★★★★☆
Girls Made of Snow and Glass is the Snow White I never knew I wanted.
It follows the stepmother, Mina, and the princess, Lynet, in alternating points of view. Both are in third person, so it’s not so jarring when the shifts occur, but there was also an element of time changing — some of Mina’s story was told in the past, but then it starts catching up with Lynet’s chapters until both characters’ POVs are firmly in the ‘present.’ This gets a little confusing if you think too much about it, but if you just read along and let the writing do its job, it flows well.
The story itself starts out a bit slowly, placing our princess in a frozen castle in the north of her unnamed kingdom and painting her as a bored, spoiled child — albeit a bored, spoiled child who dislikes her lot in life and liked climbing tall buildings.
The story that unfolds goes a little differently than the one Disney told. I won’t give anything away, as always, but the magical (and non-magical) touches added to this story make it infinitely more riveting. Plus, small (but not immediately plot-related) spoiler: There’s an LGBT main character who falls in love. They don’t hate themselves for it, they don’t question it, and no one makes any disparaging comments about it; they just love someone of the same gender as they are. A+ from me in that respect — that romance was adorable. A slow burn, too, for those who don’t like romance getting in the way of plot.
Overall, the main characters were well-rounded (except Mina’s evil father, Gregory, which honestly kind of bothered me), the story is enchanting, and the two Bashardoust pulled off the multiple POVs well.
One of my only issues with the book was that, though it’s only 384 pages, it felt like 600. At times, the characters seemed to go on and on and on about what they were thinking, even at times when it was heavily implied already. But even so, the plot and writing were well executed and I did want to keep reading. Especially near the end of the book, when I basically couldn’t put the book down at all.
An easy four out of five from me, with a definite recommendation for anyone who enjoys fantasy or fairytale retellings.
