Girls Made of Snow and Glass

This fairy tale retelling of “Snow White” is completely captivating, told from the dual perspectives of Mira and Linnet, two girls who’ve had their lives forever changed by one sorcerer. A queen and stepmother put into place in a palace. A young girl who longs to know about herself and her mother. I love the way the author crafts each character so delicately, weaving backstory so that each is so completely relatable and sympathetic. There are so many shades of gray in this tale.

And as the tale progresses, I love how the author so carefully paints her characters and makes sure we understand their motivations. You see in the queen, not the evil Disney figure, but a girl who felt lost and hopeless and just wanted to be loved, even show more as she does despicable things. It’s a wonderful retelling for that aspect alone, along with the gorgeous prose and beautiful imagery.

I love the way that it follows other traditional tellings of Snow White in some ways, and yet spins off and makes the story something entirely new. This was absolutely a delight.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less

I'd like to register my vote for more fairy-tale retellings like this one. While it's not perfect, I loved the characterization of Mina, a not-so-evil stepmother, and Lynet, a sheltered princess in a snow-covered kingdom. The magical elements - Lynet is formed from blood and snow and Mina has a glass heart - provide a way for each character to discuss and grapple with their own brokenness and to eventually recognize it in each other. While Mina and Lynet are sometimes adversaries, they're not true enemies and at times their relationship is warm. I enjoyed reading a twist on a story I've encountered before, especially one that chooses to human the traditional villain of the story.

“you believe the worst in everyone, even yourself.”

wow.

i’ve always been a fan of fairy tales and fairy tale retellings, and girls made of snow and glass is a masterpiece in this genre

this book borrows and alludes to the original snow white story, while also being completely unique and standing very strongly on its own. the world and its conflicts are almost effortlessly built through the two povs, and the past seamlessly catches up to the present in a way that i rarely experience in books with split povs in different time periods

the characters are fascinating and complex and i loved nearly all of them. lynet is bold and brave and so caring. she really embodies what i think the core of who snow white was in the original fairy show more tale that so many retellings miss an attempt to make her darker and grittier and more “feminist” (in quotations because sometimes i wonder how feminist those retellings really are, just for giving a princess a sword and armor). and mina has so so many layers. mina herself is one of the best written parts of this book, her perceptions of herself and others, her motivations, her inner and outer conflicts, they’re all just fascinating to read and kept me on the edge of my seat, hoping for the right choices to be made

it’s so refreshing to read— to see female characters really and truly love and support each other, but also be fighting conflicts between each other, conflicts that are more substantial than boys and beauty, and even in some cases, power. it seemed so much more honest and real than so much of ya fantasy i’ve read, and i really truly connected to it

also? gay characters! i was hoping so hard when i thought i saw a ship that could be but was also trying not to get my hopes up too much— i’ve been disappointed by ya fantasy too many times to count. but i wasn’t. and it was so natural, sometimes gay rep in these books feels forced, like the author doesn’t know how to write it but feels like they need to to score woke points, but this romance felt natural and real, and i loved every second of it. i almost cried when i realized that i wasn’t just projecting

i really really enjoyed this book. it was impossible to put down, the relationships made it felt so deep, the writing was wonderful, the conflicts centered around something that i really found fascinating for a fantasy ya book, and over all, the discussion of love — what love is, what it means to love and be loved, what love makes us — was just really well done show less

Fairy tales in their truest forms (rather than watered-down Disney versions) express a culture's deepest fears rather than its loftiest dreams. In "Snow White," as in many other old tales, there are familiar tropes: a young, beautiful and innocent girl, a doting but absent or ignorant father; a dead mother, an evil stepmother, peril in the forest. These motifs speak of fears of orphanhood, helplessness and defenselessness, and of being replaced: the daughter by a stepmother that takes her place in her father's heart, and the stepmother/Queen, by her stepdaughter, fearful of losing her power, (represented by youth and beauty), and her throne to a younger generation.

In "Girls Made of Snow and Glass" Bashardoust gives us a reimagining of show more the Snow White story, but from a very different perspective. Critics are naming this perspective "feminist," and while it does indeed have elements of female empowerment, I found this story to be primarily one of primal familial relations, here focusing on the mother/daughter, or in this case, stepmother/stepdaughter, relationship.

Mina is a girl who was created by her father, a famous magician, substituting a glass heart for her failing human one. As a child, she is an outcast, her and her father’s reputations as strange, criminal and mysterious preceding her wherever she goes. Her mother has also deserted her, killing herself rather than deal with the inhuman daughter the magician creates. Mina thus grows up insecure, unloved, and apart.

Lynet is the apple of her father, the king’s eye; she too lost her mother, the beloved Queen of an enchanted kingdom, very young, and as Lynet grows, others, including her father, daily remind her of her similarities to and thus pale imitations of, her saintly mother. She also grows up unsure of her place in the world, unattached by genuine love to any other individual.

Until her stepmother comes along. In Mina, Lynet finds a kindred soul, and the mother she was looking for, and they share a bond that goes beyond that of step-relations. But wrapped up in that bond are the insecurities that each player brings with her, feelings of uncertainty, unbelonging, and fear of their own selves. It is these fears of themselves and wariness of the other that causes the misunderstandings, rifts and conflicts that express themselves in the fairy tale events that unfold. So the familiar motifs of poisoning, enchanting spells, magic mirrors, dutiful huntsmen, families torn apart, escaping a dangerous castle, making one’s way alone in peril, etc, are all here but clearly have their roots in the deep psychological scars of the players and in the chasms that we create between ourselves and others due to our own fears and insecurities.

Those who wish to enjoy the book on a more basic level will love the retelling of the Snow White story, with some slight tweaks. I really enjoyed what I feel is the main thrust here, of giving us the emotional and psychological backstories of these familiar characters.

Those seeking the feminist storyline will be satisfied as well, as the story is simultaneously about female characters seeking their own plots and empowerment and purpose in a male-centered world. Here, the male characters are very much sidelined for the front-and-center love story that is the tale of Mina and Lynet. (Even the romantic subplot between Lynet and another character is a minor one.) It’s also about beauty, how we use it, how we despise it, and how we make it part of our self-definitions, to the detriment of our deeper, finer qualities.

Ultimately, I would describe this story as a love story of two women, very much like each other, each with a magical element to her, who are more alike than different, and who must learn to overcome their shortcomings, fears of themselves and the other, and insecurities about their places in the world, in order to find each other at last. All in all, a really great fairy tale.

This book is slotted into the YA niche, but its depth, themes, and issues of emotional, familial and psychological issues earn it a very secure place in adult fiction, in my view. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is Melissa Barshardoust’s first novel and her assured confidence and brilliant reimagining of the classic Snow White fairy tale has me already anticipating her next.

Lynet is approaching her sixteenth birthday when the story begins. She is overwhelmed by her father’s expectation that she will step into her mother’s shoes as Queen someday. Her uncanny resemblance to her mother seems to obligate her to sublimate her own wishes and ambitions to honor her dead mother’s legacy. Certainly her father is unable to see her as an individual separate from her mother. The only person who seems to see her as an individual separate from her mother is her stepmother, Mina and the new surgeon Nadia whom she is show more falling in love with. This all falls apart when Nadia reveals the terrible secret of her creation.

Mina came to court at sixteen, unloved and isolated by people’s fear of her magician father, she was determined for once to be on the inside looking out instead of the outside, looking in. To do that she set her cap for the King, determined to wed him and with his power, finally be accepted and loved. She succeeds at the former and fails at the latter, in large part due to her father’s interference and the King’s infatuation with his grief. However, she does become close to her stepdaughter Lynet, despite the King’s disapproval. Like Lynet, she carries a terrible secret.

Lynet is destined to be Queen, but that would displace Mina whose self-worth and identity is defined by her position. Lynet of the Snow and Mina of the Glass are set at odds by fate and fear and their struggle sets the stage for the familiar story of Snow White. There is even a Huntsman, though he is a far more important and complex character in this story. In many stories, women are set at odds with each other, demanding the destruction of one for the survival of the other. Lynet and Mina know that is what is expected of them. The question is whether they can change their fate.

I loved Girls Made of Snow and Glass. Even the magic of the story is innovative, this frozen land cursed by a Queen’s suicide, the magic of glass and snow, and the completely authentic emotional struggle at the heart of the story. It reminds me a bit of The Wizard of Oz, of the seekers desperately seeking what they already have, if they only realized it. There are real lessons to learn here, about not allowing others to define your capacity or limitations, not accepting outside judgments, and of believing in yourself.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass falls solidly within the traditional fairy tale tradition of telling stories of real traumas and fears that young people may face and providing a vehicle for working through them. There is loss, violence, thoughts of suicide, alienation, infidelity, and parental malpractice from too little and from misdirected love. This story is often grim, despite the beautiful and fanciful settings. That is what the fairy tales are for, for working out and through our fears. In this story, though, love is redemptive.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass will be released on September 5th. I received an advance e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass at Flatiron Books, Macmillan
Melissa Barshardoust author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/9781250077738/ show less

It’s the age of fairytale retellings so next up is a feminist take on the Snow White tale. This novel tells the story from both the point of view of Mina (Stepmom) and Lynet (Snow). In some ways it reminded me of Disney’s Maleficent or the TV Show Once Upon A Time in that we get this backstory on who the Queen was before she became the person we all love to hate. By swirling their stories together we can see how their relationship, and the impact others had on it, was destined for a disastrous ending unless they can rise above the journey they got forced on.

Melissa Bashardoust does a wonderful job of not falling into the trap of just relying on what others have done with these types of characters before. Instead of lifelong arch show more enemies she allows them to explore a softer, more supportive side to being in each other’s lives. This story is so character driven readers are lucky that Bashardoust knows how to write effective character development so that you really feel like you know who they are and about their motivations.

She sets up her scene work with lots of detail so you feel like you could be right there. It’s very heavy on exposition though the author is so creative in her writing you feel like you get swept away to this unique and hauntingly beautiful world with not time to get bored. One of the fun elements was playing a version of Where’s Waldo by finding the elements from the original tale she incorporated into this version; it’s like easter eggs buried in a movie.

As a mother of daughters I’m always on the lookout for books that showcase women in strong positions and I was glad to find a book that paints women in a positive light without resorting to boxing them into pathetic stereotypes. show less