#JuniperAndThorn:⁣
⁣
“Was I a woman inside the body of a monster, or was I a monster inside the body of a woman?”⁣
⁣
There’s no debate, Ava Reid has a way with prose. Her masterful pairing of words really make you feel like you’re on the brink of something special. You hold on to every lyrical line, waiting in anticipation to see how she’ll string normal words together to create a masterpiece. ⁣
⁣
Just like The Wolf and the Woodsman, this isn’t your happy go lucky fairytale retelling. There’s gore, horror, death, destruction. It’s dark. (I mean, it’s based off The Juniper Tree, what do you expect?)⁣
⁣
Marlinchen was such an interesting character. You felt for her, you cared for her, you wanted her happy. It kind of reminded me of how bad I felt for Maleficent where people think she’s so evil. ⁣
⁣
Stina Neilsen is the reader for this book, and I felt like a snake in a trance by a snake charmer. The story just flowed off their tongue and I was entranced the entire time. The world went on around me, but I was in Oblya. ⁣
⁣
Another solid book from Ava Reid. I don’t know how she pulls me into a fantasy retelling without confusing me or boring me, but she does it effortlessly. Thank you so much @harpervoyagerus and @harperaudio for the gifted copy. Juniper & Thorn is out 6/21!

Thank you to Avon, Harper Voyager, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid is an adult retelling of The Juniper Tree. The story revolves around Marlinchen, a young witch who lives with her abusive father and two sisters in a magical city. Her father has imprisoned her and her sisters inside their home. Their only source of joy is sneaking out at night. After sneaking out and watching a fancy ballet one night, Marlinchen meets a boy who changes her perspective on everything.

Here is a fantastical excerpt from Chapter 1:

I checked under my bed, but the monster was gone. It had been gone since morning, when the pink fingers of dawn flushed it back to its favorite hiding place in Rose’s garden, spiny tail banded around the trunk of the juniper tree. It would lie there,belly-flat and hissing, until I or one of my sisters went to feed it our leftover chicken bones or give it a rub behind the ears. Of all the creatures that lived in our house, it was the most easily sated.
By evening, the garden was lucent with the speckle of fireflies, rustling with the susurration of wind through the willow branches, but otherwise quiet and still. From my bedroom I could see the whole brindled sweep of it, the stout, swollen hedges and the ivy that trawled over the rust-checkered gate. If anyone in Oblya walked down the road past our house, they might feel green tendrils curl around their ankles, or hear the whisper of ferns through the fence. The pedestrians whispered back: rumors about Zmiy Vashchenko and his three strange daughters."

Overall, Juniper & Thorn is an adult fantasy that will appeal to fans of Slavic-inspired fantasy and fairy tale retellings. When I saw that the author of The Wolf and the Woodsman had a new book out, I knew that I had to add it to my TBR list right away! One highlight of this book is the lovely romance, and how the book was thematically dark without losing its fairy tale charm. Another highlight of this book was the descriptions of food, which made me so hungry. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of fantasy books in general, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in June!

I had really high expectations for this one and I am so pleased to say that it exceeded all of them!

I love anything that has to do with fairy tales, the more gruesome the better. And Juniper & Thorn was definitely gruesome, so much that I could not get over some of Reid's descriptions. Yes, they were that good. Now, this being the first book I've read of hers, I did not what to expect, language-wise. But Reid is simply a master storyteller, her prose at times a soft blanket, at times a dagger so sharp that it pierces through your heart until you've bled anything that you could. And then she continues to strike, again and again and again.

I liked how Marlinchen is a very realistic and grey character, both kind and terribly jealous. An important trait, for me, was also how she feels sexual urges, and is not the typical asexual heroine of fairytale retellings, and how this grounded her better in the story. In her sexuality she finds both shame and power, just like women in today's society are either shunned or praised for it.

Moreover, her reluctance to admit that she already knew the partial truth was a good choice for Reid to make, because from one side you just want her to admit to it, but on the other it shows just how an abuse victim might behave when confronted with the decision to acknowledge their source of distress--either feign ignorance or trying to shift the focus to something else.

I do agree with the other reviewers that mentioned that Sevas fell in love a tad too quickly, but I imagine it could be pardoned with the "fairy tale" reading experience.

I highly recommend this book to those who are seeking new sight in retellings and don't shy away from violence and gore in their fairy tales; however, I would not recommend this as a transition title from YA to adult due to the extremely violent content and the abundance of triggers. I'm excited to see what else Reid has in her plans, and will definitely watch out for her upcoming works!

Thank you Netgalley and Harper Voyager for sending me a digital ARC of this book in return for my honest thoughts and opinions.

I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I didn't really like it. Even though it's only 368 pages, it still felt way too long. I think I would've enjoyed it more as a novella.

I enjoyed the folklore and that's about it. I didn't care about the characters. I was just bored. Very disappointing since it was one of my most anticipated reads this year.

Ava Reid is phenomenal. I have never before been so enthralled and repulsed by a book at once. It’s gruesome, uncomfortable, and often times made me feel revolted, yet it is beyond gripping and beautiful. After reading both of Reid’s books, I can say she’s a new all time favorite. I think I’d read this author’s grocery lists. Incredible.

This was incredibly weird, dark, and gruesome in the best way possible.

I didn't know what to exactly expect from this book, but i ended up being very surprised.

The story is loosely based on the tale of the juniper tree, it follows marlinchen, the third and youngest of the sisters, they're all daughters to a warlock who can't accept that society is changing and advancing, who by the way was cursed a very lone time ago by another witch, and this curse means he never feels satisfied, especially when it comes to food, and so, this makes him a very cruel and oppressive person with everyone, but especially with his daughters.

So, we have Marlinchen, the youngest daughter, the one who always does everything in the house, the one considered the most docile, simple minded of them all, who could never go against her father, but once she gets a little taste of freedom, and gets to go to the theater and meet sevas, everything changes for her, she now wants more of that and when opportunity strikes, she takes it.

And so her change begins, she starts seeing everything through different lens, she becomes aware of her situation and wishes for change and omg, seeing her go through that development was very beautiful and awful and amazing.

I never knew what was gonna happen and it honestly scared me so much, this book isn't like anything I've read before.


if you're thinking of reading this please check the trigger warnings because there's a lot of heavy content.


thank you so much to netgalley for giving me an arc in exchange for an honest review (which is more like a ramble but ok)

Juniper & Thorn is the second book from author Ava Reid, who previously wrote The Wolf and the Woodsman, an Eastern European inspired fantasy featuring an essentially half-Pagan half-Jewish girl and an essentially Christian* prince attempting to stop a fellow Christian Prince from using magic to enact an oppressive reign of terror over the country. Although the romance between the main characters in that book wasn't the greatest, I enjoyed its setting a lot (not least of which for its portrayal of Jewish culture in such a land) and it got a lot of deserved hype from people I read. So I was very curious to try the follow up novel, in Juniper & Thorn.

*The book used other names for these religions, but they're transparently Judaism and Christianity. The same is the case here, so I'm just going to use the real world religious names here.*

Juniper & Thorn is a very different book however - yes there's an Eastern European setting again, this type in a fantasy Russian-esque land, and yes there's a romance between a girl who doesn't know much of the world and a man, one of whom is Jewish (although it's the man and he's not religious this time). And yet this is not an adventure story - this is a tale* of abuse, as a witch girl who is one of three daughters of an abusive and xenophobic/anti-semitic wizard, who is used to being a doormat and just accepting things, until one act of rebellion changes everything. It's a very hard tale to read, and while somewhat effective, was not really a book I loved for various reasons, not all of which were this book's fault. More specifics after the jump:

*This tale is apparently a retelling of the Grimm story, The Juniper Tree, which I was unfamiliar with, and from looking it up on Wikipedia - so take this for what it's worth - the story is a very generous retelling, with similarly named and situated characters at times, but a very different story, so don't expect it to follow the same story beats here*.

TRIGGER WARNING: Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse/Rape, Abuse by a Guardian. Abuse is a major theme of this book, and the sexual abuse is at one point somewhat explicit in a really hard to read chapter. These sections go to the book's themes, but they will almost certainly be a bit too much for some readers, and they almost were for me.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Marlinchen has never seen the world, or even the City, outside her father's lands. Her father is Oblya's last wizard, cruel and harsh in part due to a curse put upon him by a rival that he would never be satisfied with anything and would only be hungry for everything, and he restricts his three daughters, all of whom have Witch powers, from ever reaching out to a City he knows to be dirty; a city that is changing to become more modern, with Ballet, and peoples of different cultures, and one without landed nobility like himself on orders of the Tsar. Marlinchen's older sisters react to this differently than her - her eldest sister Undine is cruel and selfish, while her older middle sister Rose isn't as openly cruel, but is dismissive of Marlinchen's naivete - both of whom have the beauty Marlinchen has been told she lacks, and feel more comfortable resisting their father's rules.

But when Marlinchen follows her sisters to the City for once, and sees a Ballet dancer there who takes her breath away, she can't keep her mind off of him, and everything begins to change for her. Soon she's finding out more about the world she's been kept away from, and finding that she might actually have things she wants on her own, something she would want other than to meekly prepare food for her father.

But when her father finds out, he begins to restrict Marlinchen and her sisters even more, and when their finances get truly desperate, he begins to use his magic and power to terrorize not just Marlinchen, but the newfound things she cares about, forcing Marlinchen to make a choice: will she remain silent and beholden to his whims? Or will she act out to try to save both herself and the City she never understood before these moments....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's make this clear: Juniper & Thorn is a tale about abuse at its core, in many many ways. Marlinchen and her sisters are abused by their father: who is a xenophobic racist and anti-semitic man and whose greed got him cursed by a rival witch to always want more....and he takes that out on his daughters and originally on his wife (who he transformed into a bird in what he called an accident and then let go, causing more trauma on the daughter who was trying to care for her). He refuses to let them to enjoy their own lives, uses his magic to restrict their movements - at one point putting a curse that prevents them from leaving without impossibly getting some sand from an outside beach - and terrorizes them and the other beings (usually supernatural) who live on their farm territory. His backwards hatred of the new ways only leads him to drive away potential sources of income, and he uses his daughters' witch powers - Marlinchen's ability to see someone's past memories from touching them, Rose's ability to make potions, and Undine's ability to see futures in water - to gain money which he then hoards for himself.

And this abuse, spoiler but it really needs to be said here, goes beyond being merely verbally abusive. At one horrifying point, he invites a local doctor, a racist phrenologist, to physically and sexually abuse Marlinchen in exchange for money, in a sequence that was way too descriptive for my taste. And so the three daughters each react to this in different ways: Marlinchen becomes a doormat (she also becomes bulimic); Rose becomes complicit and contrary and dismissive; while Undine becomes outwardly cruel. Nor is the abuse in this book limited to Marlinchen's father - the love interest, a ballet dancer named Sevastyan ("Sevas") was taken from his Jewish* family by a manager who clearly abuses him and demands sexual favors as well, leading Sevas to try and take it out in drink. Everyone in this story is either being abused or abusing, which makes this a dark tale.

*This is the second book in a row of Reid's in which a Jewish, even if not religious like here, character winds up in a romantic relationship with a non-Jew, and while there's nothing wrong with that on its surface, I'm kind of getting tired of that trope in books honestly. So this might have also predisposed me to be a bit more weary of this book.*

And so our story is essentially watching Marlinchen figure out how much of the monsters in the world are around her and Sevas and deciding eventually how much she can take - whether she can stand by and watch people be hurt, whether she can be silent when she starts having suspicions about the people in the City who have suffered horrifying deaths, and whether she can continue to suppress her own desires (now that she knows what they are) in support of her father's endless ones. It's a rough story and it is effective, and the Eastern European/Russian setting is really well done as well, as a setting on the verge of changing from a more feudal/serfdom era to a modern one, and struggling as a result. The magic is effectively done, and to the story's credit, a late book swerve is one I probably should have seen coming but wound up not doing so.

So what you have in Juniper & Thorn is a story that effectively uses magic and an Eastern European setting to tell a story about abuse of many forms and how people react to it, and how a young woman can assert herself to move forward....So there is certainly value here, and I can get why people might "like" this book (I'm not sure I'd use "enjoy"). At the same time it is so thick, and sometimes more explicit than I'd like, that I'm not sure how much I'd recommend it compared to other books that deal with abuse in more interesting ways.

I received this book as an ARC on NetGalley.

Pros: This writing is absolutely gorgeous. Some of the most stunning and descriptive writing I have encountered. Even in the brutal, horrifying moments, Ava Reid writes them in such a way that you have very visceral reactions and feel immersed in the situation. Malinchen and Sevas are charming and I found their connection to be something to root for. I also loved how realistic the view of parental abuse and trauma was. It is complex and doesn't always just illicit feelings of fear and anger. There's sadness, love, hopelessness, self loathing, all sorts of complicated emotions involved and that was well done here.

Cons: As beautiful as the writing is, at times it gets bogged down by the atmosphere building and descriptiveness. It felt very slow moving and I struggled through it because I would get lost in the descriptions and forget the actions happening. It felt like plot was lost to vibes a lot of time. Which may have been intentional but that didn't quite work for me. I also did not care for Undine and Rose at all. They were just very one-dimensional. Also, the brutality of the book came pretty suddenly at times and that descriptiveness had a drawback of making those moments feel a little too heavy. I didn't mind it so much but I could see others being very bothered by it.

Overall, this book was good but I think the pacing made it suffer a bit for me and made it a bit of a chore ot get through. I am glad I read it and I would recommend if you are into Slavic lore, atmosphere/vibes over plot, and enjoy very beautiful prose.

HEAVY TW: molestation, murder (in detail), eating disorders, mental and emotional abuse, cannibalism, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault and harassment, self-harm, incest, racism, xenophobia, body horror, suicidal ideation, animal death

Earlier this month, I bought The Wolf and the Woodsman, and before I could start it, I was approved for an ARC of Juniper & Thorn, and because the temptation of the blurb was too much to pass on, I started this one first. Going in, I didn’t know what to expect, and I confess my words failed me when it was time to write this review.

I enjoyed the mini tales within the story and recounted them to my family. I love how dark this story went and the secrets that once spilled continued to do so. Reading some other reviews before writing my own, I agree with others that the pacing is slow, but for me, that’s only true at the beginning, where it seemed a bit repetitive. But the more I got to know Marlinchen, the more I wanted to know. She was so sheltered that everything was a new experience for her, and I delighted in watching her thrive.

This book isn’t for the faint of heart. I see many people posting trigger warnings, which I’m not a fan of, but if you are, it might help you to read them before starting this. Juniper and Thorn is a dark blend of romance and horror, gothic and fairy tale, and lyrically written. Absolutely a gem that I recommend. Thank you, Avon and Harper Voyager, for sending this along.

Marlinchen and her witch sisters live under the thumb of their tyrannical father in the confines of a derelict home, which they are forbidden to leave. They provide their services to visitors who are curious about their old-world charm, but they begin to face poverty and uncertainty as technology booms in the city around them and their magic becomes obsolete.

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid presents an hauntingly beautiful retelling of the Brother Grimm's "The Juniper Tree," set in the same world as The Wolf and the Woodsman.

However, it’s worth noting that this book is much, much darker than its predecessor. This isn’t going to be a book for everyone. It unflinchingly explores personal trauma and abuse and some passages were so biting and visceral that they even made me cringe (and I typically have a strong stomach for body horror).

I also do have to mention that this book suffers from some pacing and structural issues. The beginning does feel a bit meandering and unfocused, and I wish that the murderous serial killer on the loose subplot had been integrated more into the first half of the story in order to give it more tension.

Around the middle mark though, the story finally comes together and hits its stride, and once it does, it sinks its claws into you and doesn’t let go.

This book is beautifully written. Ava Reid is a talented writer. That being said I just wasn’t meshing with this book.

Juniper Thorn is full of beautiful language and pretty prose. It's an atmospheric, dark fairytale that includes some crazy, messed up stuff (cannibalism, incest, abuse, etc.). We follow a wizard and his three witch daughters as they navigate a world that is industrializing and moving past the need for magic. If you can handle the triggers and you love dark, immersive language, then this book is definitely for you.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book was everything! This book was my first by the author, I am now an Ava Reid fan. This book was very dark and creepy and full of twists and turns. It had a little bit of everything and a little something for everyone. It was very well written and Ava Reid imagination is so awesome and dark!. There is soo much backstory and the details in this book. I love the dark/creepy setting of the story and that ending is perfect. I really enjoyed this book it was right up my alley. I will be looking for more books from the author for sure

Ava Reid's prose is beautiful and while some find the amount of similes used in this novel distracting, I found it engaging. I feel like the beautiful writing plays a key in the part of this novel that I absolutely loved, and that would be the atmosphere. We get the creepy, mysterious, dark and gothic vibes all throughout this without the author ever having to tell us things are creepy bluntly, they just are.

With that said, I cannot fall in love with a novel based off atmosphere and prose alone, I just can't. I need to feel something, whether that is genuine feelings of attachment to characters, or an obsessive curiosity about the world the author has crafted, it needs to be something that drags me into the plot and I just didn't get that from this story. I didn't much care for any of the characters (or the romance, insta-love...ugh) and the world didn't grasp me like it did in The Wolf and The Woodsman.

Don't get me wrong, I could read Reid's writing style all day and just sit there and pick out my favorite quotes because they are gorgeous, but this was not my favorite of her works either.

Juniper and Thorn is a dark fairy tale set in the world of "The Wolf and the Woodsman." Marlinchen is a witch who lives with her two beautiful sisters, an oppressive wizard father, and a variety of garden monsters. She absconds one night to the ballet theatre where she falls in love with the principle dancer immediately and sets in motion a series of events that will turn out to upend her heretofore very predictable existence. Highly gory and with descriptions of sexual abuse, this dark fairy tale may not be for everyone.

After the sterling debut of Wolf and the Woodsman, Juniper & Thorn is solid, but fails to live up to Ava Reid's stronger works.

A story inspired by Eastern European mythology, the story is that of Marlinchen, a young witch and the daughter of the wizard Zmiy. With her sisters Undine and Rose, they handle regular clients for healing and entertainment, with the sisters feeling trapped by the suffocating life their father binds them to. They cope by seeking out revels in the city, attending ballet performances, where Marlinchen becomes captivated with the dancer Sevas.

Abuse and isolation fill the pages of the story. Marlinchen and her sisters are victims of increasingly terrible abuse by Zmiy, and they grow increasingly despondent as the story goes on. For Marlinchen, Sevas represents freedom, and while the romance is competently portrayed, one flaw of the novel is the overwrought dialogue to counteract the beautiful prose. There is no question Reid is firmly capable of setting a scene and describing what it is in it, but the dialogue frequently feels overly melodramatic, which damages the interactions between characters and affects the reader's emotional investment.

The strongest portions are when Reid takes folklore and fairytales, namely the classic Juniper Tree, to weave them into something new and powerful, complete with the violence and sexuality inherent in the tales. The novel takes an unabashed view of its portrait of sexuality as a sort of freedom and rebellion, in Malrinchen's affair with Sevas, to the reveals of her sisters and how they rebel against their father's tyranny.

Unfortunately, the novel is bogged down by pacing issues, with too many extraneous moments that could easily have been compressed. This is strongly saved by the strength of Marlinchen's character, but her sisters feel underdeveloped and Sevas largely exists to be Marlinchen's love interest. Zmiy is a revolting character and the depths of his villainy become more apparent as the novel goes on, with a truly excellent payoff at the end.

3.5/5 starts

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
Having loved Ava Reid’s debut last year, I was fully ready to commit to anything she would write next. And the fact that Juniper & Thorn was marketed as Gothic horror didn’t scare me off one bit. And the promise of a retelling of The Juniper Tree, one of the lesser-known, super-fucked up Grimm Brothers stories that debunks the whole “fairy tales are for children” thing all on its own? Yes, please! And upon reading, I also found some allusions to Donkeyskin, another super-fucked up tale, the most popular version being by Perrault. That said, this book isn’t playing around. I strongly suggest readers take care of their own mental health and consult the content warnings…while also repeating Ava Reid’s statement in her promotional GR post that they should not use these warnings to cast judgment and stigmatize those who’ve dealt with these traumas and how they reckon with them, Reid included.
With that out of the way…this book really lived up to my expectations. It’s set in the same world as The Wolf & The Woodsman, so while they’re atmospherically and tonally different, there’s a common thread in the Russian-inspired culture depicted. The two can stand on their own, but it‘s cool to have read both and get the little cultural references.
As for that atmosphere and tone…wow, it’s amazing. While it really hits you hard, it’s simultaneously impossible to put down. Reid has an addictive quality to her writing, and even when describing the most gruesome, heinous things, I found it hard to look away.
Marlinchen is a deeply compelling heroine, and it’s hard not to root for her as she navigates her situation with her horribly abusive father. Her trauma is poignantly drawn, as is her lingering sense of defiance as she endures and works to undermine him.
The romance she forms with Sevas provides a wonderful sweetness to contrast the intense depravity, one I welcomed dearly. He’s such a kind and compassionate love interest, allowing Marlinchen not just an escape, but a path to healing.
This book is absolutely stunning, and while I acknowledge it may not be for everyone, for reasons previously stated, I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone looking for a dark fantasy or Gothic horror novel with fairy tale aesthetics.

CWs: Gore and body horror; child sexual abuse and incest; cannibalism; antisemitism, xenophobia, and scientific racism; physical and psychological abuse by family members; gaslighting; self-harm and suicidal ideation; bulimia, graphic depictions of vomiting; animal death

Witches, monsters, and magic - Oh my! I love retellings. Especially when they are wholly unique and original or based on mythology or lore. Even better if they're dark and haunting. Juniper and Thorn ticks all of those boxes. I read it in less than 8 hours on a slow shift at work from cover to cover. I was enthralled from the outset, with the lyrical writing that created a vivid portrait of the world and with Malinchen - our unlikely heroine. I loved the Russian twist that this story gave and how dark and magical the story ended up being. It pulled me out of my slump for sure. Cannot recommend enough!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for providing me with a digital copy for review. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of the author or publisher.

Juniper & Thorn is gothic fantasy retelling of The Juniper Tree. The story follows Marlinchen as the world around her becomes more unpredictable. Ava Reid does an amazing job at writing this dark story following and the writing style is one that I love. It was extremely descriptive allowing me to get a better sense of the setting and tone.

That then leads to what I would change in the book. This book handles very sensitive topics and I suggest that anyone who is interested in the book to look at the trigger warnings first. Juniper and Thorn is extremely intense considering the topics its addresses and has included. However, I do see certain scenes as unnecessary and I can't seem to reason as to why it was included. Without spoiling, I feel more parts could have been more in depth such as the eating disorder inclusion.

Thank you so much, HCC Frenzy and HarperCollins Canada, for allowing me to read and review this e-arc. This review will be posted closer to the publication date on Goodreads, My Instagram, and Various Shops (Amazon Canada/Barnes & Noble/ Indigo Canada).

If you're looking for your next horror read, might I recommend Juniper & Thorn!? Ava Reid does an amazing job at balancing the different elements and genres within this novel. I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster while reading this book. I found that the horror sneaks up on you in this book. The author makes you, at times, forget that you're reading a horror novel. The horror parts of this standalone made my skin crawl.

Juniper and Thorn is a retelling of The Juniper Tree. I am not familiar with the original tale of The Juniper Tree. However, most of my guesses (of what was going to happen in this book) were confirmed by the end of this novel. Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid is a standalone book. I think that if you liked House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, then you will like Juniper and Thorn.

Reid did a great job creating and bringing to life all these characters. All the characters were well fleshed out. I thought Marlinchen was a great narrator for this story. My favourite parts were her interactions and relationship with Sevas.

My only critique of this novel is the ending. I loved the first and middle half of this book. However, the last half kind of dragged on a bit for me.

In a side note, there is a few trigger warnings that I think some people may want to be aware of in this book. I do not know if the book itself, when published, will include those warnings. However, the author lists them on her website.

Overall, The author did a great job at wrapping things up. I highly recommend Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid.