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.

My brain is in a state of twirling like the Apple computer trying to boot orders. I'm just well...sigh.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, & Bloom Books for the eARC in return for an honest review! All thoughts are my own.

Okay so...I honestly can't tell quite yet if I want to file this away in my Meh folder or keep it squirreled away in an undefined folder until the next one comes out. I see so so so much potential here that didn't quite reach that zenith of greatness for me. I liked the story retelling with its qualities of Beauty and the Beast (even though that particular story is getting far too much love in the retelling department), tantalizing fae loveliness, spicy heat, and maybe hints of Wonderland/Rumpelstiltskin. Maybe the disconnect is in the quick delivery. I think this is one that must be read and to each their own because I can see where some will be immediately on board and some (like me) that need a bit more of the story to become invested.

Definitely worth the read and we'll see where it goes. REVIEW TO BE CONTINUED!!!

No Regrets! 3 out of 5 stars

This was a short, interesting, magic-filled romp! I came away from it wishing for more, but what was on the page was plenty enjoyable.

Gesela lives alone on the edge of a small town full of curses. When the villagers force her to break the curse that’s dried up the town’s well by killing the toad living at the bottom, the consequences are dire. Not a toad, after all, but one of seven elven princes, whose brothers come to exact revenge. They dump Gesela with the seventh cruel and beastly brother, in his Kingdom of Thorns. This elven prince, Casamir, is under a curse of his own. Find a maiden who can fall in love with him and guess his true name, else his name will be lost forever and he will forget himself.

It all sounds highly promising, as far as premises go. Unfortunately, the fact that we’re confined to the length of a novella means that there really isn’t time to go about crafting the story with the amount of depth I usually look for in this genre. There wasn’t time to build chemistry between the characters in a way that feels authentic and gratifying. They just ended up sort of… magically, instantly horny for each other. And there were a lot — a LOT — of fairytale references and magical beings from a variety of cultures and source material… It’s clear from the author’s notes that she researched extensively for this story. The end result was more of a hodgepodge of borrowed lore, though, rather than a story that felt cohesive with intentional details.

Given that the author plans to write novellas for the remaining six elven princes, it’s possible that more of this detail and structured worldbuilding will come in the future. But at this point, I’m left wondering why the book was even titled “Mountains Made of Glass” when the Glass Mountains made all of two brief cameos in this book, neither of which bore much importance to the plot. Everything ultimately came together a bit haphazardly, though it was still an interesting world to peek into.

Will I read the next novella when it’s published? …Probably. I do love fairytales, and grumpy princes who fall reluctantly in love with stubborn main characters. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the author pulls back on the reins a bit, though, to put together a story with more focus and less background noise.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the DRC!

I didn't love this one. It seems this author is very hit or miss for me - I didn't love their Hades and Persephone story, but their vampire series is a favorite! I think this story would have benefitted from being in a longer format.

Pretty sure this is supposed to be a rumplestilskin retelling?
Listen this book was not it for me. As soon as she saw this guy it was like instant lust. I just did not like this.

Scarlett St Clair writes books that keep me up at night and Mountains Made of Glass is no exception. I have no idea how she does it and I'm in love with this series!

I love fairytale retellings and I love Scarlett St. Clair! I was super pumped for this and it did not disappoint at all!!

The world building, like all worlds she builds was phenomenal! The characters were great! You can't go wrong with anything she writes!

If you're in the mood for a quick, dark, spicy fairytale retelling, I highly recommend this!!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Incredible world building. Had a blast and loved all the influences. Scarlett is really into something here and I hope to see more of this style from her.

When I hear that the story will be a retelling I'm always getting excited about what the author will do with the concepts applied in the story. In Mountains Made of Glass, there will be a lot of them, and I think this makes it somehow hard to follow to me.
Gesela had lived in a cursed village and now she decided to do something about it - this was the beginning of her quest. On her way to save the village, she killed a toad... but this was a cursed prince! She needs to be punished and gets sent to the mansion of the Beast - that is a seventh-eleven prince, who was also cursed. A lot of cursed stuff right?
A plot was something that should be more on the spot here, as in some parts it felt like the erotic / smut part was overcoming other parts of the story - I think this was my biggest issue, but there was also the other one - beginning that was not introducing wholely the works set by the author, but provided a piece here, a piece there. Only in the later part of the book, I started feeling a connection with the characters and plot.

Received and EARC in exchanged for my honest review.

I LOVE a fairy retelling! However, I just didn't really like this one. The spice felt off and way too fast paced. The book was too short and moved way too fast. I actually wanted more plot and more world building. Not my favorite by the author

Beauty and the Beast retelling. The story was an interesting idea but I got bored in the middle and it just ended okay.

Mountains Made of Glass is not a Disney love story

MMOG is not Beauty and the Beast… it’s SO MUCH BETTER.
I picked up Mountains Made of Glass by Scarlett St. Clair ready to read a few chapters and go to bed, but I couldn’t stop reading until I finished it. It took about five pages for me to realize I was all in.

Gesela doesn’t trust the Enchanted Forest—it’s taken too much from her. After losing her parents and her sister, she has kept to herself, living recluse and avoiding developing bonds with anybody in her village. However, when the village’s well goes dry because of a series of curses the town is under, the villagers decide it’s Gesela’s turn to chip in by killing the toad inside the well.

Gesela kills the toad but then it turns out the toad is an Elven prince under a curse, and his brothers come to Gesela to seek retribution. And her punishment is to go live with a seventh brother, who they all call the beast. The only way for Gesela to escape this beast is to guess his name in seven days.

The beast has seven days to make Gesela fall in love with him, or he will lose himself forever. But he is called the beast for a reason; because he doesn’t have a single Casanova bone in his body. Fortunately for Gesela and us, this man/fae is physically irresistible. In true Scarlett St. Clair form, she made us fall in love with the captor and throw our moral compass out the window in exchange for some undeniable sexual chemistry.

“Choke me,” I said. He did not need encouragement, and I had expected this because since our first encunter, he had had an obsession with my neck.
Gesela
This story is fast-paced, creative and magical. Readers will recognize elements of many famous fairytales and Grimm stories in Mountains Made of Glass. If you love a morally grey spicy dark fantasy romance, I suggest you pick this one up ASAP.

Mountains Made of Glass was a good steamy novella that intertwined many different fairy tales into the story. The main couple misunderstood each other for a big part of the story, but they were both thrown into the situation together so it makes sense. The scenes where they were trying to get to know each other though were some of my favorite moments of the book. This is my first work by St. Clair and can’t wait to read her other series that I have!

“She makes me feel like it won’t matter if I have a name or not. So long as I know her, I will know myself.”

_________________

This novella was everything you could want to scratch the itch of a classic fairytale with a dark, violent Grimm twist!!

Spicy from start to finish we follow Gesela as she is thrown down the well in her town as a sacrifice out of spite for not accepting the romantic advances of the sheriff. She completes the task given to her, killing the toad at the bottom of the well, only to find out he was actually a fae prince and finds herself cursed and imprisoned by the seventh brother. He himself, however, is cursed to die in only a few days time if his true love does not learn his true name.

Seriously, if you’re looking for a quick, spicy, dark, fairytale don’t miss out on this one. It was more than worth the binge and I cannot wait for the rest of the stories!!

I was super excited for this novella, having a love of the darker side of fairytale retellings.. Mountains Made of Glass did NOT disappoint!
Tam telling you, ¡ enjoyed reading this so so much! It was romantic, and dark, and lovely, and horrific, and just everything didn't know I needed and was so happy I found.
I tend to read books super fast no matter how much I like them. I kept forcing myself to put this down so that it wouldn't be over. I truly enjoyed reading it so much.
Im also so excited to read the next book, which Scarlett has said will feature one of the other brothers. Eek!
Huge thank you to Scarlett and team for sending me an ARC of this novella! loved it!

I absolutely loved this book! Such an awesome conglomerate of fairytales! Enemies to lovers with duel POV. Such a fun read with fantasy, romance, suspense, and horror. Kept me on my toes the whole time! I can’t wait until the next one!

This book surprised me and I don’t even know why. Scarlett St Clair is an auto buy author for me. The MMC is chiefs kiss. The beauty and the beast aspect is one of my favourite retelling and the puzzles and mystery and tension soooo good. Don’t trust anyone. So so good.
Thank you for writing this smutty masterpiece.

I've had th priviledge of enjoying every one of Scarlett St. Clair's novels and to no suprise this one did not dissapoint. Mountains Made of Glass was a bit of a shorter novel but I feel like I can read this one over and over again. The way that St. Clair writes her reteling or any fairytale-esque novel feels so authentic and real and I've always read her books in single sittings. This one in particular is super easy re-read, it hooks right from the beginning and doesnt dissapoint.