I had hoped, more than anything, that I would love Girls Made of Snow and Glass. I was promised a feminist f/f fairy tale retelling, but all I got was a slow, dull book where the LGBT+ themes took a backseat to…whatever the hell was happening.
I really really wanted to like this book. But I had to DNF it, which I always hate doing.
Frozen meets The Bloody Chamber in this feminist fantasy retelling of the Snow White fairytale as you’ve never heard it before, tracing the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start: the beautiful princess and stepmother queen.
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.
I thought the concept was awesome: a girl made of snow, and a woman with a glass heart. It was what initially pulled me to hit the ‘request’ button. But the alternating POVs with the time hopping (where Lynet’s POV was in the present, while Mina’s chapters were her backstory and leading up to her becoming the Queen) made it just a headache and a half.
It was part of the reason why it felt so agonizingly slow; by the time I finished a chapter and was properly attuned to that character, we changed timelines and everything was different. I had to remember what was going on in that timeline, who knew what and such and it was too much of a hassle. The intertwining of the past and present just flat out didn’t work.
As a result, I wasn’t connected to either character and had no desire to keep reading. I had to DNF it at a third of the way through the story, which is a shame, but I’ve learned a lot through book blogging: if I have to force my way through a book, then that book isn’t going to be enjoyable for me.
