to pause and reread the sentence in order to make sense of what the author was trying to convey. This is something I would expect from a first draft, not a final, published one.

Pacing - 1/5 The pacing was very poor. The novel immediately leaps into the central conflict. In some cases, this can be a good thing! But only if it's executed well. Unfortunately, in the case of The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass, it wasn't. I spent the majority of the time confused about what was going on, and desperately trying to make sense of the overlapping timelines. (An impossibility, it turned out; especially because there were no customary italics to denote memories/separate the present from the past. This was made worse by the fact that the chapters were generally very short. It left no time to provide context for interpersonal relationships, and the characters were introduced too quickly to form any sense of investment in or attachment to them.

The constant slipping from past/present and from one world to the next without any build up, context, or transition made it difficult to follow the narrative more than once.

Prose - 1/5 I wasn't a fan of the writing style. The Girl Of Hawthorn and Glass is marketed as a Young Adult novel, but I didn't have that sense. The sentences were overly simplistic, and the most description we get about any of the characters include: Purple hair, a waxed mustache, yellow crocodile eyes and glasses. This type of overly simplified writing feels like it should be geared towards a much younger age bracket. That, and the author's insistence on using the term 'boi.' That pop culture/meme-y reference may have worked/felt more appropriate in a non-fantasy setting, but I found it jarring, at best, and cringe inducing, at worst.

Premise - 4/5 I originally requested an ARC because I adored the premise. The premise is fantastic! Parallel worlds? Witches? Demons? Children woven from spider webs, berries, and glass? Underground resistance fighters? Yes, please! Sadly, the book I was promised isn't the one I received. At least, in that sense. Which brings us to...

Plot - 1/5 I spent this novel questioning what was going on. Constantly. I'm sad to report it took 28 chapters to even have a glimmer of understanding as to why Tav and Cam had been sent to the City of Eyes. If that had neatly tied up the plot holes and loose ends, I would have happily scored the novel higher. Unfortunately, it only left me with more questions. The romance between Tav and Eli seemed abrupt. They had a grand total of two prior interactions, making it difficult to feel strongly about their romance, and mostly giving the impression that it had been shoehorned in.

Characterization and world building - 1/5 It was practically nonexistent. You knew little about Eli, and learned even less. The same is true for Tav, Cam, and Kite. Glimpses of backstory were teased here and there, but ultimately, there wasn't enough substance or development for any of them to be memorable or interesting. Which is unfortunate, because they had potential in those glimmers. I'm sorry that potential wasn't fully explored. The world had the material to be lush and rich in lore, but fell victim to flat writing, and the fact that the author didn't take the time to explain the magic or politics of their world.

Overall, while this book had glimmers of a solid fantasy debut, it fell short. It stumbled too often to be an enjoyable read. Like Eli, it tried to be too many things, and ultimately failed.

First off, the cover is really what drew me into this story and the idea of a teenage assassin, well those are my favorite and how I stay as young as I do, but I started to lose interest almost immediately within the story, while the story was developing nicely I was so lost in the many many times we were reminded that her name was Eli, I counted like five times within a page and I felt myself getting pulled out of the story as soon as that happened.
I also had a lot of trouble understanding the world behind this story, the world building was really lacking and I needed that to understand what was going on.
The beginning of this story really drew me in though, so I was excited to see where it was going but I got lost along the way and never really found myself invested again after Eli accidentally killed that man.

Maybe I'll try again when the finished book comes out but I am not entirely sure,

I'm sorry

Thank you to Dundurn Press for sending me an ARC via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

2.5/5 stars. After reading the whole book, I’m left with lots of questions. Not questions about what will happen next, but questions about the magic system, the characters’ motivations, and how the elements of the story work together. My overall feeling after reading is confusion and meh. I didn’t feel a connection with any of the characters. I’m still confused about the Coven, Eli’s role in her world, how magic is used, what purpose Cam served, and what the point of their “adventure” was. While reading, I felt like the elements weren’t cohesive, and a lot of things were under explained. Jumps between past and present threw me off because there wasn’t any warning in a lot of cases.
The only reason I’m giving this 2.5 stars is because I did like the author’s descriptions of the setting, and the voice of the narration was fairly easy to follow. It’s a diverse cast of characters with lots of representation (POC and LGBT) which is pretty cool albeit slightly confusing with the group of characters as “they” and also the non-binary character as “they.”
Overall my feelings about this book were, like I said above, pretty meh and I will not be reading the second one. This book didn’t grip me with a need to find out what will happen next. It was not enthralling or compelling to me. It was just meh.

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be random. This book was so incredibly random that I could not find a solid story arc. It was jumbled and confusing, almost like the author through ideas into a hat, pulled them out at random, and then wrote them down as they came out. The main character, Eli, has no emotion to her, and therefore, I couldn’t connect with her. There were too many different ides that I couldn’t keep track of the overall plot. I hated that Tav was referred to as “they.” It made the narration incoherent and forced. I kept having to figure out if when every time the author used “they” if it was used as a singular pronoun or if it was addressing more than one person. The characters name were also incredibly random and did not match the characters’ personalities at all (not that the characters had personalities to begin with. They were all dull and undeveloped). The part where Eli lost her memory was useless and could’ve been cut out. Again, too many ideas were meshed together, which made this book very incoherent and not understandable. I was confused for the entire book, as though I couldn’t find the underlying meaning behind the characters’ quest. I also predicted that Tav was the target as soon as the author introduced the character, so that arc was less enjoyable. The metaphors were just cringey and I had no idea what any of them meant. They were ridiculous and random and I could not get onboard with any of the prose in this story. Overall, this book was a huge letdown, especially since the cover is eye catching, but I would rate it 1/5 stars.

Thanks, Netgalley and the author for making it available for me :D
Three stars mean I liked it said Goodreads. And that's exactly what happened.

"curious young women are dangerous - especially when heavily armed."

I liked the setting of the novel, the world that the author build looked very interesting, but there are so many things I still can't understand. Maybe everything will be in its place after the second book of the series, I don't know.

The main character, Eli is a witch-made assassin. Her task is to kill ghosts in the human world. But if you thought, that this is what the story is about you were very very wrong. Anyway, I liked her way of thinking and how she sees the world.

At first, she accepts that she is just a thing, an object, a weapon, but throughout the story, she realises she is much more. She has her own thoughts and feelings and she stands up for them.

"These were the moments she lived for, morsels of stolen freedom."

The side characters were okay, Tav and Cam were cute but they weren't that exciting. But I loved the rock wall part it was so funny, how Cam panicked. :D

The writing style was the most confusing thing in the book. There were some strange metaphors, and skipping back and force in time or people minds.

So this is why it got three stars from me. I liked it, but something was missing. It's okay for one read.

Adan Jerreat-Poole is, I believe, Canadian which may account for some of her "English" spellings of words in this novel - words like 'sombre' and 'glamours'. This shows my ignorance because I'd always thought that Canadians used American spellings. However, it's always good to read outside of one's comfort zone, especially since far too many novels published in the USA seem to take the position that it's the only country in the world and nothing of interest happens anywhere else! I beg to differ!

I liked this novel because it was operating outside the box and far from the beaten path. Far too many novels play it safe - clone someone else's work and turn it into a trilogy. I blame publishers for pushing this boring approach and writers for kow-towing to it. I love the ones which don't comply!

The story here is that Eli (not sure how it's pronounced: E-lie? Ellie?) is less of a person than an object - an assassin 'robot' almost, constructed by witches out of organic bits and inorganic bobs. She can pass through the vortex between the witches' world and the human world, and her 'job' is to take out ghosts. And I don't mean date them!

These ghosts are not the incorporeal remains of a dead human. They're wispy beings which are almost zombie-like in some respects, and which typically occupy a human body. They can't be seen by humans, and the witch powers-that-be detest them. Eli's maker, a witch who is growing in power and influence, hands out her assignments proudly because Eli is the best assassin. She has seven special knives that help her do her work to perfection, and she has never failed. Until she does. That's when things change.

It takes a while for Eli, who constantly grows and evolves throughout this story, to figure out exactly why the ghosts are a problem for the witches, and all the time she is learning and seeing her world in very broader strokes. She discovers she's in a much different world from the one she'd thought she was in. In pursuing her last assassination - the one mission that's doomed to fail - Eli encounters two people: Tav, a non-binary person who is a biker, and Cam, a gay cab driver. These two become close to her - the first people in the human world she's ever been drawn to.

I've seen some reviews of this novel that praise it for including genderqueer characters, but in some ways it's rather overdone here. It's not a problem that they're included, but that they risk overwhelming the story to the exclusion of all others. At times it starts to feel like there are only gender-queer people in this world.

To me, the way to fix a problem where the pendulum has been pushed too far and for too long in one direction isn't to push it forcibly and equally back in the opposite direction, but to weld it firmly in the middle so no one is cruelly excluded or artificially included ever again. As it happens, in this story it wasn't too intrusive despite Eli being apparently non-cis as well. Perhaps I didn't mind so much because I really liked Eli as a character. She's definitely one of my strong-female character icons.

I enjoyed the story and read it quickly. I liked the originality. I enjoyed the different take on witches and ghosts and the magnificent world-building. This was a tour-de-force of inventive thinking outside the box and it was a most welcome read. There were some technical issues no doubt caused by Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process. I'm not the kind of reviewer who gets to read a hardback print version, so I got the e-version and there was the trademark Kindle mangling in evidence here.

One classic example of this is the embedding of the page header (alternating title and author on even and odd pages) right into the text, so I would read, for example: "She clenched her hands. THE GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS Took a breath in." The way I avoid this in my own published work is never to include page headers or footers (including page numbers) in the version I'm using for ebooks. I don't even use the headers in the print book version. What, is your reader going to forget what they're reading? I have a little more faith in readers than that.

The book also contained some abstract images that were included between chapters and sometimes as section separators in the text. These images were apparently broken-up and turned into Kindling by Amazon as well, although without having seen the original images, it's hard to tell. In other instances of generic Kindle mangling, the text was missing a line break between speech from different characters, so I'd read it all on one line:
"Hey, it usually works like a charm." "I'll bet." Eli rolled her eyes."

And one final observation: I'm sure that even in Canada, there's a difference between staunch and stanch. I read, "Tav staunched the bleeding" but unless Tav was making Cam bleed in a loyal and committed manner, she didn't staunch it. She stanched it. I've seen this error increasingly in YA novels and I find it sad. The error was repeated later as "one hand staunching the flow of blood." Nope! Stanching! There was one lone error in spelling that I noticed: "you will owe use a thousand glamours," which I think should have read 'us' rather than 'use'. Presumably that sort of thing will be corrected before this is published officially.

But we've all been there and I'm not going to downgrade such a stellar book for some minor issues. I thoroughly enjoyed this and I commend it as a worthy read. I look forward to the next offering from this author.

I really liked the cover. It is very appealing designed. The writing style is pleasant and very fluently to read. The characters are very well described and look well thought out and consistently interesting. The tension is always present. The descriptions of surroundings, feelings and scenes were also very good. The story is told pleasant and it succeeds from the first pages to dive directly into the story. The storyline as a whole is very coherent and it seems very understandable and authentic. A very fascinating story that you won't like to stop reading.