A Strong Female Cast // ARC Review: Girls Made of Snow And Glass by Melissa Bashardoust |A Thousand Words A Million Books || A Young Adult Book Blog

Title: Girls Made Of Snow And Glass
Author: Melissa Bashardoust
Publication Date: September 5th 2017
Publisher: Flatiron Books (Macmillan)
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Macmillan International (THANK YOU!)
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Blurb Description: 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.

Use the words ‘feminist,’ ‘fairy tale,’ and ‘retelling’ AND YOU KNOW THAT I WILL BE A READER OF THAT BOOK, REGARDLESS OF ANYTHING ELSE.

After Frozen (GO SISTER POWER!) the new Cinderella movie came out, I was so disappointed that it wasn’t more… feministic. I expected Disney to have seen the pure joy that women around the world faced when true love’s kiss didn’t mean Prince Charming’s and to have changed Cinderella, but it was the absolute same as before. *continues weeping*

In any case, it was after that that I began STRONGLY BELIEVING that all Fairy Tales SHOULD BE MORE FEMINISTIC so that little girls will grow up knowing how to be strong, independent women.

And so when I first read the description of Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass, I KNEW I WOULD HAVE TO READ IT. And when I got approved to read an advance reader copy, I was OVER THE MOON.

Surprisingly, this book took me a really long while to get through. The book was slow paced and filled with introspection and I found myself skipping the long LONG descriptions that came after a few exchanges between characters.

Let’s break this down:

THINGS I REALLY LIKED:

1. A FEMINISM AND LGBT FILLED FAIRY TALE RETELLING: Did you get all of those words? A FEMINIST. LGBT. FAIRY TALE. RETELLING. Really, can you ask for more? I already read one Snow While retelling earlier this year, Forest of A Thousand Lanterns and I LOVED IT for its Asian cast and anti-heroine but this one WITH MAGICAL POWERS SOUNDED JUST AS GOOD. I was so happy that this book turned the traditional fairy tale into a feminist book because WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT THAT?

2. STRONG FEMALE CAST: Most of the book was centred around strong female characters trying to find their way or themselves, and I loved it. Mina (the Queen/ Stepmother), Lynet (the Princess) and even Nadia were all characters that were so well done.

THINGS THAT REALLY COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:

1. THE PACE: THIS BOOK WAS VERY SLOW. It took me days and days to get through it purely because of how utterly slow paced it was. Like I mentioned before – there just wasn’t much HAPPENING in the book and it was filled with introspection from both Lynet and Mina about the SAME THINGS.

I found myself skipping parts of the inner monologues as I got to the latter half of the book because they were the SAME and I wasn’t learning any new information from them

I honestly felt that if the pace of this book had been different, the book itself would have been so much more enjoyable.

2. DID I ALREADY SAY THE PACE?

3. T-H-E -- P-A-C-E:

And that’s it. I absolutely love what Melissa Bashardoust’s book did for feminism in fairy tales considering HOW MUCH we need it, but I would be giving this book a lot higher of a rating if the book was faster paced. 2.75 stars.

Melissa Bashardoust (pronounced BASH-ar-doost) received her degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she rediscovered her love for creative writing, children’s literature, and fairy tales and their retellings. She currently lives in Southern California with a cat named Alice and more copies of Jane Eyre than she probably needs. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is her first novel.

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