Girls Made of Snow and Glass

DNF - PG 63

Why?

Because this was not the story I was expecting and it certainly was not the story I wanted.

I thought this was going to be a Snow White retelling where Snow and the Evil Queen fall in love with each other, team up and take down the patriarchy.

Instead, I got this. Should I have read the reviews closer? Maybe, but I think I was well within my rights for making certain assumptions about the book from the synopsis here on Goodreads and the tags that readers have used. And none of the reviews that I did skim did anything to disabuse me of this assumption.

What I was expecting:
Linet and Mina to be a couple.

What I got:
Mina being twice Linet's age and literally her mother figure.

Also, bear in mind that the ‘romance starts with stalking and the one being stalked is flattered. Bear in mind that this is not okay in straight romances. It's also not okay in queer romances.

What I was expecting:
...No non-linear narratives.

What I got:
A non-linear narrative.

I hate non-linear narratives. I pass on fan fiction that otherwise sounds amazing when it has the ‘non-linear narrative' tag. I simply hate it and do not want to read it.

What I was expecting:
Down with the patriarchy. Just...in general.

What I got:
To be fair, it might be headed in that direction, but I do not find the concept that these two women were created (by a man) and are at least partially homunculi to be ‘feminist'. Nor do I find the fact that these two women that are only seen by their fathers for what they can do for him, individually, to be ‘feminist'. Finally, I do not find such an obviously oppressed character (Linet) being put in the position she's in to be...empowering.

For me, that's the thing that all these ‘feminist' books that I've attempted to read fail at. To me, feminism is not best depicted in a fantasy novel as real world struggles to be seen as equal to men, but I would rather see a truly matriarchal society that doesn't punish the women before allowing them to be ‘feminist'.

What I expected:
Little to no magic.

What I got:
Where magic has been depicted to this point, magic is evil.

Again.

I am so sick of this conceit.

Finally, if I had known ANY of these before reading, I would have happily skipped this book. However, I did not. So.

This book was not what I wanted - it was very obviously NOT written for me - so I'm stopping now.

4/5 stars

An interesting retelling of Snow White. Mina, the stepmother, was the more fascinating of the two main characters. Enjoyable read.

2.5 stars

I really enjoyed this but I think it suffered a bit from being YA as it would be better if it could get a bit more gritty and grey with the stepmother character.

3.5. A delightfully surprising read. I didn't know much about the book before starting it and I'm pretty displeased with most fairy tale retellings after the Lunar Chronicles. But this book made me very optimistic for YA in general. Instead of focusing on the evil Queen and misunderstood princess tropes, it presented to very complex, well-defined characters who are often forced into making choices based on the decisions and manipulation of the men in their lives. I don't want to spoil the ending but I was thrilled with the way the conflict resolved, something I would have never envisioned a YA book presenting. The action can be slow at times but with reading if you want to be exited for the genre again.

Since Snow White is not one of my favorite fairy tales, I was not looking forward to the Snow White section of my Fairy Tale YA Lit class. Naturally, this section produced two of my favorite books read in the class so far (and my least favorite, but that's a whole other story).

My only real complaint about this book was I wish King Nicholas was more...I don't know, sympathetic? I mean he certainly has his moments and of course his grief over his dead wife is very sad, but ultimately I felt he was kind of one-note; of course, the same could probably be argued for Lynet and Mina, I suppose, so it's a minor complaint at most.

Overall, I liked the use of magic, the Huntsman/Magic Mirror aspects were clever, and I liked the lgbt+ aspect as well. A well crafted story about learning to love and being true to who you are; maybe that's cheesy, but hey, it's a fairy tale, and we could all use a little cheese nowadays. 4.5/5

At 3%

Your features are delicate, Lynet, like a bird???s. You shouldn???t be climbing trees, Lynet, not when your hands and feet are so soft and delicate. Emilia had died, he said, because her body had been too delicate for childbirth. Being delicate had killed her mother, and yet he was so eager to bestow the quality on her.

Everything Lynet knew about her mother, she had learned from Nicholas. She was fragile, he said. She spoke in whispers and murmurs. She was sweet and gentle. Like you, like you, he said, but Lynet had never felt fragile, though she looked it. If her father had never truly recognized his daughter, then had he remembered his wife wrong as well? What if everything he???d ever told her about her mother was only how he???d seen her, not how she truly was?

There would be no other chances, no other roles but the ones that had been set for them from the beginning???the bitter, aging queen and the sweet young princess poised to take everything from her.

Mina gave her a sad smile. ???You???ll see too, one day. Once you grow older, someone else will be waiting to take your place, someone younger and prettier than you. I knew that day was approaching for me. I knew even when you were still a child. So why am I so surprised to learn that I???m being thrown aside? Why am I always so surprised????

WOW! I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads and got to read it before the release date (September 5th! Today! GO GET IT!) and I was SO excited to read it. It did not disappoint! This is her debut novel, and the story is absolutely fantastic. It's billed as a “fantasy feminist fairy tale” and I think it lives up to that pretty well. There are no princes in this story. There are a couple of men - the King, the Queen's father, and the Huntsman, but they are not who the story is about. The story really is about the Queen/stepmother and her stepdaughter, the Princess.

It's hard to talk to much about the plot without giving things away, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a GLBT relationship, and one that was treated pretty matter-of-factly. It's really lovely to see someone take a medieval-ish fantasy setting and make GLBT relationships a perfectly normal thing. Too often medieval fantasy comes with a big dose of bigotry because “that's the way things were!” ignoring that this IS YOUR FANTASY WORLD WITH MAGIC IN IT so why on earth can't things be different?!

There was definitely a bit of stilted dialogue, and early plot events were a little cliche, but it's her debut novel and I'll forgive that for how outstanding everything else about the book was. It flips back and forth between the Princess's viewpoint and the Queen's, and early in the book it also flips between current events (the Princess's viewpoint) and many years ago (the Queen's viewpoint, before she became Queen and stepmother to the Princess). It was a little jarring the first time, before I realized it had also jumped backward in time, but after that it was smooth.

All things considered, I love this book. I think it's probably one of my favorite books of 2017.

See all my reviews at Goddess In The Stacks