This book is a mesmerizing tale that weaves together myth and magic, creating a world where gods and mortals collide in an epic battle for power and love. St. Clair's exquisite prose and vivid imagery transport readers to a realm where every page brims with intrigue and emotion. With its richly drawn characters and gripping plot twists, this novel is a captivating journey that will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Took me a bit to get into this one, I did enjoy it though, but compared to her A Touch of Darkness series, this one wasn’t my favourite. Looking forward to reading more of Clair’s work. She is a goddess at writing smut 🤭

Scarlett St. Clair is really great at writing an atmospheric setting, especially something like a fairytale. Everything from the forest to the magic to the talking mirror. The vibes were there but unfortunately the romance and overall plot was severely lacking.

The connection felt so rushed and forced between these two characters and I just felt like this had the potential to be so much more than what it was. Sometimes, even the sequencing of scenes didn’t make logical sense so it did not feel very cohesive. I am a little bummed about this one.

2.5 ⭐️
3.5 🌶

This was honestly disappointing. The story had such promise, but it felt rushed and surface-level. The characters have valid personalities and very little character development.

This was the first of the prolific Scarlett St. Clair's books I've read.

Mountains Made of Glass was a bit of a mashup of several fairy tales, including The Frog Prince, Rumplestiltskin, and Beauty and the Beast. Gesela is banished to live with the most beastly of the Elven princes, and a forced proximity romance ensues. The world-building had more of a "snippets of fairy tales" vibe than I am used to seeing in fantasy novels. The ending was solid with no cliff-hangers.

What an interesting fairytale! I like the creativeness of the plot paired with traditional fairytale themes. There were a few parts that were clunky but otherwise the pacing was okay. The characters were likable enough, and the prince truly did shine at the end. There I are some graphic spicy parts, but definitely not how some other reviews made it out to seem.

Thanks for the ARC!

Unfortunately I needed to DNF this book 22% of the way in. The sexual content was too much for me. I thought that I would be okay. However, I just need a bit more plot and less sexual or spicy.

Thank you for the ARC copy. I would love to read more books in the future from this publisher. I just think this was not my cup of tea. Thanks again!
I just rated it a one however will not be posting a review on goodreads or anywhere else.

I usually love BatB retellings..: had high hopes for this one, given its promising premise, but ultimately, I found it to be just okay rather than exceptional. I don’t like insta-smut and even smutty books need to be fleshed out to be classified as romance or fantasy rather than straight up erotica.

If you enjoy beauty and the beast retellings with inst-lust and smut on page then I for sure recommend this book. I think that unfortunately I'm a bit fatigued by these themes and so it was a miss for me. But I would still recommend this book if you're in a mood to read any of the above tropes! It was also sadly a DNF for me because of my theme fatigue.

Scarlett St. Clair is a powerhouse of a romantasy writer. She’s prolific and beloved, and I hadn’t read anything by her up to this point. So I was excited to check this book out when I was approached by the publisher for a potential review. I won’t lie, I was especially excited to check out a novella and one that is pulling from various fairytales. I best know St. Clair through references to her “Hades and Persephone” series, and that’s a tough one to get right, so I felt more confident with a fairytale re-telling as an initial entry point to this author’s work.

After now reading this book, I feel like I’m just as unclear on whether or not St. Clair’s books are for me or not. That said, I can now easily understand the appeal for many romantasy fans. Let’s start with that part. Right away, the style of writing appealed to me. There was a nice balance between quick pacing and descriptive prose. The author had clearly read a bunch of fairytales and had no problem capturing the correct tone, writing a story that felt both whimsical and beautiful at times, and violent and disturbing at others. I especially liked just how many fairytale sources were all drawn upon to craft this story. The author even included a note with more details on all of the points of inspiration she pulled upon when writing this book, which I found fascinating.

I also really enjoyed the dialogue and much of the inner monologues we saw from both the hero and the heroine. And while I enjoyed Gesela, Casamir’s chapters turned out to be the most fun. There were a bunch of side characters with whom he interacted, and I loved the ridiculousness of their scenes attempting to point out to their great Fae lord just how inept his attempts at wooing Gesala really were. There was also a captured fairytale prince whose own story veered off into some truly surprising directions.

However, almost from the very start, I struggled with the balance being struck here between plot and spicy scenes. In that…there really was no balance and it was predominantly the latter. No judgement, of course, to readers who are happy with books that lean more in this direction, but for me, I still have fairly high expectations as far as plot goes for my romantasy books. I still want a story, you see. And while yes, there was one here, it was sometimes hard to keep sight of it through all of the insta-lust we had going on.

I was especially put off when, during the very first scene between Gesala and Casamir, we have Gesala completely losing her wits and falling into immediate lust over this complete stranger. And not just “oh, he’s good looking” lust, we’re talking “let’s jump in bed now!” lust. From there, I felt like there were numerous moments where any of the tension or build to the actual love story were undercut by these moments of straight spice. And at a certain point, it became so comical how often Gesala was ending up in contrived situations where she was naked that I started counting. Which really isn’t what I want from a story: to be so distracted by some sort of silliness that I start counting.

I’m not quite sure where to go from here. Reading between all of the spicy scenes, there was a lot to like about this book. I thought the characterization was great, the dialogue was witty and often hilarious, and the fairytale inspiration was spot on. I just didn’t like how much the spicy scenes seemed to overshadow any actual story that was being drawn. The author’s note said she plans on writing stories for all of the other Fae brothers, so maybe I’ll check out the next one of those and go from there. That said, if you enjoy romantasy books with insta-lust/lots of spice, this may be for you. But if you’re looking for more story or plotting to hold things together, this one is on the weaker side.

Rating 7: A bit of a hit or miss reading experience, I really enjoyed the story we had here, but unfortunately the plot often fell to the wayside in lieu of romance scenes.

(Link will go live on The Library Ladies blog on March 27)

Mountains Made of Glass by Scarlett St. Clair
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This is a fairytale tellings that entwines attributes from many fairytales into one story. Gesela lives in a vaillage that suffers many curses. When it is her turn to break a curse she finds herself swept away into a world full of magic, fairies and an Elven prince who is under his own curse.
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What I liked:
-I liked trying to figure out what fairytale each new part of the story was influenced by. However after about 5 or 6 chapters I was totally drawn into the story and completely forgot about comparisons.
-Gesela had a great spunky personality. She was a character that made it easy for me to root for her.
-I loved that last chapter. 😈😈😈
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4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’m excited for more, the author plans on doing 6 more books for the Elven Prince’s brothers. Looking forward to them!

I don’t know what I read. But it wasn’t what I was expecting and honestly I shouldn’t read this book. Like for the life of me I don’t remember what this book was about. And that’s terrible. Usually I know what I read but with this book, I just don’t.

Unfortunately I ended up DNFing at 40%. I couldn’t get into it which is shocking because I have loved Scarlett’s past novels. The plot was all over the place.

I found this fairy tale retelling just ok and I think the biggest drawbacks was that it was a short story so that made it hard for the author to convey a compelling story when so much world building and character building needed to happen to make it great and that just wasnt there in such a short story

I could not get into this one so I sadly was not the right reader but I greatly appreciate the chance to try it early!

3/5 Stars

This was just an okay read for me. I liked the story well enough, I liked the characters and the atmosphere of the book was great. I think I just wanted more from this book. My expectations were just too high and that is my own fault because I enjoyed previous books by this author. Overall I would still recommend reading it as I said I did enjoy and have a good time reading it.

I'm a huge fan of St. Clair and her longer novels always fit the bill. This wasn't a favorite of mine but I'm convinced it's because it needed a bit more length to fully grow. I definitely enjoyed it but was left wanting more. I'll be continuing for sure.

I loved this one soooooo much I don't even care it was short, tropey and full of smut.
Who am I kidding.
I'm actually pretty sure I loved this especially because it was short, tropey and full of smut.
Sometimes you gotta scratch a particular itch, and this book didn't just scratch it.
It scratched real good, too.

Father used to say the forest was magic, but I believed otherwise. In fact, I did not think the forest was enchanted at all. She was alive, just as real and sentient as the fae who lived within. It was the fae who were magic, and they were as evil as she was.


The perfect mixture between Holly Black's The Folk of Air and Rebecca F. Kenney Healer to the Ash King, Moutains Made of Glass was a perfect and dark fairytale, complete with all those elements I love in novels.
It wasn't only exquisitely written, with some of the best quotable lines I've ever found in a an adult romantasy book, it was also entertaining to the max and peppered with the most delicious art.
The setting of the Glass Muntains and the cursed forest was as eerie and atmospheric, as the apparition of many fantastical creature was spot on.
Plotwise speaking, it wasn't the masterpiece of the century but I had tons of fun with it and the retelling aspect was so incredibly well done. Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast are only a few of the fairytales this story was inspired by, and damn, were they properly employed.
If you're interested, * I'll add the author's personal list of fairytales and references she used as inspiration for this, at the bottom of this review.

“When you rescued your princess, what happened?”
The prince shrugged. “She was grateful.”
“And?”
“And?” he repeated, confused.
“What else happened?”
“We returned to her kingdom where her father declared that we would wed,” he said. Then he asked, “Did you rescue your princess?”
“I did,” I said.
“And what happened?”
“I fucked her in the woods all night long.”


St. Clair speaks to my aching heart with her idea of what makes a morally questionable character as gray as they can be. Prince Casamir was so damn gray, so freaking sexy, so deliciously ruthless.
Can you tell I'm in love?
I liked Gesela as well, even if she was a little annoying and way too naive , with her rushed decisions in the beginning, especially for a person as smart as she was described to be.
The romance was chef's kiss. The dual pov and enemies-to-lovers trope gave me a perpetual stomach tingle, and the smut was so so so so good.
"Choke me", FMC said at some point, and there I was, flying to the moon with heart palpitations and squeezed tighs.

I met his gaze.
“You were made for this,” I said.
He smiled and asked, “Made for what, sweet creature?”
Pleasure, I wanted to say. Sex.
But instead, I answered, “Heartbreak.”


The ending was simply perfect.
I can see myself reading this again and again in the future.
I'm gonna go read Scarlett St. Clair's entire backlist now, and pray this wasn't just a one-time thing.



*
-Andersen, Hans Christian. Best-Loved Fairy Tales.
-Carruthers, Amelia. Snow White and Other Examples of Jealousy Unrewarded. Cookhill, Alcester, Warwickshire-
-Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Complete Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
-Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
-A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

Scarlett St. Clair is an author that I've heard a lot about and own quite a few of her books, but just never got around to picking up. I thought based on the synopsis I was really going to love this book, but it was just kind of a miss for me.

For starters, I hate instalove. Or infatuation. Or obsession. Or whatever it was in this book. I hate romance where I literally do not believe in the chemistry beyond the characters wanting to have sex for the sake of it. I don't think that the length of this story gave time for the characters to develop or to allow me to believe what it was the author was trying to tell me.

I will say that the narrators were decent and made it a really quick and enjoyable listen. I will definitely be picking up other books by this author because I do think that the storytelling and plot were okay.

Really hoped I would love this one because the premise was so promising (beauty and the beast retelling), and I found it to be good, not great.