“Caught between history & progress & blood & desire, Marlinchen must draw upon her own magic to keep her city safe & find her place within it.”

I was completely chuffed when HarperCollins Publishers approved me to review Juniper & Thorn on NetGalley. After having read Ava Reid’s The Wolf & the Woodsman in 2021, I became a staunch fan who could not wait for Juniper & Thorn to premier! 

Let me say, I was not prepared for how much I would fall in love with this book. As I stated in my review for Wolf, Reid won me over to the Gothic genre, which I view as being different from horror in that they share motifs, but the scare isn’t the center of the story like in horror. 

I saw a recent IG story of Reid’s in which she stated that she had some apprehensions about writing a character like Marlinchen, but never before in a story have I identified with the MC so thoroughly. Right away, I sympathized with being bullied & hurting as a child but later being perversely proud of it as an adult, like a badge of perseverance. Reid has the compelling ability to write self-conscious characters who are easy to believe & to whom it is even easier to relate. 

I often balance a fine line of spoileriness in my reviews, but as Juniper & Thorn is yet unpublished, I am reigning in my desire to dissect & display the nuances of the story, which tends to be my style of reviewing. Let me tell you, it is not easy; I could address Juniper’s underlying themes, or the issues on which Reid tends to expound in her writing. But, let me make it simple by saying Marlinchen is a girl who comes into her womanhood & finds her power &, most importantly, learns to love herself & allow herself to be loved, despite her flaws. 

Reid brings to light that life is not always clean & stories aren’t always fairy tales, but even one person’s presumed horror could be another person’s grace, & the basest of us may be capable of love. For all that Juniper & Thorn is fantasy, it speaks the truth of the world. Unlike fiction meant for escape, it is a story meant for reflection & it is all the more graceful for its gore.