I was really excited for this book and a bit disappointed in where it ended up.

There were definite parts about the story and characters that I really liked. I really liked the reimagining of sleeping beauty. I love a good fairy tail retelling (Alex E. Harrow's take on the sleeping beauty tale is really well done!) and so there were a lot of bits throughout the novel that harken back to that which were a really nice edition.

I also like the addition of bi-representation though I feel like there could have been more done here. I wasn't really getting much from the love triangle trope aspect and just felt like more could be done to create a more genuine connection between the characters. Sometimes you don't need two love interests to create romantic tension.

Overall it wasn't a bad story. It just feels like in a world where fairy tail retellings run rampant more could have been done for this particular narrative.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

There are elements of a really good story here, including bi-representation and a very spooky forest, as well as some creepy moments! I also liked the Sleeping Beauty twist, that part was super creative.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to the advanced copy of this book to read.

This book was received as an ARC from Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I love books that have a new modern interpretation of a classic tale. Briar Girls is a modern interpretation of Sleeping Beauty in combination with a curse where skin can kill. That was the struggle Lena was facing until Miranda drops in and her life changes forever when Lena agrees to help Miranda on her journey to rescue a sleeping princess and her home from a tyrannical ruler. The blossoming friendship of Lena and Miranda, and the quest they embark was all the reason I needed to finish the book. i knew I could not stop reading or else I will miss key details to help with following along for the quest. Rebecca Kim Wells did a fabulous job creating a world in a colorful manner transporting the reader in the ultimate fantasy interpretation of a classic tale. From beginning to end, this book just got more exciting by the page.

A blossoming friendship, enticing quest, and fantasy adventure made Briar Girls the ride of a lifetime. This book deserves 5 stars.

TLDR:

Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells is a YA Fantasy reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, pitched as The Cruel Prince meets A Curse So Dark and Lonely.

Notable elements:

- Break-the-Curse
- LGBT+ (Bisexual Representation)
- Constant Bargaining
- Freedom vs. Power

What I liked:

- Subtle, Stunning Displays of Human Connection — Lena beautifully embodies humans’ innate desire for connection. Her inexperience in forging bonds leads to some lighthearted, imperfect attempts at creating a relationships with Miranda and Alaric. I caught myself smiling as Lena stumbled through deceptively mundane aspects of the relationship building experience, like deciding whether to risk sharing a small truth for a chance at developing a deeper, more profound connection.
- Smart Skepticism — Lena cleverly tests the loyalty of others to determine if she can trust them, and they do the same to her. Everyone is a suspect, which results in a deliciously entertaining sense of collective moral ambiguity.
- Enchanted Forest Setting — I adored the imaginative, magical ecosystem in the forest of Silence. From animal guides who lead Lena to safety to a house of dragons who require steep prices to bargain, the forest holds endless mysteries for Lena to uncover.

Reminds me of:

- Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
- For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten
- Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

Content warnings:

- Death, Blood, Dismemberment

Final thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells! It’s a quick, light-hearted read that’s perfect for the seasonal reader looking for enchanted woodland ~vibes~.

Briar Girls is a fascinating reimagining of Sleeping Beauty. Lena was cursed by a witch before she was born to have skin that kills at the touch. When things inevitably go bad, she and her father go on the run to a village near a mysterious forest that lures people in only for them to never come back out. Lena runs into Miranda who comes out of the forest on a quest to wake a sleeping princess and needs Lena's help. If she helps, Miranda promises to break Lena's curse. Lena jumps at the chance, but the further she goes into the forest, the more she begins to wonder if she might have been lied to. Highly recommended! Be sure to check out Briar Girls today.

First book of 2022! I was really looking forward to this book, and it definitely delivered. I've been in a reading slump for the past couple months and this helped kickstart me out of it. I enjoyed Lena and Miranda's relationship and liked watching Lena learn how to trust others.

There was a lot of promise here with the plot and summary listed, but I found it fell a little flat. I really hated the love triangle, too. Some of the violence felt unnecessary to me.

DNF @ 4%

I did not care for the writing style at all. I felt detached and I could care less about the direction, the characters, the plot, or anything else. This year I have decided to be more free with my DNFing. If I don't want to finish a book, then I won't. I will not be rating this based off of not being far enough to have a solid feel of what I would rate this novel.

I couldn't get into this book, but have to review every book I'm given or my NetGalley ratio won't hit 100%, sorry!

I enjoyed Briar Girls immensely! While it was a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, RKW is fabulous about putting her own voice into her books and changing the narrative so there is a fresh spin on things.

I wish that there was more of an opportunity for the MC to have a choice in her life and it does bother me when that doesn't happen.

I ultimately gave this book 3 stars because while I love RKW's writing, the book wasn't for me. I think I went in with one expectation and it didn't hit what I wanted so I was left a little underwhelmed.

A great idea and great characters, I just found the execution and some plot elements to be confusing. It was both too easy to figure out the plot and also too hard to muddle through it in some places. The main character, Lena, also went through extremely dramatic changes in personality that I didn't necessarily think believable given the plot that we saw described. That being said, I did enjoy it and would read more by Rebecca Kim Wells.

I wish I had loved this but it just didn't work for me. I didn't like the writing style, or the pacing of the plot. The world and the details just didn't feel very fleshed out to me. I was super excited for a sleeping beauty retelling but this one was ultimately a let down.

Thoughts

This book is a painfully generic fantasy. I hold high standards for fantasy, because I love it (and because there is so much of it). At best, this book is forgettable. But if someone wants to discuss it, I've got some WORDS to say.

Pros
Sapphic Fairy Tale: It's always fun to see a non-hetero twist on a fairy tale, especially one that is particularly rape-y in the original. I mean, when you've got a "sleeping beauty" woken up from her slumber by unexpected labor pains courtesy of the prince... Well, anything is a better take than that, in my opinion. Bringing more women into the tale (and leaving out a few key men) makes the love interests shine in this one--and allows the sleeping princess to keep slumbering unviolated. And that's the best kind of twist.

Gruesomely Whimsical: As all good fairy tales should be, this book is both gory and full of magic--dark magic. The magic is twisted and corrupted, and its implementation is bright and full of whimsy. The forest teems with shadows and blood, desiccated bodies and hideous beasts. But alongside that death and destruction are whimsical will-o-the-wisps and drifting flower petals. The naming conventions in this book are fun and very fairy-tale as well, though that lightness hides the dark reality of the world the author weaves.

Epic Quest: There is a lot of YA fantasy out there, but so little of it focuses on a quest. While quest literature tends to sacrifice character development to make room for the epic journey, the personal and worldwide stakes still make the page--and that's the case here. There is a sleeping princess, a wicked witch, and a harrowing journey full of heroes and heroines, rebels, refugees, magical roadblocks, unsettling beasts, and unexpected help along the way.


Cons
Generic Voice: With so much YA fantasy out there, it can be hard to develop a unique character voice. This book just didn't do it. Neither Lena herself nor her narrative voice stood out in anyway. Because of that, I never really cared about her, and without caring for the main character, the stakes she was facing just didn't make any difference to me. I wasn't invested, and that's unfortunate.

Bad Transitions: Every transition in this book felt clunky and unedited--and I do mean every one. Transitions in time, transitions in dialogue, even character movements around the scene: it felt a little bit unpolished. There were too many "signal words" at play here. Signal words--words like "first," "then," and "after"--definitely have a place, but if they're used in abundance, they make the reading feel rather juvenile. They're often applied abundantly in learning-to-read books, after all, to help young children make predictions and connections. They're not so useful in abundance in a book meant for readers who can guess time skip transitions without needing the full expression of it.

Too Much Trust: I've said it before about characters and I will say it again about this one: Lena trusts way, way too much (except when it is plot-relevant that she doesn't). She switches loyalties on a dime. She gets very mad that people have concealed the truth and/or lied to her even though she has no actual reason to expect the truth from them. And if she decides not to trust someone, it's just to make a plot obstacle. She trusts again and again and again--mostly without any problem at all, real or imagined. And that just doesn't make sense.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4/10

Fans of Tahereh Mafi's Shatter Me will appreciate this new never-been-touched protagonist. Those who loved the chilling fogs of Janella Angeles's Where Dreams Descend will sink right into this shadowy forest.

I received this ARC for Booklist, and my review is online at Booklist Online as of November 24, 2021.

First, I think this might be more new adult than young adult, or at least that’s how I would classify it. I enjoyed the fairytale retelling, as well as the super fast pace of the story. I also enjoyed the way the author played with trust, truth, and finding your way amongst friends, family, and strangers. The world building was fairly good for the fast pace, including many mythological creatures and a decent magic system.

The reason I would label it as new adult is because there were multiple sex scenes that were more detailed than I typically see in young adult, though there was a “fade to black” element. The sex scenes felt a bit awkward though, like they didn’t necessarily fit in the plot. And there was a lot of insta-love type of moments. This is what kept this book from being five stars for me.

3.50 Stars. This was a pretty good read. It did have a few issues, but I found that I quite liked it anyway. This is actually my second Sleeping Beauty retelling that I have read in a row. That was not on purpose, I just wasn’t even thinking but it wasn’t the best decision since I did find myself comparing them some. What made this book standout is that while it was a retelling, it really was a whole new story. While this uses a few similar things we all will recognize, for the most part this was a new and well imagined world that Wells wrote.

One of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy is when characters are passive and don’t have any real agency so everything is just done to them. I find those types of stories extremely frustrating to read and I never enjoy the characters much. When this book first started, I had a bad feeling it would fall into this particular pet peeve. It seemed like everything just kept happening to the main character. Luckily, that quickly changed and the character ended up almost always having choices. Sometimes they were not great choices, and sometimes I didn’t like what she chose, but the main got to make her own decisions and take control of her own destiny.

When it comes to any romance, the main character is bi and it looked like a love triangle was forming. I wasn’t that happy since I thought it seemed too forced, but then I realized that Wells was doing something very different instead. I have to go into a little more detail here so feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph if you are worried about finding out too much. Instead of being frustrated, I felt like Wells did a good thing here. The main character is almost 18, and due to her curse she cannot touch anyone. In this book she has the chance to have sex and is happy to finally have intimacy that she has never experienced before. While she enjoyed the intimacy, she realizes that she doesn’t want anything more from this person –except to be friends- and instead would rather look to see if she has real feelings for someone else. With all the slut-shaming that is so baked into books with female characters –and that guy characters that can sleep with multiple people but females can only sleep with “the one”- it was nice to see a sex positive, YA book instead.

The person the main character ends up falling for I liked quite a bit. However, their relationship really needed more time to develop in the beginning. While it was not insta-love, it sure was insta-like. This is a pretty short book for fantasy, with a well build world and decent magic system, and I think Wells missed the mark by not having the two characters spend more time alone together. Had they had more adventure together, face more peril together, you would have understood why they felt so bonded by the time the middle of the book rolls around. By the end of the book I believed in them as a couple, because of everything they went through, but I needed to feel that chapters and chapters before when the characters were risking their lives for each other.

There are a few other issues I had but I don’t really want to go into much since this review is getting long and my carpal tunnel is flaring-up. I will say that I had some pace issues in the first half. In fact, the first half in general I just didn’t care for as much. I thought it was okay, but something felt off that I can’t explain very well. However, the second half of the book really picked up and was good fantasy entertainment. I found myself completely glued to the story and really enjoyed the book so much more. So if you are feeling a little off in the first half, remember the book really does pick-up in the second.

TLDR: This was my first book by Wells and it won’t be my last. While this had some issues, and I can understand the mixed earlier reviews, I still quite liked it. The first half is a bit bumpy, but Wells really hits her stride in the second half and it is good entertainment. The world building is well done and this is a very unique take on a sapphic Sleeping Beauty retelling.

Unfortunately I am DNFing this one at 15%. I wanted so desperately to fall in love with this book as I adore stories featuring dark and magical forests. But sadly, this one did not work for me.

I wasn't connecting to the writing at all. But more importantly, this story lacked any semblance of character or world building. This jumps straight into the plot, and not in a good way. I was immediately felt like I didn't know enough about the characters to care about the plot...

On top of that the heroine, who is cursed, traumatized, and clearly has strained relationships with those closest to her, takes one look at a beautiful stranger and follows her into a magical forest without question. Which is what did this story in for me. I just couldn't place the heroine or her motives and knew this book wasn't going to be one I ended up loving.

I love a good retelling. I love an good reimagining. This one was imaginative and unique and blended a lot of new tropes into the Sleeping Beauty tale, making it feel like a refreshing new story in itself. I found Briar Girls to be a quick read but was slowed down a bit by the ARC's formatting, something I only mention because it actually distracted me from the quick pacing and detailing of the plot. I think that the story was extremely well written, but with some of the twists being a bit predictable. I also felt like the characters lacked a bit of chemistry, but were put into intimate situations to drive forward a love triangle(but not really)-like sub plot that kind of felt unnecessary at times. I did really enjoy the story itself, but was confused by some of action going on along the journey into the Silence, how the Silence communicated, and the "rules" for blood plague. I did like the end and how we were left to interpret where the character's paths were leading them.