This had a good start, but that’s the best I can say because shortly after the beginning I just lost all interest, what seemed promising at the first few pages just felt empty and a bit soulless, I didn’t care about the characters, just not for me.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

"No one is from here. And you can't treat this world like yours. Everything has feelings. You have to treat everything like a lover and an enemy."

This book was very whimsical and magical and seems to have confused a lot of people who read it according to my review of the reviews.
From the inspiration of the book at the foreword this book was written to explain their anxiety, depression, self-identity and grappling of sense of self in a world that doesn't accept.

In that instance this book captures those feelings. I like searching for the under layer of inspiration in stories, the larger metaphor. This journey of a witch in this very fascinating dimension layered on top of the human world that is accessed by keys. This City of Eyes inhabited by witches and tools who are made like our lead character Eli to destroy the ghosts in the human world. But there is more that they don't tell Eli that she is starting to question. The City of Eyes is alive and most of what happens in it is constantly moving and biting back and testing you. It's a death landscape built to test like most internal challenges. I thought it was a mesmerizing liquid feeling through the story like you might melt into it. It's hard following the world building when things change and there is no definite rules to the world explained because the main character was never taught how to survive completely so she had to rely on her maker but it makes it interesting and dangerous. I'm so glad that my dreams can't effect the people around me yikes! I think the set up for Tavs book makes me wants to see how they fix what was broken and what the witches damaged. I like the whole galaxy part of it. I kept thinking of David Bowie's Labrinyth when they were in the junkyard except on speed lol.

There is LGBTQ representation with the main characters being non-binary and gay. I am not sure what Eli identifies as she does not identify as human so I don't think her sexuality would term like ours but maybe more pansexual. I loved Eli and Tavs chemistry. Also Eli and Kite's relationship was ... toxic and I'd say dependent.

Synopsis:
Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven living blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.

Terrified that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli seeks refuge with a group of human and witch renegades. To earn her place, she must prove herself by capturing the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you @netgalley and @dundurnpress for the arc copy for my honest review.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass is a strange, unique, and other-worldly coming of age story. Eli is a created being, crafted of various materials by witches to be used as an assassin of ghosts. As she tries to discover her own nature, she encounters others who help guide and assist her on her journey through the various worlds. Very interesting premise and a promising start but it was hard to keep my attention after that.
Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.

I wasn't happy with this book. It failed to live up or even meet my expectations. I wasn't able to bring myself to care about the characters.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole is one of the strangest and most wonderful books I have read in a long time. It tells the story of Eli, an assassin sent by a mysterious Coven to hunt down ghosts in the human world. She may look like a teenage girl but she is anything but, she is a "made thing" crafted by the witches to do their bidding, and living with the threat of being "unmade" if she fails in her mission. She is the girl of hawthorn and glass, and many other parts, and she is the most successful of the witch's creations to date, but when a mission goes wrong and she kills a human being instead of the ghost she was expecting she begins to question her purpose and whether she can trust her Witch mother and the Coven. Terrified of the consequences of her mistake she finds herself turning to a renegade witch in the mortal world and soon she and her companions are on a dangerous quest to capture the Heart of the Coven and hopefully find some answers along the way.
There is a sense of magic and mystery in the way this book is written, the reader is definitely throw in at the deep end to some degree, with very little explanation of the world or magic systems. I am not sure if this is done deliberately to mirror Eli's confusion, but I am sure it will be something that will turn off some readers. This is a shame because as the book goes on , the whole thing does start to make a little more sense. There is a definite darkness too, nothing is simple or safe, the magic seems to have a purpose of its own , and it will punish you for any mistakes you make. Like the characters, the reader has to really pay attention .
I liked Eli as a character, and really admired how the author wove the properties of her "components" into her abilities, strengths and weaknesses. I also appreciated the inclusion of a non binary character ,and how well that was incorporated seamlessly into the story.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher ,all opinions are my own.

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole is a young adult romantic suspense. I found this to be a slow read that I could not get into. The story seemed to drag on. I was hoping for more from The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass.

I definitely agree that this book is unique. The story is very odd, but I found it really hard to get into.

Mostly, I was confused with the world-building. I felt like I was missing the mark and went back several times to reread passages.

I thought the characters were fine, though I was sometimes very confused with their intentions.

Overall, I think this book has its audience, I just don’t think I’m it.

In The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass we follow Eli who was made by her witch mother to be a hunter of ghosts in the real world. After Eli makes a mistake on one of her missions she begins to question her life and all she has learned throughout her life so far. I really loved the concept of this book, witches making assassins? How cool!

The best way I can explain this book and the writing is that it reads like a fan fiction. By that I mean that it feels like as a reader I’m expected to already know the world and the characters. Things happen fast with characters and we aren’t given much information about them. I wish there was more backstory given about the world and the characters. Without these the story was often confusing and hard to relate to, thus care about, in anyway. I think this is a good book for someone who is trying to get into fantasy for the first time. There is the magical world full of witches and our real modern day world. It’s an easy way to jump into the world of magic without fully diving in. With that being said, I don’t have much more to say about this book. It was not necessary my type of read, but I do think you should give it a try because it may just be the prefect book for you!

I thought I would love this book, but I just couldn't care.
The premise of this book sounded great, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me. I wasn't invested in the plot and couldn't care less about these characters, and it was really hard to keep pushing through this book. I wasn't a big fan of the writing, and I thought this book lacked a lot in terms of world-building.
I expected so much more, and in the end, it just wasn't for me.

I enjoyed this read, however it felt similar to some other stories I've read before. I did love the main character and the story kept me engaged.

The story world in GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It’s both contemporary and fanciful, charming and full of teeth. A tiny coffee shop to a forest of awake trees to a walled compound of violent witch children to a library where the books might attack. It kind of has everything.

From the first page I found Eli likeable. Right away I wanted to follow her down the path of solving the mysteries of her existence and to learn more about the mysterious motorcycle rider who befriends her. I loved the banter between Cam and Tav, too. Those two were fantastic.

The story is a bit dark. The magic has that eye-for-an-eye feel to it, where the rules are unbreakable, and it’s all about figuring out how to make what you need conform to the rules of the magic. And Eli is, after all, an assassin, so she thinks a lot about killing, and, until things start to go sideways, she never questions her assignments.

I think readers who liked NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman or THE STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SORROWS OF AVA LAVENDER by Leslye J. Walton will definitely want to check out this book.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a unique take on ghost hunting but I struggled with this one a little bit. Eli is a fascinating character; doesn't take shit from anyone but wants to belong. She travels to the human realm as a ghost assassin but when a kill doesn't go as planned and she realizes the witch coven as set her up. She befriends two people from the human realm in her search to understand why her coven set her up. The story sounded so interesting but the delivery fell short. The travel between realms was pretty cool and you fully understood the danger she took overtime she traveled. I actually enjoyed her companions but where the book lost me was when she got trapped in between. It dragged and some magically things happened that I didn't quite buy into, seemed out of place with the narrative. There is a second book coming in the series and I would be interested in picking it up.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a hard book to review. I really wanted to like it. I found it had similar plot lines as other books so I thought it was going to be done really well. I was not very impressed halfway through. It felt very disjointed and I had a hard time caring about any of the characters. I really wanted this to be amazing... I am so sad that it was mediocre. I see that it is part of a series so hopefully it gets more interesting for book 2.

The synopsis for The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass sounded very interesting book and I do have a weakness for books about assassins. Those two things combined should have made the reading experience of this book amazing, sadly that wasn’t the case. I really didn’t enjoy The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass, I had many problems with it.

The story was all over the place. Many aspects didn’t make sense and the events that happened didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. I was confused to what was actually going on throughout the whole book. The world-building was non-existent. Nothing was properly explained. A good fantasy book needs at least some good world-building, to help the reader immerse themselves into the story, this book had none of that. With all of those things bothering me while reading, I also didn’t connect to the characters. None of them stood out to me in any way, good or bad. I just didn’t care about any of them.

Overall, The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass wasn’t for me. I had many problems with this book and the reading experience really wasn’t the best.

Okay I'm apologising for the bad review before hand.
Truth to be told I can't fault anything in this book and I enjoyed my time with it. But I also didn't really care.
The magic system is really cool and unique and the rep was real good and diverse. But it just didn't pull me and hold my attention.

To begin with, this book has a gorgeous cover and to be honest that is what drew me to it. Then it has a very interesting story and the word assassin on the synopsis that made me wanting to read the book. It's a YA LGBTQ+ fantasy book set in a world of witches, ghosts and misfits fighting to save the earth. It's a debut for the author and it's very diverse and lyrically written.

I generally enjoyed the story as it had a lot of potential. I love the fact that there were diverse characters who had very unique personalities. The beginning was very gripping and I thought I would love this book but as it moved on it got slow-paced and the world-building started to confuse me.

I went into this book hoping I would end up loving it, but I just never really got into the story. Half the time I was confused about what was going on. And the slow pacing didn’t help.

The one thing I did really like about the story was the non binary character. It’s not often we see that in books. The writing was really good as well, I just wish there would have been more world building. I liked that there were many different characters. All of the characters had different personalities that were well written, I especially liked Cam as a character.

It was an okay book, but I doubt I will pick up the second one anytime soon.

Although it took me a while to finish this was a fabulous book and I am excited to read more from the author! I will most definitely be buying this for everyone I know for the holidays!

2/5 stars

I wanted to enjoy this book however, I did not enjoy the writing and for the life of me couldn't connect to the characters. I found myself bored most of the time while reading. I just didn't enjoy this book, it wasn't for me.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

The book had a good premise and such beautiful cover but I couldn't quite connect with the story. The pace was slow, which it was a trouble for me. Also I felt like nothing really happened at all.