I find it difficult to rate this book. On one hand, it might be one of the best-written books I've ever read. Some of the turns of phrase here hit me bone-deep. On the other hand, I'm not sure I even liked the experience of reading it.

Reid's previous book, The Wolf and the Woodsman, was one I found to be slightly overwrought with atmosphere and the magic system one I found so repellant it took a lot of my enjoyment away from reading it. I think Juniper & Thorn is a much more cohesive story with compelling character arcs that end in gruesome yet satisfying ways for the narrative and there really isn't more I can ask for in a book.

This book is a disgusting, gross, stunning, twisted fairy tale about the stories we hear and the way what you wish for can come to you in ways that bring out the monster in you. The trappings of a good fairy tale are here: three witchy sisters, oppressed and terrorized by their cursed father. I don't really want to even go into the plot here because I think part of the journey of this book is the way Reid plays on your conceptions about what a story like this should be and seeps those trappings in trauma so even if we get a satisfying ending, it's one that fits the universe Reid has created and not what we thought we wanted.

I had to take frequent breaks while reading this book. It does not let up or let you forget exactly what kind of story this is. That being said, the writing is drenched in some of the most clever metaphors I've ever read, the prose dripping with vivid imagery that had me highlighting constantly.

I can't even begin to scratch the surface on the content warnings here so please seek those out as some of the themes and issues the book deals with include sexual violence, assault, disordered eating and more.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Haper Voyager for the opportunity to read an E-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! Ava Reid’s debut, The Wolf and the Woodsman, was one of my favorite books in 2021 so to say that I was excited to read this book is an understatement. I couldn’t wait to dive into this story and once I did I read almost the entire book in a single day simply because I didn’t want to put it down. This is a very dark tale and I would encourage readers to check out the content warnings before picking this one up.

This story is told from the point of view of a young witch, Marlinchen, who lives with her father, a wizard living under a curse. Marlinchen and her two older sisters must deal with his cruel ways but they have found a way to escape to the city to see the ballet while he sleeps. This is where she meets Sevas, the principal dancer in the show. Even though Marlinchen isn’t as beautiful as her two older sisters, she wins the eye of the young dancer. The world that Marlinchen and Sevas live in is often cruel and decisions about their lives are frequently made by others but they hope to change that.

I grew to like Marlinchen pretty quickly and hated the way she was treated. I really wanted to see some positive changes come into her life. She worked so hard to keep her father happy and was never appreciated. The story itself was exciting. There were some pretty big surprises that came into play in the story. Because of Marlinchen’s father’s magic, anything could happen in this tale which kept things really interesting. I thought that the writing was excellent and loved the way that the vivid descriptions helped to bring the story to life.

I would recommend this book to others. This was an incredibly imaginative and well-written tale that kept me glued to the pages. I have not read The Juniper Tree so I can’t say how this book compares but it was an entertaining read on its own. I look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the future.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from Harper Voyager.

Wow, wow, wow this book. I’m a feeling a lot of things after reading it, but most of all I’m feeling seen. This book was like stepping through the halls of my soul. It resonated so deeply with me, and feels like a great big “YOU MATTER” in so many ways. ♥️

First of all, Juniper and Thorn is an adult gothic horror fantasy. Don’t let “retelling” lead you to believe this is a whimsical fairytale. There are certainly fairytale aspects of the book, but The Juniper Tree is already a dark story, and Reid reimagines it in ways that only they could do (and they do it well!). One of the purposes of the horror genre is to leave readers unsettled and if you feel that way after finishing this book, all I can say is: Good! Mission accomplished!

Personally, I delighted in every bewildering moment of it. Again, it resonated deeply with me and I think many who have experienced similar traumas and violence will feel the same way. I greatly appreciated the way Reid carefully and accurately represents the effects of sexual trauma, particularly through Marlinchen’s intrusive thoughts and fixation on specific body parts, which tend to be hypersexual in nature. This is a very common behavior and even coping mechanism in folks who have experienced sexual trauma and violence particularly CSA. (There are reviews out there clutching pearls over this and making it out to be gratuitous or gross or unnecessary or disgusting, and simply put it’s disappointing and disheartening to see, as someone who actually lives these types of thoughts and behaviors. It’s not helpful rhetoric on SA or CSA at all and completely misses what I feel is one of the central themes of this book. Again, reminder here that it is a horror book borrowing from an already horrifying story.)

Reid has been frank and open about how much of this book reflects their own experiences and I felt like they handled that portrayal through the perspective of a main character masterfully. Simply put, it’s not something we see often in genre fiction. Characters who go through similar experiences are supposed to Get Good With A Sword™ and slay dragons and topple evil and dismantle authoritarian governments. Rather, Marlinchen isn’t a character that’s going to lead a rebellion or sacrifice themself for the greater good or take down a ruthless king. Instead she felt REAL. Marlinchen is smart and resourceful and has an innate desire to not just survive, but to live and experience everything the world has to offer.

And when she meets Sevas and they discover how much of their experiences mirror one another? *chef’s kiss* Marlinchen and Sevas have both been treated in unspeakable ways by the people they should be able to trust and rely on more than one another (common for those who have experienced SA, particularly CSA), and there’s an innate beauty in seeing Marlinchen and Sevas them come together and discover how much power they hold and feed into the other.

There is satisfying romance to root for throughout this book as well and it balanced the horror themes well. Sevas is the himbo fantasy love interest I didn’t know I needed, but I’m taking him home with me! You saw it here first!

Simply put, 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.

Again, if this book leaves you feeling unsettled, then it’s done what it’s supposed to do!

I won’t get into a long list of trigger warnings on this book because as a horror novel, it’s safe to assume there will be potentially triggering content. Pointedly, there is depictions of (childhood) sexual assault and trauma (both post experience and seen through flashback), body horror, gore, bulimia, animal death, violence, and more. If you’re at all familiar with The Juniper Tree, then it’s safe to assume this book has a similar level of content. Finally, this is an adult novel.

Between The Wolf and the Woodsman and this book, Reid has found themselves solidly in my favorite fantasy authors and I’m looking forward to everything that comes from them in the future! This book was a win in so many ways for me, and I feel as though I’ve found a kindred soul in Reid’s storytelling.

3.75
Thank you to Harper Voyager for sending me an ARC of this book to read and review! This was dark and twisty. Not necessarily in a bad way, I just don't know if all the dark and violent ideas are for me. That being said, I did really enjoy Marlinchen as the narrator and main character. It was interesting to see her relationships with her sisters, her father and others unfold. The writing was stunning and so many of the descriptions really stuck out to me in a good way. I did feel a bit lost sometimes with the timeline of the story. The magic was unique and had more of that darkness vibe attached to it, but I really was intrigued as I was reading. Overall I did like this one.

3.5
Let’s take a moment for this cover because I was living for it❤️
If you enjoyed The Wolf and The Woodsman, you’ll likely enjoy this as well. Ava Reid has absolutely lovely prose and definitely knows how to write imagery and mood. It was a great read with just that alone. However, I’ve seen some people say that the characters were hard to connect with and, while that wasn’t necessarily the case for me, I can see how or why it would be. They could feel overly sexualized and one dimensional at times. Still, I had a good time reading this. Just keep in mind that it is a dark fantasy and does have Trigger Warnings such as : SA, pedophilia, violence, incest, etc.

Juniper & Thorn is a tough book. Plot-wise, it's dark and gut-churning. The reading experience, to me, often felt like wading through thick honey - rich, but slow going. And given that I absolutely loved Ava Reid's previous book, The Wolf and the Woodsman, I really wanted to like this book. But ultimately, I found that I just couldn't enjoy it.

The best things about Juniper & Thorn are also the worst. The plot felt daring to me, harkening back to the most gruesome fairy tales and folktales. But daring does not necessarily mean fun to read, and I often felt like I was plodding through a lot of mess to find the nuggets of good story. The writing, too, is lush and gorgeous, but there were also just so so many similes and metaphors. Too many. Every description had one. To the point where eventually I just wished someone had thought to rein the writer back a bit.

The pacing of the book was another odd point. It had the rhythm of the kind of tales it clearly drew on, but stretched out to the length of a novel, that sort of slow, meandering type of storytelling doesn't necessarily work. I was constantly frustrated with how slowly things were moving and how long it was taking Marlinchen to put the pieces together.

It's possible that this just wasn't the right book for me - what I found to be slow going and over-described might enchant other readers. But in the end, I was mostly just glad to be done with it.

3/5

First, I’ll start by saying that I struggle to explain why I like books; it’s easier to point to things I didn’t like. As it is, I’ve struggled to gather my thoughts on why I enjoyed this book so much. It might be the vivid and atmospheric writing or the stories woven in throughout that tie into the themes of the main plot. Either way, Juniper & Thorn is a beautiful yet gruesome story to which I will keep returning.

Juniper & Thorn is the gothic retelling of my dreams. The prose is lovely, and before the story even begins, it’s what draws you in.

It’s dark and atmospheric but hard to read at times.

Marlinchen is an isolated girl, confined to her house with only her father and two sisters. Marlinchen receives abuse from everyone, which has messed with how she acts and thinks of herself.

Juniper & Thorn follows Marlinchen and Sevas as they try to escape from abuse and manipulation.

CW: (taken directly from author’s Goodreads)

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

Ava Reid has done it again: created a modern gothic masterpiece that is raw, and real, and brimming with truth. I absolutely loved last year’s The Wolf and the Woodsman, and to return to that same world with another character is a real treat.

Juniper and Thorn, a gothic horror retelling of the fairytale the Juniper Tree, follows Marlinchen, a girl who is put in a terrible position and has to find a way to protect herself and those she loves. Set in the same world as Reid’s debut novel, Juniper and Thorn is about magic, monsters, trauma, healing, love, and power. As the last true witches, Marlinchen and her two sisters spend their days as little more than a tourist trap, treating their clients with archaic remedies and nostalgic charm for days before the city began shifting from magic to industry. Marlinchen spends her days working and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic, wizard father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world… but at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city and its revels, particularly the new ballet theater, where Marlinchen meets a dancer she can’t help but start to fall for. There’s always a price though, and soon, as Marlinchen’s visits to the ballet grow more fervent and frequent, so does the danger of her father’s rage and magic. And beneath it all is a monster lurking in the mist, full of hate and an old-world power. With the world caught between history and progress, blood and desire, it’s down to Marlinchen and her magic to keep the city and herself safe.

As always, I found myself enamored by Ava Reid’s lyrical prose and the breath of life she infuses in her words. Characters and worlds come to life off the page, even those stained with unimaginable horrors. This is not a novel for the faint of heart (I mean, it’s a gothic horror novel… you should know both of those things have the ability to mess you up really good), so make sure to check out the trigger warnings listed below:

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

Overall, if you think this book might not be for you because of the trigger warnings, listen to your gut and stay safe in your reading. I promise though that this is a story about so much more than that— it’s about strength in the face of and despite horrific things, and although Marlinchen might be a quieter character, her story certainly is not.

A hauntingly beautiful story that's set in the world of The Wolf and the Woodsman, although I had to DNF it due to the triggering content! I thought I was in a more prepared/better mindset than I was when requesting it, and ultimately had to DNF. Still, I really enjoyed what I read of it!

Juniper & Thorn is a loose retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale “The Juniper Tree,” incorporating aspects of the original tale but ultimately telling it’s own story. Our main character is Marlinchen, the daughter of a wizard who refuses to let her or her two older sisters leave the house. When the three sneak out to attend the ballet, Marlinchen becomes entranced with the male principal dancer. Meanwhile, there is a string of gruesome murders happening in the city, and the penny presses are speculating the murderer may not be human. First of all: trigger warnings. This book features physical and psychological abuse, sexual abuse of children, depiction of bulimia, and violent, gory animal death. So please beware of all that before jumping into this book. Also note, all of this content means that this is NOT a YA book. There’s a trend of labeling all fantasy books by women, especially retellings, as YA. But this is very much meant for an adult audience.

This book is simply spectacular. Reid’s writing is lush, vivid, and perfectly suited to a dark fairy tale like this. I will say, this does make some of the darker scenes even more disturbing. There was a scene featuring animal death that shook me quite hard. I generally stop reading a book when something like that comes up, so it’s a credit to Reid’s skill as an author that I kept going. The book was too good to stop. Her characters are complex and engaging, and I found myself so invested in Marlinchen. I also loved the way she weaved different fairy tales together; while this is technically a retelling of “The Juniper Tree,” she also incorporates some aspects of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” “Cinderella,” Russian folklore, and more.

The one flaw I found with the book was the love story. While I loved both of the characters, I did feel a bit like insta-love to me. To be fair, the initial attraction is clearly portrayed as lust, but it becomes far deeper than that after only a few interactions. It’s ultimately a small complaint since there was so much more to enjoy in the book, but it is something that stood out to me.

Overall, Juniper & Thorn is a wonderfully written dark fairy tale well-suited for fans of Naomi Novik and Gregory Maguire. It’s disturbing at times, but I cannot recommend it enough.

This was a very dark book which I didn't realize until I had already gotten around 20% in. I think the writing and setting was the strong point of the book. The characters (besides the main character) didn't seem fully developed and I wish we had gotten more development for them. Overall, it was a very atmospheric book with beautiful writing.

This book started really good but then halfway through it just got so slow and so dry. There was just so much but so little happening and this book seemed to rely really heavily on bookish tropes like the missing mother, evil sister, love at first sight, etc.

Also TW for bulimia for some weird reason that had nothing to do with the story and didn’t help the plot.

This was a heart achingly good book.

There’s magic, love, and deceit.
The world building is phenomenal.

I gasped. My heart broke.
My felt so proud of Marlichen.

Thanks to @netgalley and @hapervoyager for this ARC! #juniperandthorn comes out 6/21

#JuniperAndThorn:⁣
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“Was I a woman inside the body of a monster, or was I a monster inside the body of a woman?”⁣
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There’s no debate, Ava Reid has a way with prose. Her masterful pairing of words really make you feel like you’re on the brink of something special. You hold on to every lyrical line, waiting in anticipation to see how she’ll string normal words together to create a masterpiece. ⁣
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Just like The Wolf and the Woodsman, this isn’t your happy go lucky fairytale retelling. There’s gore, horror, death, destruction. It’s dark. (I mean, it’s based off The Juniper Tree, what do you expect?)⁣
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Marlinchen was such an interesting character. You felt for her, you cared for her, you wanted her happy. It kind of reminded me of how bad I felt for Maleficent where people think she’s so evil. ⁣
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Stina Neilsen is the reader for this book, and I felt like a snake in a trance by a snake charmer. The story just flowed off their tongue and I was entranced the entire time. The world went on around me, but I was in Oblya. ⁣
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Another solid book from Ava Reid. I don’t know how she pulls me into a fantasy retelling without confusing me or boring me, but she does it effortlessly. Thank you so much @harpervoyagerus and @harperaudio for the gifted copy. Juniper & Thorn is out 6/21!

Thank you to Avon, Harper Voyager, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid is an adult retelling of The Juniper Tree. The story revolves around Marlinchen, a young witch who lives with her abusive father and two sisters in a magical city. Her father has imprisoned her and her sisters inside their home. Their only source of joy is sneaking out at night. After sneaking out and watching a fancy ballet one night, Marlinchen meets a boy who changes her perspective on everything.

Here is a fantastical excerpt from Chapter 1:

I checked under my bed, but the monster was gone. It had been gone since morning, when the pink fingers of dawn flushed it back to its favorite hiding place in Rose’s garden, spiny tail banded around the trunk of the juniper tree. It would lie there,belly-flat and hissing, until I or one of my sisters went to feed it our leftover chicken bones or give it a rub behind the ears. Of all the creatures that lived in our house, it was the most easily sated.
By evening, the garden was lucent with the speckle of fireflies, rustling with the susurration of wind through the willow branches, but otherwise quiet and still. From my bedroom I could see the whole brindled sweep of it, the stout, swollen hedges and the ivy that trawled over the rust-checkered gate. If anyone in Oblya walked down the road past our house, they might feel green tendrils curl around their ankles, or hear the whisper of ferns through the fence. The pedestrians whispered back: rumors about Zmiy Vashchenko and his three strange daughters."

Overall, Juniper & Thorn is an adult fantasy that will appeal to fans of Slavic-inspired fantasy and fairy tale retellings. When I saw that the author of The Wolf and the Woodsman had a new book out, I knew that I had to add it to my TBR list right away! One highlight of this book is the lovely romance, and how the book was thematically dark without losing its fairy tale charm. Another highlight of this book was the descriptions of food, which made me so hungry. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of fantasy books in general, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in June!

I had really high expectations for this one and I am so pleased to say that it exceeded all of them!

I love anything that has to do with fairy tales, the more gruesome the better. And Juniper & Thorn was definitely gruesome, so much that I could not get over some of Reid's descriptions. Yes, they were that good. Now, this being the first book I've read of hers, I did not what to expect, language-wise. But Reid is simply a master storyteller, her prose at times a soft blanket, at times a dagger so sharp that it pierces through your heart until you've bled anything that you could. And then she continues to strike, again and again and again.

I liked how Marlinchen is a very realistic and grey character, both kind and terribly jealous. An important trait, for me, was also how she feels sexual urges, and is not the typical asexual heroine of fairytale retellings, and how this grounded her better in the story. In her sexuality she finds both shame and power, just like women in today's society are either shunned or praised for it.

Moreover, her reluctance to admit that she already knew the partial truth was a good choice for Reid to make, because from one side you just want her to admit to it, but on the other it shows just how an abuse victim might behave when confronted with the decision to acknowledge their source of distress--either feign ignorance or trying to shift the focus to something else.

I do agree with the other reviewers that mentioned that Sevas fell in love a tad too quickly, but I imagine it could be pardoned with the "fairy tale" reading experience.

I highly recommend this book to those who are seeking new sight in retellings and don't shy away from violence and gore in their fairy tales; however, I would not recommend this as a transition title from YA to adult due to the extremely violent content and the abundance of triggers. I'm excited to see what else Reid has in her plans, and will definitely watch out for her upcoming works!

Thank you Netgalley and Harper Voyager for sending me a digital ARC of this book in return for my honest thoughts and opinions.

I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I didn't really like it. Even though it's only 368 pages, it still felt way too long. I think I would've enjoyed it more as a novella.

I enjoyed the folklore and that's about it. I didn't care about the characters. I was just bored. Very disappointing since it was one of my most anticipated reads this year.

Ava Reid is phenomenal. I have never before been so enthralled and repulsed by a book at once. It’s gruesome, uncomfortable, and often times made me feel revolted, yet it is beyond gripping and beautiful. After reading both of Reid’s books, I can say she’s a new all time favorite. I think I’d read this author’s grocery lists. Incredible.

This was incredibly weird, dark, and gruesome in the best way possible.

I didn't know what to exactly expect from this book, but i ended up being very surprised.

The story is loosely based on the tale of the juniper tree, it follows marlinchen, the third and youngest of the sisters, they're all daughters to a warlock who can't accept that society is changing and advancing, who by the way was cursed a very lone time ago by another witch, and this curse means he never feels satisfied, especially when it comes to food, and so, this makes him a very cruel and oppressive person with everyone, but especially with his daughters.

So, we have Marlinchen, the youngest daughter, the one who always does everything in the house, the one considered the most docile, simple minded of them all, who could never go against her father, but once she gets a little taste of freedom, and gets to go to the theater and meet sevas, everything changes for her, she now wants more of that and when opportunity strikes, she takes it.

And so her change begins, she starts seeing everything through different lens, she becomes aware of her situation and wishes for change and omg, seeing her go through that development was very beautiful and awful and amazing.

I never knew what was gonna happen and it honestly scared me so much, this book isn't like anything I've read before.


if you're thinking of reading this please check the trigger warnings because there's a lot of heavy content.


thank you so much to netgalley for giving me an arc in exchange for an honest review (which is more like a ramble but ok)

Juniper & Thorn is the second book from author Ava Reid, who previously wrote The Wolf and the Woodsman, an Eastern European inspired fantasy featuring an essentially half-Pagan half-Jewish girl and an essentially Christian* prince attempting to stop a fellow Christian Prince from using magic to enact an oppressive reign of terror over the country. Although the romance between the main characters in that book wasn't the greatest, I enjoyed its setting a lot (not least of which for its portrayal of Jewish culture in such a land) and it got a lot of deserved hype from people I read. So I was very curious to try the follow up novel, in Juniper & Thorn.

*The book used other names for these religions, but they're transparently Judaism and Christianity. The same is the case here, so I'm just going to use the real world religious names here.*

Juniper & Thorn is a very different book however - yes there's an Eastern European setting again, this type in a fantasy Russian-esque land, and yes there's a romance between a girl who doesn't know much of the world and a man, one of whom is Jewish (although it's the man and he's not religious this time). And yet this is not an adventure story - this is a tale* of abuse, as a witch girl who is one of three daughters of an abusive and xenophobic/anti-semitic wizard, who is used to being a doormat and just accepting things, until one act of rebellion changes everything. It's a very hard tale to read, and while somewhat effective, was not really a book I loved for various reasons, not all of which were this book's fault. More specifics after the jump:

*This tale is apparently a retelling of the Grimm story, The Juniper Tree, which I was unfamiliar with, and from looking it up on Wikipedia - so take this for what it's worth - the story is a very generous retelling, with similarly named and situated characters at times, but a very different story, so don't expect it to follow the same story beats here*.

TRIGGER WARNING: Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse/Rape, Abuse by a Guardian. Abuse is a major theme of this book, and the sexual abuse is at one point somewhat explicit in a really hard to read chapter. These sections go to the book's themes, but they will almost certainly be a bit too much for some readers, and they almost were for me.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Marlinchen has never seen the world, or even the City, outside her father's lands. Her father is Oblya's last wizard, cruel and harsh in part due to a curse put upon him by a rival that he would never be satisfied with anything and would only be hungry for everything, and he restricts his three daughters, all of whom have Witch powers, from ever reaching out to a City he knows to be dirty; a city that is changing to become more modern, with Ballet, and peoples of different cultures, and one without landed nobility like himself on orders of the Tsar. Marlinchen's older sisters react to this differently than her - her eldest sister Undine is cruel and selfish, while her older middle sister Rose isn't as openly cruel, but is dismissive of Marlinchen's naivete - both of whom have the beauty Marlinchen has been told she lacks, and feel more comfortable resisting their father's rules.

But when Marlinchen follows her sisters to the City for once, and sees a Ballet dancer there who takes her breath away, she can't keep her mind off of him, and everything begins to change for her. Soon she's finding out more about the world she's been kept away from, and finding that she might actually have things she wants on her own, something she would want other than to meekly prepare food for her father.

But when her father finds out, he begins to restrict Marlinchen and her sisters even more, and when their finances get truly desperate, he begins to use his magic and power to terrorize not just Marlinchen, but the newfound things she cares about, forcing Marlinchen to make a choice: will she remain silent and beholden to his whims? Or will she act out to try to save both herself and the City she never understood before these moments....
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Let's make this clear: Juniper & Thorn is a tale about abuse at its core, in many many ways. Marlinchen and her sisters are abused by their father: who is a xenophobic racist and anti-semitic man and whose greed got him cursed by a rival witch to always want more....and he takes that out on his daughters and originally on his wife (who he transformed into a bird in what he called an accident and then let go, causing more trauma on the daughter who was trying to care for her). He refuses to let them to enjoy their own lives, uses his magic to restrict their movements - at one point putting a curse that prevents them from leaving without impossibly getting some sand from an outside beach - and terrorizes them and the other beings (usually supernatural) who live on their farm territory. His backwards hatred of the new ways only leads him to drive away potential sources of income, and he uses his daughters' witch powers - Marlinchen's ability to see someone's past memories from touching them, Rose's ability to make potions, and Undine's ability to see futures in water - to gain money which he then hoards for himself.

And this abuse, spoiler but it really needs to be said here, goes beyond being merely verbally abusive. At one horrifying point, he invites a local doctor, a racist phrenologist, to physically and sexually abuse Marlinchen in exchange for money, in a sequence that was way too descriptive for my taste. And so the three daughters each react to this in different ways: Marlinchen becomes a doormat (she also becomes bulimic); Rose becomes complicit and contrary and dismissive; while Undine becomes outwardly cruel. Nor is the abuse in this book limited to Marlinchen's father - the love interest, a ballet dancer named Sevastyan ("Sevas") was taken from his Jewish* family by a manager who clearly abuses him and demands sexual favors as well, leading Sevas to try and take it out in drink. Everyone in this story is either being abused or abusing, which makes this a dark tale.

*This is the second book in a row of Reid's in which a Jewish, even if not religious like here, character winds up in a romantic relationship with a non-Jew, and while there's nothing wrong with that on its surface, I'm kind of getting tired of that trope in books honestly. So this might have also predisposed me to be a bit more weary of this book.*

And so our story is essentially watching Marlinchen figure out how much of the monsters in the world are around her and Sevas and deciding eventually how much she can take - whether she can stand by and watch people be hurt, whether she can be silent when she starts having suspicions about the people in the City who have suffered horrifying deaths, and whether she can continue to suppress her own desires (now that she knows what they are) in support of her father's endless ones. It's a rough story and it is effective, and the Eastern European/Russian setting is really well done as well, as a setting on the verge of changing from a more feudal/serfdom era to a modern one, and struggling as a result. The magic is effectively done, and to the story's credit, a late book swerve is one I probably should have seen coming but wound up not doing so.

So what you have in Juniper & Thorn is a story that effectively uses magic and an Eastern European setting to tell a story about abuse of many forms and how people react to it, and how a young woman can assert herself to move forward....So there is certainly value here, and I can get why people might "like" this book (I'm not sure I'd use "enjoy"). At the same time it is so thick, and sometimes more explicit than I'd like, that I'm not sure how much I'd recommend it compared to other books that deal with abuse in more interesting ways.