Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Hardcover, 384 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 2017

ISBN:
978-1-250-07773-8
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OCLC Number:
961001872

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4 stars (5 reviews)

Frozen meets The Bloody Chamber in this feminist fantasy reimagining of the Snow White fairytale.

Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, 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 …

1 edition

Review of 'Girls Made of Snow and Glass' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The blurb sells this as a take on Snow White and the Snow Queen. I started it out of my childhood crush on the latter, but I don’t think the novel is at all close to these tales, in characters or themes. Rather, it deals with topics one sees more often in sci-fi: What it feels like for your body to be artificial, constructed; what it feels like to be dehumanised for it; being built differently; being told that because of your nature, you're unable to love; being a mother but just a substitute. Probably the most accidentally trans novel I’ve read in quite a while.

One fairy-tale archetype that is explored in depth is that of the social-climber stepmother, of the world pushing women against one another. I came for the lesbians, stayed for the mother-daughter relationship.

It was a quick, light read and I enjoyed it.

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rated it

4 stars
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rated it

3 stars
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rated it

5 stars

Subjects

  • Mothers and daughters
  • Juvenile fiction
  • Fiction
  • Magic
  • Queens

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