I’m sorry to say that I didn’t enjoy this book. It had a lot of potential in that the author did a lot of work with “world-building” which is always a challenge in fantasy books. The characters had good bones, too. The execution of plot and character was just not there, in my opinion. I didn’t feel connected to the characters and the plot felt very unstructured and confusing. It’s tough with “adventure” books where the characters are on a mission to have it not feel just like a recitation of traveling to different places. That was how this felt, in addition to being jarring because of the magical means of transporting from place to place.

I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Reading The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass felt a lot like dating.

It has its ups and its downs and it morphs over time following stereotypical relationship development.

What am I talking about?

When a couple begins dating, they do everything in their power to be accommodating and impressive. The initial dating phase is like a game.

I’ll say all the right things, I’ll be on my best behavior, I’m going to make them laugh, make them smile, and show them a good time.

Eventually the couples gets closer, becomes tighter. They begin to ostracize their friends as they spend more time together and excitement ramps up all the way to the altar.

But after the honeymoon phase, the rest of your life begins and you realize you can’t be that person you were on dates 24/7.

Soon your partner discovers you aren’t the person you thought they were. Quarrels and arguments happen. Misunderstandings and confusion runs amuck.

Who is this person?

What happens next wildly varies from couple to couple. But nearly every couple experiences the previous steps above in nearly a play-by-play fashion.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is the couple that comes to a mutual understanding and toughs it out for the investment already made, neither completely resolving their differences, but neither are they at each other’s throats.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass Review

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is about Eli, a girl who was made by a witch for the sole purpose of being a tool for the witchdom.

She’s an assassin, created for nothing more than killing ghosts in the human world.

Ghosts aren’t spirit beings in this world, they’ve inhabited human bodies and they pretend to live as humans.

Eli can sniff them out, find them anywhere, and put an end to the charade. The witches give her a target, a dossier, and send her on her way.

With each kill, she and her witch mother climb higher up the social ladder of witches.

When Eli is given her most difficult task yet, the Coven breaks from protocol and speaks directly to Eli, instead of her mother. Instead of the normal dossier, she’s given only a name.

When the hunt goes wrong and she discovers her target isn’t a ghost, but a human, she has to make a difficult decision.

The First Date

It’s a really awesome concept.

Before I read The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass I looked at the reviews on Goodreads, and wow are they rough. An average of 2.5 stars with 70 reviews. I try not to read them too much to not get spoiled, but I did glance.

15% of the way through the book and I can’t figure out why the reviews are so bad. I’m loving this.

Eli is off on her mission and my adrenaline is starting to flow and I’m looking forward to seeing her assassin skills in action.

I want to see her and her witch mother progress and get more prestige.

Engagement

But oh no, the mission goes awry. No surprises there, it’s written right in the blurb of the book.

And what would a good story be if everything went well? I’m not concerned.

In fact, I’m elated.

I’m excited to see how Eli will confront this challenge, how she’ll overcome it and complete her mission. I’m ready to see her standing in front of the Coven receiving all the praise.

But that’s not at all what happens.

First Year of Marriage

That really cool premise that takes up the first 40% of the Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is nothing but a front.

It’s like the fake, “on my best behavior” personality of a dating couple.

Because as soon as I hit around the 50% mark I’m like “what the heck is going on?”

What is this?

Where’s my witchling assassin? Where’s my strong, cold as death girl?

It’s not the the direction the story takes is a bad one. In fact, it’s quite a logical turn and had the potential to be an interesting one.

The problem is with execution. Instead of driving her own fate, Eli becomes the third wheel in somebody else’s plan.

She has no reason to trust the new companions she has just met, but she lets them dictate her path without any solid or logical evidence. They don’t even tell her what they’re trying to do.

They use her as a pawn, and it destroyed every ounce of respect I had for Eli and obliterated any interest I had in the story.

What takes place between 50%-95% is nothing but aimless wandering and pure confusion.

A Rocky Relationship

This confusion comes from a few different things.

The first is a lack of identifies for who is speaking at least 40% of the time. Dialogue goes back and forth with quick banter, but 6 to 7 lines go by and you have no idea who is saying what.

The second aspect of confusion comes from a half-baked story with murky reasoning and unclear descriptions on what’s happening, how it’s happening, and why it’s happening. All of this leaves the reader unsure what they should be looking for.

And the final bit of confusion comes from what many will consider a highlight. And that’s the non-binary character.

The author herself identifies as non-binary, so it’s natural for the author to write a non-binary character.

The diversity argument aside, the use of non-binary pronouns is very confusing to a story.

If you aren’t aware, non-binary pronouns are “they” and “them” instead of “she” and “her.”

The problem is that “they” is a plural pronoun. Not singular.

So at least 40% of the time the author used the word “they,” I couldn’t tell whether it was in reference to the singular non-binary character or the group of three characters.

This contributed a lot to my confusion with what was going on, who was doing what, and why it was happening.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I simply tolerated the story from 40% onward.

I had the potential to love it so much. I was so very very excited early on.

I really felt like the person in the relationship who was strung along, making me think the story was something that it wasn’t.

I will not likely be picking up the second book which already has a title: The Boi of Feather and Steel.

For fooling me and pulling the rug out from underneath me. For taking my strong heroine and making her a pawn in someone else’s game. And for confusing the living daylights out of me so I had no idea what was happening for more than 50% of the book, I give The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass:

2/5 stars

I don’t really know what I just read. So many aspects didn’t make sense, and the story was just kind of all over the place. From the synopsis I thought this was going to be an incredible story about this assassin who was made by witches to go into the human world and kill ghosts. It wasn’t really that, but I couldn’t tell you what it was either.

I love fantasy books because of the world building and descriptions. This book could have had such a unique plot, but there weren’t any descriptions on how this world worked. To get from the human side, to the witches’ side of the world sounded super cool, but it’s just explained as a vortex?? I need more than that. I wanted to know how this world worked and why it was the way it was.

Another thing that bothered me was how so much was going on, but yet nothing was really going on. The main character is an assassin made by witches and the descriptions of how she was made and with what made no sense. Her dialogue with the other characters was just annoying, weird, and I didn’t care for anyone. Honestly, this book just did not make sense as a whole. Clever and unique plotline, but it did not follow through.

There are so many things I wish to say about this ARC that I received from NetGalley. I started reading this book with high hopes and an enthusiasm that was unlevelled. The name of the book, the blurb and the cover were so impressive that I felt like I had to read. The feeling continued for a few chapters before completely dying.
Throughout the time that I read the book, the characters never spoke to me and I couldn’t learn to care for them. Every character is under-described but what disturbed me most was the gruesomeness of the protagonist Eli. There’s a fine line when it comes to this: I enjoy reading about humans dealing with animal traits, personalities that make them resemble foxes or lions. But when the protagonist is partially an animal, one that crawls on fours and has crocodile teeth and eyes? I don’t think I was confortable reading about that. Instead if Eli had snarled at people like a crocodile, I think it would have been a lot better. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know?
When it came to the rest of the characters – none of them was described well enough. I cannot picture even one well enough and there was nothing that made them memorable. The worldbuilding was interesting although not very clearly set in my opinion. Since there was no logic in the land of witches, every location they visited could or did change drastically from Eli’s childhood.
The one thing I really appreciated about the book was the queer representation and how thoroughly the author refers to Tav as ‘them’ or ‘they’. The entire cast of characters contributed to the LGBTQ+ representation and that’s something we all love.
Giving this 3/5 stars for absurd creativity and great rep!

Despite the messiness, I liked this book. The characters need a little more depth, but they are all very likable and the diversity was top-notch. The world building was really cool but feels incomplete. There is a dreamy, chaotic, Wonderland-esque tone that I really liked, but the plot was all over the place. I enjoyed the journey and think this book could be really great, but it doesn’t feel like it’s fully developed yet. Nevertheless, I liked it, the writing style was beautiful and unique, and I would definitely read the sequel. Thanks NetGalley, author, and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is very hmmm lyrical. Half of it is set on earth but because the PoV character comes from a world of magic and dreams, even earth itself doesn't feel quite real. I dig it.

Eli is a made thing, created to serve the witches as a killer. One of her mission goes slightly askew, and suddenly the fate of both worlds is in her hands. Typical YA fare, one might say. What makes this book stand out is 1) having an NB character as a love interest and 2) the prose. As I said, Eli comes from a world where words have power and faith is as strong as a blade, so everything is just a little...strange.

The worldbuilding, although it took me a bit to really get into it, was interesting and unique. And the plot, while predictable, had enough twists and turns to keep you reading.

I would recommend this for anyone who wants to escape into a novel that's more poetry than prose.

What a fever dream of a book! Reading this was like reading something Maggie Stiefvater and Lewis Carroll had written when they were high.

I'll admit, there were beautiful, fantastical, moments that made me stop and ponder. Adan has a certain ability to make the reader stop and really examine the words they had written. But then the next line came, and that magic and beauty of the moment was lost. I had a really hard time traveling from one moment to the next, trying to understand exactly what Eli, Cam and Tav, were truly after and why.

This was a very character-driven novel with a particular vein for the dark, weird, and creepy things in fantasy. It sure did have its moments, but I found halfway through I just couldn't follow along anymore and was turning pages just to try and figure out where this was going and when it would end.

2/5 stars

The premise was interesting, and the cover art is beautiful, but I struggled to get through this. The plot was confusing at the best of times, and I think needed to be fleshed out a bit more. It lacked clarity. It felt like reading an early draft. The writing style was promising, so I am eager to see what Adan Jerreat-Poole does in the future after they hone their craft a bit.

I'm have really mixed feelings about The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass. In some ways I loved it in others in was disappointed.

I liked the Characters but there was so much going on it was hard to keep up with all the different stories and reasons. I loved that it was centred around so many LGBT characters and I enjoyed reading different pronouns etc for my first time in YA literature. The worlds fascinated me as did the idea of a created assassin, a tool of the witches to go after ghosts but not the type of ghosts that I have come across in so many other stories. It was all very intriguing.

My only problem was that I didn't get the buzz from reading this book that made me want to rush through it and find out what happened. I actually put it down and forgot about it for a week. Although I did slip straight back into it when I picked it up again.

After seeing the beautiful cover and reading the intriguing plot, I had very high hopes for this one. Witches and assassins vs humans and ghosts?! I mean, count me in. However, this story never managed to get me invested in it, mainly because the storyline was a bit confusing to me.
Every character had their own quest and together they embarked on one big quest without really knowing what their endgame was going to be. They also didn’t seem to have a lot of motives to actually do the things that they are doing in this book. On top of that, the reader is presented with quite a few flashbacks, but to me it wasn’t always clear what was the present and what was in the past.

I did like the diversity of the characters (both human and non-human). I also enjoyed the two worlds (The City of Eyes and the City of Ghosts) and all the different, magical places that our main characters get to visit. The magic in this book was also great, however it wasn’t explained all that much because magic didn’t seem to be the main focus.

Finally, this book contains a massive instalove and I’m just not here for it. The fact that Tav is always described as being awesome, mysterious, captivating an beautiful just didn’t do anything for the story. And the word “boi” was used a couple of times for no apparent reason and with no explanation whatsoever, which just added to my confusing.

So, I really hoped I would like this a lot more, but this one was just not for me.

Huge shout out to this book for having great LGBTQ representation! Non-binary, gay, and queer main characters really added to the story and made me personally happy.
The plot has a lot of potential and I like the idea of it. A girl made out of objects and brought to life by a witch's magic to be an assassin is a cool concept. I felt like the story stayed on the surface and things went by so quickly. I would love to see this dive deeper into the City of Eyes, the Coven, and the Children. Get more world building and some deeper emotions.
Cam is my favorite character, he's funny and sweet and isn't deterred by a scary assassin girl lol. Tav was a great non binary lead and I'd love to know more about them. Of course Eli is badass and the most complex character in the story. She's been through a lot and is capable of more than she knows.

I was surprised at the ending. I guess it's a cliffhanger but the stakes feel low. There wasn't a lot of buildup, so I'm not sure how the next book will play out. Hopefully we'll explore everything a bit deeper and develop Cam and Tav more. I did enjoy this and it reads really quickly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dundurn for the advanced copy. These opinions are honest and completely my own.

I really did try with this book. The cover and the synopsis were amazing and I was very excited when I got the arc for reviewing.
I like the concept of the book and the plot definitely had potential. I felt that the main character fell a little flat and even annoying sometimes. The idea that she is a tool to the witch and does not comprehend humans and the human world was something that had a lot of potential.
If the characters could be modified to connect more with the readers, the book would be so much better.

*Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.*

Although the premise was excellent, the story fell short. Many of the points didn’t connect well or at all, and plot twists lingered and fizzled out instead of being built up. The writing didn’t flow, and the characters fell flat.

I really enjoyed this book!

Holy moly.. This is not a gene I normally grab, but I am very glad I did! I thought the main character was a complete bada$$!!!! Very refreshing to see a girl kicking butt and taking names, and not being a wimp and depending on someone else to take care of stuff for her.

Loved it! The characters and the writing!!

I was really excited by the premise of this book and liked the unique idea of Eli's life being created and her magical knife belt, but that is were the excitement ended for me. I struggled to connect with any of the characters and found myself skimming through the book waiting for something to happen or draw in my interest. The writing style didn't flow for me and it jumped from ideas without enough development. I do love the cover, which is what drew me into the book in the first place.

On the struggle bus with this one.

I feel like this reading this book was like eating a half baked cake. The ingredients are there but the author did not stir the batter long enough and lumpy bits were left throughout. I liked the premise of the two worlds but time was not taken in the development of the City of Eyes World. At times I was left thoroughly confused. Additionally, characters seemed to appear one minute and are gone the next. Overall, I felt like some more ironing out was needed.

DNF at 20%

I couldn't get myself to read any further as nothing about this book kept my attention.

When I first noticed the cover of 'The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass', I was immediately captured by its beauty! I think the cover is not only appealing and right to the point for its genre, but also captures a bit of mystery that makes me wonder what the story will bring me. The premise of the book sounds amazing and I was ready to begin in this witchy assassin book!

For me, the story unfortunately did not enchant me as much as I hoped it would. The characters felt a little flat, because I thought there was a bit of a lack of personality development throughout the book. I couldn't really connect with them, even though I really wanted to. And it wasn't like the characters were the only ones not sure which way to aim for, because in my opinion, the plot itself had also a little trouble telling the story in an understandable way. It did get confusing at several points and I wasn't really committed to the story anymore at one point. I feel like the world building could've been so much stronger, due to what the premise would suggest, but the execution was done a bit dissapointing, unfortunately. After (finally) finishing the book I didn't exactly know what I had read or how to feel about it, but it did not feel satisfying at all to be honest...
I did really like the LGBT+ theme and that really earned a star for me, because it also had non-binary characters and I wasn't familiar with those at all. So that gave a really refreshing feeling on the over-all reading experience. I did like Eli, but the other characters were a little meh to me.
The other star is definitely for the mystery in the book. The ending makes me wonder whether or not I still want to know what happens in the second book. And, the concept of the book is fine, but the story needs editing to really emerge as good as it could be.
So, 2 stars for me.

I still want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC of the Girl of Hawthorn and Glass.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I will be posting my review on Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, and B&N.

trigger warning
<spoiler> racism, homophobia, deadnaming, transphobia, manipulating mother </spoiler>

Eli is an assassin, sent to the human world to eliminate a special kind of target - ghosts.
This is why she is puzzled as her current victim dies a very human death, something she never wanted, never was prepared for.

The title refers to Eli's making. She is not human nor witch, but something else entirely, containing both hawthorn and glass. She is stronger than any human, but has to follow certain rules, especially when it comes to her "mother", the manipulating witch who made her.

A main character is Tav. It's not clear, which label Tav prefers, but they use singular they pronouns without anyone making a big deal out of it, and not ignoring how hard it is to be shut out from the non-queer community.

While the first part of this novel felt perfectly paced, the second part felt rushed up to a point at which a scene confused me. Another surprise was the open ending, which left me wondering if this is done on purpose, if this is a standalone or a series.

The execution of this might not have been perfect, but every they made my heart sing.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.