Compelling worldbuilding mixed with imaginative magic and twisty plotting. This might be a good fit for our fans of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making or someone who wants whimsy plus fantasy. It also lends itself easily to booktalking in schools.

Oh, this book was weird and strange and a little hard to get into at first, but so great to read! I enjoyed it so much! Remembering the different parts of this book to write this review was a great experience, even if I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out what to say!

Neverfell was a bit naive at the beginning of this book, which made this book feel more of a middle grade than YA, maybe upper middle grade. She was very trusting, and she was lucky and she was smart and she got through some pretty tricky situations, and learned from them. I was really impressed with who she became in the end!

One weird/funny/strange bit of this book was the guy in charge, with his two halves of his brain, and how they thought differently, and why he'd set that up. It was a pretty bitter-hilarious bit when both halves started attacking each other!

There were a few mysteries going on in this book. Who Neverfall was, where she came from, who was the thief, and more. It was complicated, and there were a few things going on, and I really enjoyed how they all resolved!

This book was great and I enjoyed it immensely once I got going!

This was an enjoyable read! A great fantasy world to dive into! Not the best the YA genre has to offer, but it makes for a solid book to hold you over for the next Sabaa Tahir or Leigh Bardugo book! 4/5 stars

I did not enjoy this book at all. I stopped reading a quarter of the way through and I have no qualms about that. The only thing I liked was the cover. However, this is a book I may revisit later on, when I'm really bored.

DNF at 28%.

I might have to come back to this one later... I love Frances Hardinge, but I just didn't connect with this one. It might be because it's a middle grade story. I'm sure following the protagonist's misadventures would be totally fun for a child who has that similar frivolous innocence and curiosity. I have a hard time getting behind a protagonist who is so naive and trusting to their detriment. This isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. It's just not for me.

Fantastic mystery of Hardinge!! Love the characters and the idea of smells having power! Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge is a fantasy adventure and the author is able to create a world-building of what it is like to live in a world where everyone judges you by how you appear.

This was weird. Unlike her other book I actually finished this one but it was just weird. But I think that’s why I enjoyed it. I mean I was kind of confused but it really kept me thinking and surpsied me. I will admit I was confused a lot of the time but again I think that added to my enjoyment. It was unique, and something I haven’t read. I went into this book blind, and I think that’s the way to go. It makes it much more interesting! But it does show a parallel to Alice but that’s not the whole context of the book! Keep an open mind! It’s oretty interesting!

I just had trouble getting through the book. It just did not hold my interested. I can see others enjoying the book. It’s not the first book I would recommend. I did enjoy the world the author created and the descriptions.

Did not finish. I had such a hard time getting into this book so I gave up around 100 pages.

In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare. They create wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer even as they slit your throat. The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned. Only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to show (or fake) joy, despair or fear — at a price.

Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a little girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. For Neverfell's emotions are as obvious on her face as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, though entirely genuine. And that makes her very dangerous indeed...- Goodreads

This book took some time to get through. There is a lot of moving parts and a lot of things going on. Let's start with Neverfell.

I had to keep remembering how young and inexperienced she was to interactions with people, her emotions and thoughts. She does a lot of outbursts without thinking and after going through a few chapters, you're like 'Girl, have some restraint.' She is pure in the world because she doesn't know the evil it holds or when a person is using her. Despite some of her annoying tendencies, she really was a breathe of fresh air.

In regards to the plot, this story is different. The idea of people living underground and having this developed civilization may seem familiar but once you get into it, the creativity level sky rockets. You really appreciate the world, the author was able to build because it is really like no other.

Things become complicated when it talks about facial expressions and the purity of emotions and allowing yourself to feel and display your emotion. What is complicated about this is the line is blurred between real and unnatural. There are some parts of the book that you think "hold on wait is this a person who had their expressions created or what" I love the complexity of this novel but at times it required a going back to. 

The book is long and its bit winded as there is so much details and things that you need to know in order for you to not be lost in the next chapter. I overall thought the story was alright. But it got knocked up a point because the creativity is astounding and I appreciate and love that. 

Neverfell is pure and does show growth towards the end of the book. I wished the author would have provide more of an ending as opposed to a another voice giving a recap to what happened next.

Overall, 

2.5 Pickles

Neverfell has only ever known the cheese caves and Master Grandible. As his apprentice, she helps him prepare True Cheeses, delicacies which can grant certain powers to the eater, such as visions of the future or recovering lost memories. In this underground City of Caverna, each caste has a certain repertoire of Faces, expressions they must be taught to mimic or else be completely expressionless. Neverfell has never seen her face. Instead, she wears a mask, convinced she is too horrid to ever be seen by anyone outside of Grandible's caves. This changes when one day makes her way out of the tunnels and into the wider world of Caverna.

The beginning of this book was hard to get through, but once Neverfell left Grandible's tunnels, the story picked up. It was interesting to see Neverfell grow from easily impressionable to someone a bit more hardened, but still open to the joys and sorrows of the world. Hardinge's use of language, of description, was captivating, especially when we as readers can experience Neverfell's emotions right along with her. Everything she feels has such a pureness to it, even when she's feeling anger, that it seems to remind us what it is to feel those things for the first time.

I didn't even make it to the end of this one. I couldn't get interested in the characters or story.

I've come to realize that this authors books and writing just don't work for me and I am not interested in writing a review.

Really enjoyed this! It was a fun fantasy read that I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a unique and creepy read. The concept was so different from anything I've ever read and I can't wait to go back and read this again!

Lovely great read!! Highly enjoyed the overall plot and quite gripping if I do say so! Really enjoyed it immensely

What if Alice grew up down the rabbit hole, and she needed a little white rabbit to lead her…out? That’s a very basic, watered down one-liner that sort of describes what this book is about. You must admit that it’s very intriguing.
A Face Like Glass tells the tale of Caverna, an underground city, much like Alice's Wonderland. In Caverna, babies are born with the inability to show their emotions on their face and, as such, are taught how to mold their faces into expressions by wearing masks. If that wasn't strange enough, Caverna is a land of magic - although it is never seen as magical - for the wines can erase your memories, cheeses can help you see the future, and perfumes can command your thoughts. Into this world is thrown Neverfell, a girl whose every thought is shown visibly on her face. As such, she is a threat to those in Caverna who fear the honesty of her gaze but also seek to exploit her innocence. When Neverfell chases a white rabbit, with the original intent of bringing it back to her master, she stumbles into the world of Cavera and from there, her journey is every bit as crazy as can be imagined.
I hardly know where to start when it comes to Hardinge's spectacular novel as I have never read a book by this author before, but I have checked some out just never read one. Caverna’s inner city is beautifully detailed and immersive – there are sparkling petrified forests and ravenous trap-lanterns, cheeses that can make you remember long-lost truths and wines that can make you forget the last ten minutes. The passages and caves are so convoluted that anyone who tries to map them goes mad. The elite families, each the master of a different rare art, are at constant war with each other for control of the city, and for the favor of the Grand Steward. The Grand Steward is so obsessed with staying in control that he has artificially extended his life and cleaved himself into two beings so that one part of him will always be awake. Intrigue, blackmail, coercion, and assassination are all daily events.
While Neverfell remains the most fleshed-out of all the characters in this novel, nearly every character in this tale becomes well-developed with the progression of this tale and, best of all, the villains aren't all black-and-white, but rather multiple entities of grey. In fact, seeing this world through the eyes of Neverfell, it is difficult to be sure, at times, if friends are truly enemies and enemies are truly friends. In the midst of this political intrigue, Neverfell slowly comes to realize who she is. It is evident that she is not a citizen of Caverna but rather of the outside world where, rumor has it, the sun burns off your skin. As Neverfell has no memory of her childhood, of how she came to be in Caverna, this intriguing tale of political mystery is in equal parts a gentle story of growing up, of becoming the person you can be when circumstance forces you into dark corners. It seems like a very dark tale at times, but rest assured that Hardinge always keeps the silver lining just within reach.
As bizarre as the setting and doll-like faces of the characters are, this book brought me home to reality so many times. Frances Hardinge quite clearly thought a great deal about her premise and all the ramifications of being the one person always expressing her complete truth in a society of fabricators. Neverfell is feared and pitied. The ruling families aren’t sure whether to assassinate her, imprison her indefinitely, or manipulate her for their own ends. Neverfell, confined to a very small set of tunnels for her whole childhood with only a grumpy cheese artisan and several hundred feisty cheeses for company, is understandably naïve. She’s guileless and prone to trust anyone who gives her a friendly face, no matter how false. She even admits that she’s annoying, but she’s also honorable, clever, and resilient in completely unexpected ways.
In many respects, poor Neverfell’s overactive mind had coped with her lonely and cloistered life in the only way it could. It had gone a little mad to avoid going wholly mad. To break up the dreary repetition of the day it had learned to skip unpredictably, to invent and half-believe, to shuffle thoughts until they were surprising and unrecognizable. The whole book is a masterpiece, in my opinion, but what really blew my mind was the epilogue. In a stroke of pure genius, Frances Hardinge suddenly switches the perspective to that of an outsider for the final pages. Reading from his point of view, it suddenly came crashing down on me just how far down this particular rabbit hole I had really gone. I had fallen for Caverna and in doing so, I had gone a bit mad.

That was probably the most creative novel I've ever read. A little crazy and at times hard to follow, but def worth figuring out.

3.5 stars; would consider rereading.

I've adored Frances Hardinge's work ever since I read "The Lie Tree" (perhaps one of my favorite books ever) - highly recommend A Face Like Glass. In fact, I highly recommend everything Hardinge has written, she's amazing.

A FACE LIKE GLASS by Frances Hardinge tells the story of an underground people where facial expressions are learned.

When Neverfell arrives in Caverna, her face stuns the people around her because they aren’t accustomed to natural facial expressions. She must wear a mask and figure out how to survive in this strange world where society is connected to social status and every expression has meaning.

Librarians will find fans of Hardinge happy with this imaginative new middle grade fantasy. Share this novel with middle grade students ready for a book with strong characters, witty exaggeration, and creative world building.

Published on May 9, 2017 by Harry N. Abrams. ARC courtesy of the publisher.

Face Like Glass is another nearly perfect book by the incredible Ms Hardinge. Taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary she always delights. Neverfell is delightful in her strengths and insecurities, she navigates her world with a straight forward hope that she is worthy of something better and that others are worthy of her best.