Girls Made Of Snow And Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

Mina has never known love.

The beautiful daughter of Gregory the Magician, she is both shunned and reviled by the local townspeople, who, although they despise her father’s powers, do not hesitate to call on him if they can find no other solution to their problems. Gregory himself shows no paternal affection for his only child and living relative, thus Mina lives a lonely existence, with a silent heart that she always thought was normal. When she learns that her father cut out her heart and magically replaced it with glass when she was a young child, she fears that her non-beating heart is the reason she is incapable of giving or receiving love, sending her down a psychologically unforgiving path.

Then, purely by accident, she discovers that her magical heart has given her the ability to manipulate glass. Mina decides to keep her powers a secret from everybody around her, not knowing when they could come in useful. It isn’t until she moves with her father to Whitespring Castle and sees the recently widowed king for the first time that she thinks she may be able to change her situation. If the king can love her because of her beauty, she could become queen, and then everybody would have to love her. It seems like the perfect solution to her loneliness, and becomes an aspiration that gives Mina hope for the future.

But the king has a daughter, Lynet, who looks exactly like her late mother, and grows to look like her more and more every day. Suffocating under her father’s love for her, Lynet aspires to be more like Mina, her stepmother, who encourages her to break away from her mother’s invisible influence and become her own person. When she learns the reason for her uncanny likeness to her mother- that she was never born but created from snow and blood by Gregory the Magician- Lynet is even more determined to cast her own shadow. But then her father displaces Mina as the queen of the Southern territories- originally Mina’s passion as a Southerner- and gives Lynet the role…

With her position of power usurped, Mina and Lynet start to see cracks in their once-close relationship. Further familial dramas add to the conflict and Lynet has to decide whether she wants to cede some of her power and win back Mina, or fight for her new position and potentially lose all that she knows, including the only mother figure she has ever had. With hidden magic, new adventures and illicit love woven into the mix, will one queen rule over all, or will the girls made of snow and glass be able to put aside their differences and find a way to reshape their story?

This original adaptation of the Snow White fairy tale- dealing with the contradictory feelings faced by both Mina and Lynet- has themes that many people can relate to. Both girls feel trapped in their lives and want something more for themselves, but are held back by society’s expectations of them. The magical elements of the story give both of them a power that help to shape the way they perceive the world, and their places in it, with their relationship written in an empathetic yet conflicted way. All of the characters in this novel are strongly formed, and each play a pivotal role in the way the story pans out. This is a fantastic adaptation which will leave you wanting more from this debut author.

Rating: 4.5/5
Published: October 2017

#Fiction
#Teenage
#Young_Adult
#Fairytale
#Adaptation







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