Girls Made of Snow and Glass (REVIEW)

There were tears.

 Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

Published: September 5th, 2017 by Flatiron Books

Goodreads

SYNS: Frozen meets The Bloody Chamber in this feminist fantasy reimagining of the Snow White fairytale.

At sixteen, Mina’s mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.

Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.

REVIEW

(I received an ARC on Netgalley for my free and honest review)

If you hadn’t told me this was a retelling, I wouldn’t have even noticed. In fact, I had completely forgotten about the synopsis of this book by the time I really got invested in reading it, so I didn’t even remember that it was supposed to be a retelling, and I don’t even think that it should rely on that categorization. Girls Made of Snow and Glass stands solidly on its own, strong and emotional and compelling.

Both Mina and Lynet’s stories weave together fluidly, and at the beginning of the book, Lynet is only just beginning to live at fifteen-going-on-sixteen while Mina’s perspective is set in the past when she was only sixteen herself. This creates a dual narrative that is interesting and makes it easy to compare the two girls, and it makes it easy to notice how Lynet’s icy surroundings mirror the blank emptiness of Mina’s heart.

This is also a book where the protagonist and antagonist are not easily identifiable. In many ways, Mina is the villain of this story, as, in Lynet’s present, she is the “Evil Queen”. However the reader sees how her past has shaped her, and from the beginning, you know the truth behind her cold demeanor, and this makes it hard to peg her as a true villain. Later on in the book, in Lynet’s present, you see what acts of kindness and love that Mina has carried out without receiving credit and that further shows that she isn’t the standard cruel stepmother that she’s based on.

What I love about Girls Made of Snow and Glass as well is that both Lynet and Mina grow over the course of the narrative in amazing ways, which is a stark contrast to the source material, and even most retellings, where only the Snow White character that Lynet is based on grows as the story progresses. You also see a change in the characters around them- including, of course, my two favorites, Nadia and Felix.

The only complaint I had about this book was that, looking back on it now and knowing that it is a retelling, I felt it was really forced on Mina to become more cruel to fit the “Evil Queen/Stepmother” role. With pressure looming on her, and her overbearing worry that Lynet will take everything from her that she’s worked so hard on, I can understand her inner struggle, but I think that some of her dialogue was written harsher than what I felt fit? Most of my frustration came from thinking that I understood her character only for her to go back on it and do something objectively terrible, only to then lament about it right after. I think that if there was no pressure for her character to ultimately fit an already fixed character role there wouldn’t have been this back and forth because then her character could be “heartless” without having to have her mean-ness ramped up so she could come across as evil.

But that fact doesn’t change how much I loved this book. It explores the dynamic between a woman who grew up too fast and who feels outside pressure to ignore this young child despite her instincts telling her to be a mother and a girl who is forced into a role and told that she can’t get too close to the only woman she looks up to. It’s amazing and I highly recommend it.

Overall, I give Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust 5 out of 5 tears that I physically cried after reading.