what a delightfully fucked up book that doesn't flinch away from the most bizarre and upsetting of fairy tales. It has that sort of fairy tale logic and style that carries through in a really nice way, with some added complexities here and there. I'm not easily shocked as a reader, and I usually assume the worst when it comes to mystery dumpling fillings in the icebox, but I was surprised by most of the twists in the story. I especially appreciated how all are made complicit and monstrous, and how even the sisters are part of this awful household.

Thank you so much Harper Collins for gifting me a copy of Juniper & Thorn and to Net Galley for a digital eARC!

This book has been beloved by many on TIK TOK and rightfully so. My experience with this book centered in the fact that reading it was stepping out of my comfort zone. This year I really wanted to challenge myself and read more genres that I have been hesitant (or scared-looking at you horror) to pick up. Juniper & Thorn taught me a lot about myself as a reader. This is the first horror novel I have ever successfully finished and it was the beautiful prose and the drops of romance that pushed me through to the end (two things I always love and gravitate towards when reading). The horror elements taught me that there are some things I don't enjoy in horrors and moving forward I can check CW for those things. But it also taught me that there were things I loved. In Juniper & Thorn's case it was the wicked and disturbing metaphors Reid crafted. Some were so well thought out that my body felt what the character was feeling. The craft that went into this book was phenomenal and so well thought out.

The pacing of the story was one I was not expecting for a horror novel. The story felt like that final long draw of a violin string. Waiting for the snap or the quiet. For me the pacing of the book never felt quite right at times and what was a 300 page book felt like a 900 page book at times. The chapters were so long that and ended nicely that it was easy for me to put the book down and not have the urge to pick it up and know what's going to happen next. I will always love a cliffhanger ending to a chapter.

Overall this book is wickedly enchanting and as a wannabe fan of Grim Fairytales I had a lot of fun reading this. It is a haunting gothic fairytale. Since reading Jane Eyre in January, I have wanted to dive into even more Gothic stories and Juniper & Thorn solidified my love for the genre. I cannot wait to pick up The Wolf and The Woodsman and read A Study In Drowning next year. This book pushed me out of my comfort zone in a delicate way and although its not my preferred genre it solidified Ava Reid as an author I want to read more from.

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Voyager for providing me with an eARC of the book for my honest review!

Juniper & Thorn is about a young witch, Marlinchen, who is trapped in life, and physically, at home, due to her wizard father and older sisters. Her family is abusive and oppressive, so naturally, Marlinchen wishes to be free. Along the way, Marlinchen meets her love interest Sevas, and together they start to uncover grisly secrets about her family.

This was my first Ava Reid experience and wow! What a ride. Juniper & Thorn did not disappoint. This was a retelling of the Grimm fairy tale The Juniper Tree, which I have never read or heard of, so my first exposure was through this book and I'm not mad about it. Ava Reid's writing is so beautiful and haunting, and at times, a bit dark and grotesque but that's what makes it great. Ava Reid's capability for writing complex relationships is remarkable, complex, and obviously nuanced. You can't help but feel for the characters and fall in love with them--good or bad.

Juniper & Thorn is and adult gothic horror that explores dark themes. Some of the scenes were unsettling, and I was left feeling a little bewildered throughout the book.

Please look over the trigger warnings before reading!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions contained within are my own.

I’m sitting here, staring at my computer screen, because I’m finding it hard to put into words what I felt about this book. A gothic horror tale that leans hard into the horrific, I found myself both intrigued and grossed out through most of this book! But there was also a good chunk where I was bored out of my mind. So let me try to transfer those very conflicting feelings into a coherent review!

Juniper & Thorn follows three witches and their wizard father who live in a world that is swiftly leaving magic behind. Marlinchen is the youngest of the sisters, a plain-faced witch who doesn’t know much of the world outside her family’s garden. One night, when she sneaks out with her sisters to watch the local ballet perform, she meets a dancer and her world turns completely upside down. Secrets upon secrets, lies upon lies, and it all may soon come crashing down on Marlinchen and her family.

First and foremost, I have to say that Ava Reid can freakin’ write. The writing in this is absolutely superb! I loved the flow of it, the intensely gothic feel, and how it was so evocative that it was like watching a movie as I turned the pages. She did a fantastic job of establishing the world and bringing in a supremely chilling atmosphere that was probably my favorite aspect of this book. If you’re looking for great, gothic vibes, this book has that in spades.

The author also did an incredible job writing an entire cast of compelling characters. Marlinchen is our main character, and she certainly comes to life on the pages. The secondary characters, however, don’t fall flat simply because we aren’t getting the story from their POV. They are as vibrant and captivating as Marlinchen, which I always appreciate in a book. There’s also a lot of trauma, both present and past, that they are all dealing with throughout this story, so maybe prepare yourself for that. I think it was all handled in a great, if sad and dark, way so that it didn’t read like it was added simply for shock value. And I absolutely loved watching Marlinchen come into her own as the story progressed.

All that being said, the plot left a little something to be desired. I enjoyed the story and where it went, but it felt like such a slog to get there at times. I have a hard time pinpointing why exactly I was getting so bored. Perhaps it is the repetitive nature of Marlinchen’s daily life, that we got to see repeatedly in the story. And it was often written in the exact same way. For example, Marlinchen cooks for her father every day. And, every day, Marlinchen remarks that she cooks varkenyky with filling she doesn’t remember making. Every. Single. Day. I might be exaggerating a bit but it felt like I read that same scene over and over again. There was a lot of repetition in this book and, though I feel it was intentional to convey the monotony of Marlinchen’s life, it lead to me getting bored.

Marlinchen also thinks/talks about breasts… A LOT. Like… I almost started keeping a tally of how many times the word “breast” or “breasts” was mentioned in the text because it felt like it was… excessive. You might want to avoid this if you’re at all sensitive to reading about vomiting, as well, because, oof, does Ava Reid go into detail about that.

Overall, the writing, the character work, and the world-building all made up for the kind of lackluster plot. I enjoyed this one and I’m definitely interested in checking out more books by this author. It wasn’t precisely my cup of tea, but it was a good read.

(4.5 rounded up to a 5)

Juniper & Thorn is a gothic horror fantasy with folklore elements by Ava Reid. The ebook version is 303 pages. We follow our main character with a first-person point-of-view.

Marlinchen is the youngest of three sisters who are the last of the true witches in the country of Oblya. They live under the thumb of their abusive and xenophobic wizard father, Zmiy Vashchenko. Though they all have different powers, the girls feel as if they are little more than a tourist trap. At night, the girls sneak out to enjoy the amenities of the city and to eke a bit of happiness out of their existence.

When Marlinchen finally joins her sisters for a jaunt to the city, she meets a dancer at the recently established ballet theater who steals her heart. At the same time, there seems to be a monster loose in the city that has an unquenchable appetite.

This story is set in the same universe as the author's The Wolf and the Woodsman, though in a different time and place. It is a gothic horror retelling of The Juniper Tree, one of the grimmest tales of The Brothers Grimm. There are a ton of content warnings, so please check those out before you pick up this book.

I really liked this! It was very dark, though, so I had to read it in bits and pieces. I stayed up really late to finish the last few chapters because I really needed to see how it ended! Also, this cover is GORGEOUS and after reading the book I can see just how many little details are included from the story itself.

This book really showcases how powerless some young women feel in society, and how sometimes it feels like our bodies are not our own.

Tropes in this book include: folklore, retelling (The Juniper Tree)

CW: gore, body horror, child sexual abuse, incest, cannibalism, antisemitism, xenophobia, scientific racism, physical and psychological abuse, gaslighting, self-harm, suicidal ideation, bulimia (graphic descriptions), animal death

Special thanks to Avon, Harper Voyager, and NetGalley for providing an eGalley of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.

Juniper & Thorn is a horror fantasy from author Ava Reid.

Marlinchen's father was intensely terrifying, and the absolute hold he had over his daughters was hard to read. The love and trust between sisters really held the story together for me, but parts were hard to get through.

Overall this was a very dark horror.

My first read by this author and I was not disappointed at all. I do not often read young adult but when I do I seem to love what I read. This had great writing and I really enjoyed my time with it.

This book was absolutely stunning in every way and my only regret is that I didn't read it earlier (but i had to have a signed edition).

Opening line: “I checked under my bed, but the monster was gone.”

Book thoughts: Gothic horror fairytale. A love story with gruesome obstacles to overcome. It is a story of survival during and after abuse, a finding of self and love. This was not an easy book to read and I was grateful that I went into it fully warned. Please be sure to look at the trigger warnings below, especially if food is one of your triggers. I was truly absorbed reading this and was happy with the way the story ended. For covering such difficult topics, the writing is very well done.

The #FantasyFrenemies will be discussing this one soon and I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks. We all loved Ava’s The Wolf and the Woodsman.
Thank you to #NetGalley and @harpervoyagerus for the advanced reader copy!

TW: death of a parent, controlling parent, eating disorders - binging & bulimia, molestation, child sexual & physical abuse, emotional abuse & bullying, body gore, murder, graphic animal/monster death, cannibalism, snakes,

This is the first book I’ve read about this author and it didn’t disappoint. It has such a beautiful writing and the story is very atmospheric. I felt like the topics are very well guided, made me really think about what I was reading while also enjoying it.

Absolutely beautiful writing, but way darker than what I expected. I don’t know if this was horror as much as it was horrific, if that makes sense. I was never scared, but I felt intensely uncomfortable the whole time I read this, in a way that made it difficult to get through many of the scenes in this book. This contains body horror, pedophilia, sexual abuse, self-harm, parental abuse, physical abuse, sexual shame, eating disorders, cannibalism, and so much more. At times the way some of these things were described was gratuitous - I struggled to read lyrical sentences about how badly the MC wanted to purge or how she imagined cutting her nipples off. I ultimately did like the story and will read more from Ava Reid because her writing is truly beautiful, but I felt so unsettled by how such dark topics were handled that I can’t say I enjoyed it more than 3 stars worth.

If you are a fan of Grimm-style fairytales, Juniper & Thorn will be up your alley. In fact, it’s loosely based off one of their darker stories, The Juniper Tree. This is a gruesome story and it’s not the happiest. Marlinchen is treated the worst of her siblings and she waits on her father, who was cursed with never being satisfied. So he eats and eats, and never gets full, but Marlinchen is able to keep his hunger occupied with carefully planned meals. Her father is constantly taking advantage of Marlinchen’s empathetic and caring nature.

This novel is told with a melancholy tone, but Ava Reid’s prose is as beautiful as you could hope for. It’s quite a contrast to the horrifying things that happen in Juniper & Thorn. Reid is able to enchant us with the poetry in her words, fully immersing her readers in this dark tale. Marlinchen takes an awful amount of abuse throughout her whole life, but when she experiences the first inklings of love, it gives her motivation to break through the grasp of her father and escape from under the shadows of her sisters. This is quite a tale of survival, both physically and mentally, from all that she had to endure.

Juniper & Thorn will not be a book for everyone. It’s haunting and sad, but it makes its way towards hopefulness and love. Ava Reid has a talent for telling these woeful tales in a way that encourages you to look beneath the horror to pull out the messages within. In this retelling, Marlinchen is given a voice and dimension, she is somehow untouchably ethereal and vividly realistic at the same time.

There’s quite a few content warnings on Reid’s site that I’d like to share, for anyone who is interested in the novel, but isn’t aware of the triggers that it might incur:

Gore and body horror
Child sexual abuse; incest
Cannibalism
Antisemitism, xenophobia, and scientific racism
Physical and psychological abuse from family members; gaslighting
Self-harm and suicidal ideation
Bulimia; graphic descriptions of vomiting
Animal death

I would like to thank Harper Voyager for a finished copy of Juniper & Thorn for review. It was absolutely my pleasure to read.

Cw: eating disoder child sexual assault rape assault

Juniper and Thorn was an incredibly well written follow up to Ava Reid’s The Wolf and the Woodsman. Taking place in a pre-industrial revolution in the same world as TWATW following a young girl battling against her father, her family, and old magic that’s threatening to break the town apart. The writing is the perfect balance between grotesque and horrific while still feeling beautiful and haunting. The vibes were immaculate while also emotionally heavy.

This is really not a plot heavy book. This is more an examination of relationships, particularly abusive ones. As well as an examination of human behaviors like trauma responses. It was swell done but tread carefully.

Reid's debut novel had a wonderfully dark fairy tale vibes throughout it that I was looking forward to again in her sophomore release, Juniper and Thorn. Set in the same universe as the Wolf and the Woodsman, Juniper and Thorn absolutely immerses you into that dark, violent, magic fueled world where magic isn't all sparkles and sunshine and happily ever after is something you have to fight for.
The characters are broken and flawed. Both Marlinchen and Sevas have deep traumas they carry with them. Over the course of the book they find the support they both need in each other.
The plot was engaging and kept the story flowing even if the final twist was a bit obvious. For me the characters and Reid's overall style really made the book.

Juniper and Thorn was not at all what I had been expecting. I read Ava Reid's The Wolf and the Woodsman and loved the weaving together of Hungarian history and Jewish mythos, and thought this one, set in the same world, would have a similar feel.

I was surprised, then, to find that Juniper and Thorn read like a horror. Turns out it's based on the Grimm's fairy tale called The Juniper Tree, one of their darkest and most horrific tales. The trigger warnings are endless--sexual assault of a child, rape, gaslighting, emotional and physical abuse, and cannibalism. I'm honestly probably forgetting some. This was a tense, heavy reading experience. The writing felt almost clinically detached as the characters experienced horror after horror.

Marlinchen is the third daughter of the last wizard in the land of Oblya, and she and her two sisters are the last witches. The city is shifting from magic to industry, and their remedies and services barely bring in enough to keep them and their cursed father fed. A monster roams around the city, killing men and removing their hearts and livers, and Marlinchen is caught in a web of lies and manipulations that keep her world small. She begins to see through the smoke and mirrors to the truth, but the truth may be more terrible than she thought possible.

This nightmarish retelling is not for the faint of heart. Read with caution. This would be perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson. Naomi Novik, or Catherynne Valente.

Objectively, the book was well written, but I can't give it more than three stars personally because of how absolutely grotesque the story was.

Juniper & Thorn is a dark book with dark themes and dark consequences. It’s a story of two souls valued only for what they can do, rather than who they are, and the unraveling of the world around them that happens when they stand together.
Beautifully written and hauntingly lyrical.

This book is hard to describe. With the author’s beautiful writing you feel transported into a dark fairytale world filled with abuse and monsters and dark magic. It was heavy and daunting and yet I couldn’t put it down even though at times I felt like I couldn’t bear to keep reading. While I figured out what was happening, the heroine did not and I was filled with trepidation on her behalf. There are trigger warnings a plenty and I caution you to review those if you have concerns. While it is hard to say I enjoyed this book, I appreciated the care and talent that went into writing it and felt the storytelling was excellent.

A retelling of fairy tale The Juniper Tree, Juniper and Thorn manages to be a wonderful and immersive story about three witch sisters, their terrible wizard father, and the goings on in the city that has sprung up around them and their home. The original story is already one of the darker Grimm fairy tales, and this one absolutely doesn't spare us equal bits of both light in dark as we learn all about the youngest of the sisters and how she has been wound so thoroughly around her father's controlling and crooked fingers. It's always been this way, since her mother was changed into a bird and then left them to their father, but soon Marlinchen meets a bright young dancer at the theater and she can't help but begin to rebel against the things she felt powerless to change. There's so much her father's kept from her and her beautiful older sisters, and so much that now needs to change whether he wills it or not.

A story centered around grief, loss, abuse, manipulation, secrets, and monstrous fear it does have instances of sexual assault, details of physical and emotional abuse, and toxic sibling dynamics to be aware of going in. I loved the lush narrative, rich details, complex characters, and genuine honesty in its narrative.

Unfortunately I am just super super sick of fairytale retellings after I took a class about them last semester! Which I didn’t actually expect, I thought that I would gain a greater appreciation for them and finally be able to enjoy them. But actually I hate them forever (except for THE GOOSE GIRL series by Shannon Hale) and I should stop picking them up. Also, I found this way gorier than I wanted to expected it to be. I was Just Not In The Mood for the dark places this book goes, including domestic violence and child sex abuse. I’m giving this book three stars.

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid may not be for everyone but I thought it was so good.
Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I was definitely cringing and not sure about and I definitely had some frustration with Marlichen and I absolutely despised her father and sisters.
BUT, the writing is flawless. It is so lyrical and intoxicating. Just gorgeous.
This is definitely a dark and eerie, but if that’s something you like I’d definitely recommend this book.
Do make sure to check the trigger warnings