The pacing in this book was just off for me. I was bored every time I picked it up. However, I did enjoy the cozy feel of the world and felt there were some whimsical elements which I love in a book. This is one I may revisit at a later time but it wasn’t for me right now.

In all honesty, I was not familiar with the fairytales and folklore that this novel was based on. Coming in, I thought that it would be a fantasy/fairytale about how a fae helped Moira Jean find her friends, and maybe they would fall in love (I have been reading a fair number of fantasy romances lately, so...). But what I ended up reading was so much more, and infinitely better, than I had initially expected.

Moira Jean and her friends are working to get by, daily, in their small village. She is mourning the loss of her love, Angus. She feels like she has to stay in the village for her mother, and no longer dreams of leaving as she once had. In a moment of fun, she and her friends dance by the fire in the woods, and then everything changes.

To win back those that she lost, Moira Jean has to enter into a series of bargains with The Dreamer. He offers her everything, promises to take her away, and in the process, steals from her life in a game that only The Dreamer really knows the rules of. In her journey, Moira Jean learns how quickly those she thought friendly can turn on her, and how far a dark Lord will go to convince her that he is the only thing that can save her. When in truth, maybe Moira Jean is really the only one that can save herself.

This is dark, and the end is more bittersweet than anything, but also hopeful. And maybe that sort of ending marks some of the best fairytales.

Thank you HarperCollins 360, Magpie and NetGalley for an eARC of The Thorns Remain!

The Thorns Remain is a dark and twisty tale. Moira Jean is a heartbroken girl just trying to get by in her village. When her and her lively group of friends go for a bit of fun and drinking in the forest one night, things take a turn for the worst. Fae appear while they dance, and spirit her friends away. The Dark Fae Lord requires a bargain and Moira Jean must complete all the tasks in order to save her friends. Suspenseful, twisted, and bewitching, The Thorns Remain is a page turner!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper 360 for allowing me to read the ARC of this book and for allowing me to share my unbiased review.

First of all, the cover of this book is super pretty. It was what interested me in reading the book in the first place. The setting is quaint and idyllic. Who doesn't enjoy reading books set in Scotland? The writing is detailed and whimsical. I enjoyed the faerie elements a lot- I like when they are depicted as ruthless and otherworldly. Moira Jean is certainly a fierce and fiery character throughout the entirety of the book and is a strong lead. I appreciated the relationship she had with Angus and liked the moments of grief when he came up.

Moira Jean was also aggravatingly dumb for a good portion of the book. Her bargain making abilities were poor and it was like she didn't learn from any of her previous bad deals before going on to making another bad deal. I felt no connections to any of her friends that she spent the majority of the book trying to save. They didn't seem worth the bargains that Moira Jean made for them and the relationships she had with all of them felt very hollow. The plot was also a bit bland and boring at parts. I think limiting the setting to an isolated village doesn't do much for writing interesting filler.

Also, the costumer in me needs to point out that stays, as referenced often in the book, are an early form of corset that phased out of use during the 1830s, and were replaced by the corsets we know today. No one in the post WWI era would refer to corsets as stays, and even then, corsets as a whole would have begun to fall out of fashion as silhouettes changed.

The Dreamer was a super interesting character. I think he was the best part of the whole book. That being said, I was disappointed that there was no romance in this book, even though it's definitely advertised as one. Overall, this book was a fair read. One other thing that would be helpful would be to include a pronunciation guide in the glossary for the various types of faeries that appear because Gaelic is not a language that reads phonetically and it would be nice to know how to properly pronounce the names.

People who like the darker aspects of faeries and enjoy the Cruel Prince would probably like it, as would someone who likes the more whimsical and meandering plot like the Ten Thousand Doors of January would also probably enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this e-arc.

The premise for this had me so excited but it fell quite flat for me. I, unfortunately, had to dnf at 22%.

The writing style and the dialogue felt juvenile, and the format made it very difficult for me to read. Instead of the usual several chapters within 2-3 different parts in a book, this was split up between 5 extra long parts which was not ideal😅 the pacing was also a bit all over the place and lacked consistency, which made some parts difficult to follow while other parts felt rushed.

I enjoyed the Scotland setting which really lent to the fantasy and fae though! I think if everything could be flushed out a bit more to create some consistency, this would be very enjoyable.

This book had an interesting premise and I was hoping for a Labyrinth meets Spinning Silver type of tale, but the writing and actual story seemed to be more fitting of a YA novel than an adult fantasy. A bit more of a darker tone would have helped my enjoyment. The ending was also a but strange and didn't seem to fit the character arc the rest of the book was building up.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an arc of this book!

Unfortunately, this book ended up not being for me. I love the Gaelic parts of it, and I loved the idea of the Fae, but I don't feel that this was advertised correctly. It's not...really a romance per se.

Anyways, my major problems were the writing and pacing. I was bored. I was so unbelievable bored that at 47% I stopped actually reading and started skimming the book. I felt like nothing was happening, it just wasn't working for me.

I think the idea was fantastic, but it just didn't work for me.

I liked the setting of this novel: it really leans into the Gaelic origins of Fae mythos, finding a home in the rolling hills and green forests of Scotland. However, I wasn’t as sold on the protagonist. Moira Jean is brave and kind but reckless: I struggled to reason with how she talked to the terrifying Fae king who had kidnapped her friends despite knowing what he was capable of. I did also really like the Fae kidnappings as a metaphor for the very real losses incurred through war and illness during the equivalent time period. Unfortunately, the book is also very long and suprisingly slow - I feel like the pace could have been improved and the beginning condensed.

"From the Sunday Times bestselling historical fantasy author of The Shadow in the Glass comes a tour-de-force of faerie bargains, perfect for fans of The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue, Mexican Gothic, and Ten Thousand Doors of January.

A dance with the fae will change everything.

1919. In a Highland village forgotten by the world, the young people who remain after war and flu will soon head south to make something of themselves.

Moira Jean and her friends venture to the forest for a last night of laughter before parting ways. Moira Jean is being left behind. She too planned to leave once - but her lover died in France and, with him, her future. The friends light a fire and dance. But, with every twirl about the flames, strange new dancers thread between them, music streaming from the trees.

The Fae have joined the dance.

Suddenly Moira Jean finds herself all alone, her friends spirited away.

For the Fae feel left behind and forgotten too. Led by the darkly handsome Lord of the Fae, they are out to make themselves known once more. Moira Jean must enter into a bargain with the Lord to save her friends - and fast, for the longer they spend with the Fae, the less like themselves they will be upon return. If Moira Jean cannot save her friends before Beltane, they will be lost forever...

Bewitching, threaded with Highland charm, and sparkling with romance, this fairy tale will carry you away."

I'm always here for a tricksy faerie bargain!

You all know how much I love stories involving the Fae. You’ve seen me shout about it enough that it should be obvious at this point. But regardless — The Thorns Remain wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. At this point, almost all the Fae stories I’ve read leaves the main character thoroughly in love with a member of the Fae. To be honest, those stories have been getting a little stale. Thankfully, The Thorns Remain takes a new approach — one that I haven’t personally seen yet in a book like this — the Fae are actually the villains. Now, not all of the fae we see are evil, but…most of them aren’t exactly friendly. If we take it way back to old school stories like these, the Fae are usually not something to mess with. It is so refreshing to actually have that be the case here.

Our main character is Moira Jean. She’s sassy, stubborn, and soooo sad. Mourning her lost fiancee is just soaked in her bones, and throughout the whole book she never really turns away from him. She doesn’t forget him and move on, she mourns, and mourns, and mourns and I was happy, honestly, that she doesn’t just suddenly get over him. It wouldn’t have made sense for her character, and I’m really happy that Harwood didn’t shoe-horn in some half-done romance here. (That’s right, there’s no romance in this book, IDC what the promotional material says. Moira Jean never really comes close to falling in love.) Moira Jean’s friends get taken by the Fae, and it is up to her to bargain for them back. She does everything in her power to get her friends back, but in doing so, she messes with The Dreamer.

The Dreamer is the big bad Fae at the heart of this story. Everything that happens to Moira Jean is ultimately his fault. The nice Fae that she meets end up being either sent to her by The Dreamer, or are acting on his orders. The Dreamer wants to know more about Moira Jean, and about humanity in general. He bargains with Moira Jean, but twists and turns those bargains around to mess with her. He’s cruel, but he’s trying to be kind. He does not really succeed. He’s terrifying because you really don’t know what he’s going to do next, or how he’s going to mess with everyone back in the village. You really feel for Moira Jean, because she is truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. She has no help. Everything is really up to her, and it was so hard watching her try everything she could while literally everyone and everything worked against her.

I do have a few complaints, unfortunately. There are no chapters in this book — it is simply broken up into four parts. It made it hard to find a good place to stop reading, and I hate that. Next, the villagers turn against Moira Jean like…on a switch. They’ve known her literally her entire life, and they turn on her at the drop of a hat. It felt maybe unrealistic? Maybe? IDK, it bothered me more than a little. Unfortunately, the confrontation towards the end of the book felt a little rushed. It could have really been stretched out a bit longer, so we could have learned more about The Queen. Instead, she’s a shadowy, vague figure and that’s it. Still, I really did enjoy this. It was a nice refreshing take on a Fae story. Four stars.

Ah, a book that speaks to my soul and spirit. I grew up in Sweden and I've always had a big fascination with the "little folk". Folklore is heavy where I come from and so it seems to be in Scotland and Ireland too.
This book is about Moira Jean who is about 19 and lives in a little village close to Invarness, by Aberdeen road. Her friends plough the earth and help everyone left to survive. Her mom is the only doctor. It seems like the story is happening around early 1900s with the war and flu. They are all barely making it.
For some reason Malcolm is removing horse shoes that they had over their doorframe. (This is/was a common practice in Sweden too, to keep the fairy folk out. Swedes even leaves rice porridge outside in a bowl overnight for the farm gnome, for good luck and such.)
One day Moira Jean wants to have a party in the woods and the young ones sneak out. They get a little buzzed with whiskey but then strange things starts happening. Next morning she's the only one of her friends that is still there but all her friends are gone. Here is where her journey with the supernatural starts.

This book was a thrill to read. I highly recommend this one. An easy 4 stars. It's more of a 4.5 star read

I didn't like the writing style and language in this one. The story was okay overall, but I found myself skimming a lot because I was bored. It was very slow.

4/5 stars! THIS COVER! A darkly beautiful tale of love and loss. The story did take a bit to get going, but once the pace picked up, I fell in love with this world. I really enjoyed Moira Jean's story and would definitely read more by this author. I find the author's works to be a slightly darker and slightly more immature writing style similar to Margaret Rogerson. Would read more by this author.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

The Thorns Remain is a thrilling, fantastical story following Moira Jean, a nineteen-year-old girl who lives in a small village in 1900's Scottland. The Spanish Flu is upon them, and so is the Lord of the Fae. After a dance in the woods causes the disappearance of her friends, Moira Jean is forced to make a bargain with the Lord of the Fae in order to get her friends back. Her detailed descriptions of the settings transport you through time to follow Moira Jean as she rushes to save her friends. If you are looking for a book that does not romanticize and water down the Fae, look no further. JJA Harwood provides realistic, terrifying portrayals of the Fair Folk. The only concern I had with this book was the slow pacing at the beginning, but other than that, I was enthralled.

At first, this book reads like it's going to be a typical Fae & Human bargain tale in which a creepy Fae kidnaps humans to keep as amusement and pets. It has all the expected Fae lore elements from Celtic mythology: dangerous creatures, exchanges of gifts and favours because nothing is free, the eternal dance till you drop dead, an otherworldly Fae that lords over them all, a plucky human girl that resists their influence, the fear of iron... All the details, big and small.

Then, by the middle of the book, it starts to read like a retelling of the legend of Tam Lin, the fairy knight that the Queen of Fairies keeps as a slave and intends to offer as a teind (tithe) on Halloween and who is rescued by Janet. This element had a twist here, but was so apparent that I was sure this book was going to be it.

But then, by the end of the book, the story was its own. Neither a typical Fae/Human bargain tale nor a Tam Lin retelling. It had both, but was still a different story than I expected. I am both delighted and disappointed, truth be told.

Delighted because the story was unique. It starts in 1919 in a village in Scotland, one year after the war and with the Spanish Flu pandemic still ongoing, where we met Moira Jean Kinross and her five friends, all youths intending to leave the village for better futures, except for Moira Jean herself. She had intended to leave too, but her fiancé had survived the Great War only to fall to the Spanish Flu, so she stays with her mother. On the night before they all depart, the six friends go to a clearing in the woods to have some fun drinking and dancing around a fire, and there they are approached by and ultimately kidnapped by the Folk Under the Hill.

Except for, again, Moira Jean herself, whose fiancé's medal was of iron and saved her from the kidnapping. Determined to rescue her friends, she strikes a series of dangerous bargains with The Dreamer, the Lord of the Folk Under the Hill that feel abandoned and forgotten by humans and want to have them around again, and who becomes fascinated by Moira Jean. In the process of saving her friends, Moira Jean becomes the target of the villagers' distrust and has to learn what really matters to her.

I liked this aspect. Moira Jean is spunky and determined, but she has one big flaw: she's emotionally codependent. When we meet her, she's still mourning Angus and has whitewashed him in her memories. She's a people pleaser, always so nice and helpful to the villagers even when they're nosy and rude to her, and she's so clingy in her relationship with her mother. Given this psychological profile, you'd expect someone like her to cling like a woman drowning to The Dreamer when he offers her everything she'd ever wish for, including love. But that doesn't happen. Instead, Moira Jean has to break away from this codependency and break free from it all to go pursue a better future on her own, as she always wanted.

What's disappointing, then? The ending! It's rushed, abrupt, and leaves questions unanswered. How did The Dreamer deal with forsaking the tithe obligations and how was he allowed to live after that? How was he able to be there in that last scene? And I also didn't like that Moira Jean needed to be "rescued" from the villagers by her mother, that it had to be her mother who gave her that one last push to break her last bond of codependency instead of Moira Jean doing it by herself. That felt like it weakened her character progression.

It's a fine story if you like Fae stories in which they're not nice little pixies or just humans with pointy ears. The pace is annoying in the beginning, and annoying again in the ending, so writing-wise that's the worst problem. And there's some weird elements that seems to be there for . . . reasons, e.g. the scene where The Dreamer changes from a he into a she for . . . reasons. That felt out of the blue, and I have a suspicion that was the Token LGBTQ+ bone thrown in for the "make it gayer" crowd, because at no point before did we get a hint that Moira Jean was bi until that plot point demanded it. Moira Jean's petulant many times, which makes the dialogue feel childish and her character also feel childish, and you have to wonder sometimes what exactly The Dreamer sees in her. He must be too starved for human company that he'll take anyone. Props for a codependent Fae?

I did enjoy it most of the time. It's not the best Fae story I've read, but it isn't terrible, and it definitely deserves kudos for not going the way of all Fae/Human bargain stories these days with romance and pixie dust and powerful fairy lords that shift into sweet puppies the moment a pretty human female shows up.

Bottom line: Plot is decent, execution could've been much better.

Thank you to Harper 360 and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

When I saw that the author of The Shadow in the Glass had a new book coming out, I knew that I had to add it to my TBR list right away! The Thorns Remain by JJA Harwood is a dark adult fantasy hidden behind a whimsical, farm-like setting. The story revolves around Moira Jean, who lives in a village in 1919. She is dancing with her friends one day when they are taken away by Fae. It's up to Moira Jean to make a deal with the Lord of the Fae to save her friends. But when she gets to know the gender-fluid Lord of the Fae, who can change appearances and genders, she starts to fall in love.

Here is a gripping excerpt from the Prologue:

"The sun was shining on the day that the village of Brudonnock disappeared. The sky was a blazing blue, bright as topaz, and no one walked beneath it. The wind trailed its fingers through the forest, rustling through birch leaves and pine needles. The smithy ticked quietly as it cooled; spiders crawled across the kirk door.
...
Slowly, a figure came into view, limping along the dusty Aberdeen road. It picked its way across the path, shoes in hand. Long, curly, mushroom-brown hair shifted in the breeze, and a long skirt swept up clouds of dust in its wake. The girl came closer – hungry, sunburned, swaying – and shaded her eyes, staring at the village.
Even from the path, she knew that something was wrong."

Overall, The Thorns Remain is an absolutely amazing adult fantasy that will appeal to fans of ACOTAR and Howl's Moving Castle. One highlight of this book are the "in love with a monster" and "enemies-to-lovers" tropes. Both tropes are also subverted to various degrees. Another highlight of this book is how dark it is. At first, I missed the morally grey heroine and general darkness of the author's previous work The Shadow in the Glass. But then, I realized that although our heroine isn't morally grey, she doesn't experience a great character arc. This story also has its own darkness and crept up on me. I totally wasn't expecting it. By the end, I was fully on board and loved this book just as much as the author's previous book. 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 May!

The use of Celtic faerie lore was very interesting in this book, but I felt some types were just mentioned to show that the author knew that they existed and didn’t really add to the overall story. The character development felt a bit clunky and disjointed for our FMC. While I understand the complex emotions of healing from trauma, it just kind of hit fast forward near the end, without a lot of work on the FMC’s end. I feel as though her budding relationship with her elder neighbor should have been utilized/fleshed out more and would have given the reader more insight on the faeries mentioned in the story. All in all the story was interesting but I didn’t feel emotionally invested in the characters.

Thank you to Netgalley, HarperCollins, Magpie, and JJA Harwood for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. Mild spoilers ahead.

Actual Rating: 2.5 Stars
***I will update this review tomorrow with the link to my tiktok post!

This historical dark fantasy romance is set in 1919 Scotland where Moira Jean and her friends plan to leave their war-ravaged village in the hope of finding a better life. One last night of revelry finds the group in the forest, dancing with fae – but once you dance with the fae, you can’t stop.

Moira Jean finds herself alone, her friends taken by the someone called Tthe Dreamer, with whom she must now bargain with to get her friends back. This novel feels like a cross between an encyclopedia on traditional Scottish folktails, the type of magic the fae have in The Cruel Prince, and very vaguely an Amarantha and Jurian Under the Mountain situation.

What I liked about this book included something a lot of the fae books published in recent history have, you get the morally grey, dangerous Fae Lord love interest. But in addition to that, there were faeries present like the mischievous brownies. While I do believe there was way too much of the Scottish folklore, I did enjoy reading about it, albeit it did read like a textbook. It’s no surprise to discover that the author has some sort of background in history and therefore this is where her strength lies.

The prose and writing, for the most part was alright. I enjoyed the setting and buildup but after that at times it felt as if the author attempted too much to try and be whimsical while instead reading as repetitive.

The book itself struggled with pacing. It seemed to drag on in some places, while zooming through scenes that needed to simmer. This unfortunately resulted in very weak characters. The premise of the novel is that Moira Jean needs to bargain heavily to ger her friends back. But why does she want them back? Beyond the label of “friends” we don’t know who these people are and therefore her trading everything away makes no sense to me. I wasn’t invested at all in why she had to do so much to save them cause I didn’t know them from John across the street.

There was a heavy focus on Moira Jean’s relationship with her mother which I found very curious as it added nothing to the story – other than making Moira Jean look even more immature and childish than the dialogue and writing did.

The character I enjoyed the most was The Dreamer – I feel like the concept of him literally coming out of the woodworks and trying to bring himself and his people into the real world the only way he knew how was extremely interesting. I also loved how it ended and I so wish I could’ve read what was going on in the The Dreamer’s mind at the end there.

Overall, not sure if I would recommend this – I wasn’t as engaged as I hoped but it ended very strongly. This is a huge spoiler, but I loved how it really wasn’t actually a romance in the end, in spite of how it was marketed. :) lol

Reviewed for NetGalley:

Beautiful cover, interesting concept, but the story fell pretty slow and flat for me.

Couldn't really get into it.

I enjoyed this book much more than I initially thought I would. The beginning felt a little slow-paced with a lot of information. The writing felt off at times but I think that was more of a personal stylistic preference than anything else. The story didn’t immediately grab me but, wow, once it got going I was hooked. I LOVE books with the more traditional take on fae, which this delivered well.

It felt really refreshing and provided a unique take on romance. I expected one thing, and was pleasantly surprised with the opposite. Loved the dynamics between the Dreamer and Moira Jean, especially her growth throughout.

How the main character processes her grief, isolation, and unhealthy relationships also felt genuine and well done. Would definitely recommend this book!