So Barb Hendee writes another wonderful novel.......

Again we have the three choices format as the lead gets the opportunity to live through three choices of how her life might be if she chooses one of three en in question, thanks to a magical mirror inhabited by the spirit of a witch.

This time the lead is Kara, the sheltered ward of a noble woman who's husband ends up selling Kara in exchange for some land to an awful man. When I say Kara is sheltered it's no joke as the girl hasn't left her manor house and has been hidden away from all eyes leaving her petrified of anything and everything.

On the way to her new home she is kidnapped by a band of robbers and it's when she is taken to their secret settlement that Kara's choices come into play when she finds the mirror in an old shack where she is temporarily being housed.

Three different choices and three very different men to choose from. In theory the choice should be easy but as in the previous two books these choices are far from simple and become delightfully complicated.

Barb Hendee is a wonderful writer and again she has created a lovely tale that an easy read while still being a lot of fun, full of action and complicated enough to make the brain work without making it hurt if you know what I mean.

A great read and a recommended one.

"Kara, as a ward with no parentage and no future, has been raised knowing nothing outside her lady’s chambers. Until Royce Capello, a visiting nobleman, is struck by her ice-pale looks, and demands her as payment for the land the family needs.

With barely time to protest, Kara is sold and packed off for a life as a concubine—until a raiding party descends on Royce’s company and she’s kidnapped for the second time in as many days.

Whatever happens, Kara will be alone in the world, inexperienced and fearing even the vast unfamiliar sky. But one raider gives her a choice—and a magic mirror appears to show her where each path will lead...

~She can leave with her protector Raven and journey with his performing troupe, competing for his mercurial affections.

~She can flee the raiders’ settlement, and return to Royce’s manor, chattel among devious nobility.

~Or she can stay in the settlement, bound to firm, silent Caine, who is as gentle as he is staid and inscrutable.

Her fates twist and turn to affect far more than she could have guessed, tangling the bitter with the sweet—and Kara must choose which consequences she can live with..."

Yeah, yeah, romantic fairy tale retelling, but what I really love is the publisher's name, Rebel Base Books!

More of a 2.5 - mostly because I did not particularly like the inclusion of the "he touched me and it was magical" in the third choice (which harkened back to her first choice).

I actually downgraded this because I realized a thing that happened in the second branching path - or honestly that entire path altogether - bothered the living daylights out of me.

edited to add: I downgraded this to a 1 star because looking over my six pages of notes and anger over the second path has me basically shaking with rage still.

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In Through a Dark Glass I was at odds with the book mainly because of two reasons: the introduction of Megan's ability to "read minds" was so underused it was upsetting and all of her choices basically led to the same conclusion. The book lacked a sense of variety if she chose one path over another. This was especially frustrating since her powers COULD HAVE made a bigger difference than they did, when influencing her story. However, in the end I really enjoyed it.

In A Choice of Crowns I basically enjoyed the hell out of that book and was so happy to see Hendee had made Olivia's choices really mean something. Very real changes occurred depending on who she chose as her path and she had defined character development (that's made especially clear in her choice at the end).

I had higher hopes for A Girl of White Winter since our heroine, Kara has even more dramatically different choices to make. Should she be a traveling entertainer? Should she try to make it on her own? Or should she stay and wait for what may come? All three choices took her to three very different lives with very different outcomes to her personal happiness.

And here's where I start to have an issue. Spoilers major after this point.

So in Path 1, Kara runs off to be a traveling entertainer. Cool. I like that. It takes her a little while to really get settled in, and I'm a little leery of some of the more...culturally appropriating bits that seem to be part of the troupe, but overall it was fine. Except Kara feels LOVE - like Soulmate levels of Love and so does her chosen suitor. A fairly big deal is made by Kara about their first kiss and the troupe at large makes a fairly big deal about the fact her suitor seemed so enamored of her after years of philandering (more or less).

But whatever, it was her first path and in all the books there's at least one "love is my choice" path.

Part 2 is where hell hits the fan. TW for rape, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, and in general a lot of abuse.

Kara runs away from the traveling folk and winds up getting herself caught by Royce - the guy she was trying to run away from and not end up in sexual servitude to. Apparently, in Royce's Kingdom, its completely cool for a guy to be married and then go and take himself a companion to fulfill all his other needs (emotional, psychology and sexual). That's Red Flag 1.

Red Flag 2 is that Royce's father has a lady like this and she basically tells Kara "hey so this is gonna be your life, this is my life, so make the best of it". At first what seemed like a fairly loving relationship takes a severely dark turn. Royce's mom was totally okay and even ENCOURAGED the relationship. Even though she's quite dead, Royce's dad doesn't see a reason to marry his mistress if she's "happy" not marrying him.

Red Flag 3 was the actual rape, which Hendee does not go into explicit detail about, but that's a small mercy in this case since Adina is horrified...that Kara tried to fight back and "refuse" him. She urges her to treat him like her hero, to gratify his ego and basically do whatever she needs to keep him happy.

Red Flag 4 is that Kara gets a weird sort of...Stockholm Syndrome almost. Things happen and she's no longer beholden to Royce, but instead of taking her money and RUNNING AS FAR AS SHE COULD she decides to stay with Adina and Royce's father her "new family".

Literally the entire section had me shaking with rage and disbelief. NOT COOL. NOT EVEN A LITTLE COOL. This is the opposite of ok. Literally the exact opposite of ok. ONE PERSON seems to have an inkling of how jacked up this whole thing is and at the end even he's like "Well. If you're sure." and rides away.

I'm not sure if these are targeted for YA, NA or mainstream fantasy-romance folk. I tend to think of these are closer to low end NA because they do include non-explicit sex and the heroines are age 18+, but even as a mainstream fantasy-romance this is not something to encourage. Its the worst trope. Kara doesn't learn anything except her value as being someone's doll; her Aunt's, Royce's, Adina's - none of them encourage her to find her true self.

And Branch 3. Sigh. Ok. So I liked this one the best because it had Kara learning her own worth (at her own pace), learning that she can make her wants known and not be afraid of being pushed aside and learning that first impressions aren't always the best. This was going so well. UNTIL...the brother from the first branch, the traveling entertainer she originally runs off with. Hendee decided that she'd just keep including the fact they were MEANT TO BE despite the fact Kara is happily in her life and he's happily on the way to his life.

And they kiss. Which had me throwing my phone down in disgust because I abhor cheating. There has to be very specific circumstances for me to even CONSIDER being okay with the THOUGHT of cheating and Hendee hit none of those circumstances. Not only do they kiss but Kara wonders if maybe she made the wrong choice and she's ready to upset a half dozen lives on a maybe.

In the end she doesn't choose to go with Branch 1 because she realizes that it will hurt too many people, but you're left with this feeling of...resignation to her choice. Like she made it not because she really wanted to, but because it was the right thing to do.

When Olivia made her choice to give up love to protect her friend and help her rule the country it didn't feel like she was resigned to making the right choice. It felt like a genuine growth in character from someone who started out shallow and selfish. She weighed the odds and for her it meant more that she could help the country and the Princess, that felt more "right" to her.

When Megan chose the youngest (I think he was the youngest) brother, consigning the oldest to death basically and herself to a life less comfortable than she was used to, you knew she made the choice because of love. While her character growth was less apparent than Olivia's, it was still there in that she put her wants first for the first time.

Kara choosing to marry Caine over Raven (because the second Branch was never a real contender here) felt like she took the option out of obligation to do the right thing. Which is actually a step back in her character growth. With Raven and Caine, in their separate paths, she learned what it meant to think for herself (basically). While Raven's "everyone has a choice" spiel is asinine at best, for her it was a credo she needed to learn so she would stop trying to please everyone. When she makes her choice she thinks about Jade accusing Raven that his "talk of choices" was an excuse for him to do as he pleases instead of what's right. Kara choosing Caine was what was "right". And that felt WRONG to me.

Sorry my spoiler is pretty long. Basically no. No. No. Read "A Choice of Crowns" instead. I'm looking forward to "A Choice of Secrets" in November, but I'm way more wary now.

I really like this book i found its easy to get into i had not read the other book in the series but that didn't matter. the book was about Kara and she had been kidnapped by thieves and had three choices and she get to see what would happen with each one. I would recommend this book to anyone who like fantasy and romance. I had not read the other books in series but I now think I will.

Another wonderful book in the Dark Glass series. For the first time two of the choices were viable options. Usually, the main character has three choices but the way one of them is written is clearly the one we are supposed to want. Two of the choices in this book involve love and family. I did expect the reason for the different coloring of the main character (she has Snow Queen type appearance) be explained but it never did.

Well.... so I received this from Netgallery in exchange for an honest review. And I’m torn.

As what I took to be a fairytale adaptation with multiple endings it was pretty fab.
As part of a series of female protagonists who get to see three possible futures it’s a little more problematic.
I didn’t realise when I requested it, that it as part of a series of the “three options”. I don’t think that I’d actually go back and read the other books with the same narrative.

It was a clever way of exploring possibilities and decisions, and her eventual choice was based on, not so much her own personal happiness, but on the best thing for everyone.

I felt that there was a lot of passivity to the protagonist, which annoyed me quite a bit. Things happened to her, instead of her having agency. Even the choice that she had to make about her three futures was given to her.

Plus,I find it difficult to deal with the part where she is so beautiful that everyone is stunned only she has no idea of her own power.

So, interesting, but frustrating.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley, thank you! All opinions are my own.

A Girl of White Winter had some remarkable ideas in terms of storytelling. I liked the idea of the protagonist's different pathes. Nevertheless, I couldn't really get into it as much as I wanted to. Solid three stars.