⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars

The Maiden and Her Monster blends Jewish folklore, forbidden magic, and feminist themes into a haunting, thoughtful journey. Malka’s path through the cursed forest is rich with moral complexity, touching on faith, control, and the danger of “good intentions.” 🧠💔

The atmosphere is lush, and the themes are powerful but the slow pacing and slightly altered Jewish elements made it hard to fully immerse at times…
Still, this is a bold, thought provoking read that brings something rare to the fantasy genre. 📖

A simultaneously tender-hearted & grief-stricken novel filled with sentient forests, ancient folklore, Eldritch horrors, Jewish mythology, magic, & history, and an absolutely swoony sapphic romance, & i sincerely enjoyed my reading experience of this 🫶

Maddie painted such a beautiful story here filled with commentary, hope, grief, and love & I think many will love this story :)

Rich worldbuilding informed by Ashkenazi folklore and Jewish mysticism can't escape the pitfall characters who are motivated by the plot needing to happen, rather than the other way around.

A beautiful tale about the strength of belief and love. Loosely based on Jewish history and mythology but set in a make up kingdom in a made up time. It is the story of a woman who thinks that finding the beast will help save her village but not all that she has learned in her small village is true and who shapes the stories that are shared shape the ideas they try and spread.

This was unexpectedly wonderful. Creatures of the dark forest and magic unknown come to play, and bargains made will either save or damn them all.

Unfortunately, I DNFd at 34%. Disappointing because I’ve been waiting to read this book for months, but I was bored. I didn’t care about the characters at all and wasn’t even sure what the plot was going forward.

Such a gorgeous and atmospheric debut from Martinez! Flawless combination of folklore, romance, and horror. I am so excited to read more by this author!

Enjoyed this read but didn’t absolutely love it. It fell a little flat for me and that could be because it’s a new style of writing for me but I still enjoyed it and think others will as well!

The Maiden and the Monster is the story of young Jewish healer Malka, who embarks on a journey into a cursed forest in order to save her family and her village. On her way, she meets many people who challenge her worldview and her ethics, including a golem created with forbidden Jewish magic.

I think that there was a lot of promise to this book. Thematically, I love the ideas it chooses to explore—how people with good intentions can become corrupted by making decisions for other people. This applies to the village men who are driven to rage and drunkenness seeking to kill the monster that haunts them, the acolytes of the Christian-coded religion who harass the Jews in their religious fervor, the boy who so badly wants to marry Malka and be her hero, and the rabbi who flirts with heresy by using magic to save his community. I think that these topics were explored with a really sharp feminist Jewish lens I found interesting.

Now what kept me from suspending my disbelief and enjoying the book was two things. First, I found the pacing of the book to be slow. It took a long time for the rising action to complete, and the main characters to meet. I felt like there was a lot of walking in the forest with internal conflict feelings bubbling inside Malka. The second was the way the Jewish aspects of the story were handled. I’m an expert reader when it comes to Judaism and I found that the way Jewish religious and cultural ideas were slightly altered—not with originality, but just slightly garbling them—to be disconcerting to the point of annoyance. I probably would have enjoyed the story more if it was real historical fiction, and then it also would have been more informative for people not familiar with Jewish topics. Like Leigh Bardugo’s Sephardic historical fiction The Familiar, or Helene Wexler’s The Golem and the Jinni. The world seems heavily inspired by the Pale of Settlement and the stories of the Maharal of Prague. The way the Jewish concepts were garbled, and relabeled with pseudo-Hebrew made me feel like the author is not confident enough to handle the heavy historical topics that come with writing Jewish historical fiction and but didn’t completely commit to making original fantasy either. I crave Jewish fantasy writers who can take those challenges head on instead of making things up so they can have a false sense of control. Funnily enough, this was the gmain reason I DNF’d the book. I was about 40% through.

I think this story line really had a lot of potential, and was itself pretty interesting. Overall though, I found the execution a bit lacking. It felt like a lot of the book was centered around a feeling of being torn between tradition and truth, but I never felt like I fully was brought into these feelings with the characters. It felt disjointed because of that. I also didn't enjoy how drawn out Malka's hatred was for Nimrah, it felt like we jumped right to suddenly liking her but then not? That felt confusing. The ending also felt extremely rushed, and a particular death at the end felt super unnecessary and I felt did a disservice to the story. It felt like it added one too many sad endings. It felt like maybe the focus should've been on either the adventure or the romance, but with both story lines present it felt like they got too lost within each other.

The Maiden and Her Monster reimagines the Jewish myth of golem that’s rooted in history, folklore and of course a sapphic romance.

My favorite part of this novel is that it felt very atmospheric specifically in the beginning when our main character was starting her adventure in the woods. I would pick reading this in the Fall time if you like catering your books to certain season! It had very heavy fairytale vibes which I have been loving lately.

Since this was marketed as having a sapphic romance I did think there was going to be more romance. I didn’t feel the build up on their connection so when it started to happen it didn’t feel believable. I wanted to love the romance so bad but it just wasn’t there for me.

Now, there were also a lot of words in here that I did not know what they meant and it was nice to have this book on my kindle to search up what they meant, however, I feel like in the beginning because of this it took me awhile to get into the story. .

Romances specifically spahhic fantasy romances have been something I have been on my immediate add to TBR lists this year and I knew when I saw The Maiden and Her Monster’s blurb that I needed to get my hands on it.
Overall I loved the premises but the story did turned more political than I thought it was going to. Normally I don’t mind it but my mind wasn’t in the right spot for it. I really thought it’s was interesting in the first part but after she meets Nimrah and then they end up in a city and out of the woods I started to lose more interst. I also thought the romance between the characters weren’t as strong as I would have liked it to have been.
Things I did like. I did like the world building. This is based off of Keyes’s folklore and I always find it fascinating. It makes me want to look more into the folklore itself as I am not well versed. I liked the prose. I really enjoyed the writing especially in the beginning.
I feel like I would have enjoyed this more if I had known more what I know now going into it for now my rating is 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 for review purposes.

Thank you to Tor for the complimentary copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a fascinating fantasy that draws on Jewish folklore. I really enjoyed how the story came together, and how the characters developed throughout the story. I do think the pacing could have been a little more consistent and I wish the magic system had been a little more developed. But overall, I really enjoyed this and I can't wait to see what this author writes next!

I did not finish this book, but didn't feel it deserved any less than 3⭐️.

I appreciated the world building and use of magic in The Maiden and Her Monster, and loved all the mentions of herbs and plants for healing, as it is a special interest of mine. The Jewish mythology was incorporated well and clearly so much time and research went into this work, though I suspect some of the terminology and language was just made up, which made it a little hard to tell up from down.
Additionally, the pacing felt incredibly slow and I struggled to stay immersed in the story. The first part felt sort of like an extended prologue, with so much detail and conversation that I found myself having to work to stay focused. I expected the second part would pick up a bit in pacing, but that wasn't the case and the storyline didn't cause me to feel emotionally invested in the characters or their goals. I DNF'ed before 50%, and it feels incredibly important to say: please check out other reviews before you decide for yourself! A DNF for me could be a 5⭐️ for you!

An atmospheric dark fantasy reimagining the tale of the golem of Prague, this novel has very lush writing, but there was something about it I couldn’t quite get into, so about 3.75 stars.

Malka lives in a village where girls have recently been killed by a monster in the nearby forest. When her mother is falsely accused of being responsible by the church oppressing the village, Malka strikes a deal to capture the monster and prove her mother is innocent. But in the forest, Malka meets the golem, Nimrah, who is supposedly responsible. Malka then strikes a deal with Nimrah that she will help her reunite with the rabbi that created her if Nimrah will give herself up, and they go on a journey, where the plot expands into one with political machinations, magic, sapphic romance, and about religious freedom.

The blurb really only covers like 30% of the book, so I did feel slightly misled, as I was expecting this to be a more character-focused journey like the Bear and the Nightingale or Spinning Silver. It’s more politically-focused than I expected, which isn’t usually to my taste. It’s also quite dark, with dismemberment being pretty regular as well as death and blood and violence. The writing was pretty good, but I couldn’t help but think it didn’t quite live up to my expectations based on some of the authors it’s compared to. The middle felt kind of slow at times and I was never as immersed in this as I wanted to be.

I feel like I didn’t understand Malka as much as I wanted to. I understand the journey she’s going on, where she’s unsure of herself at the beginning but she grows, but some of her decisions along the way made no sense to me and felt too much like serving the plot. Nimrah was interesting, but I think it was a little predictable where she was headed so the layers we saw to her didn’t feel as satisfying as I wanted it to, like it felt pretty obvious that everyone just misunderstood her. The romance between them was a little sudden, like there wasn’t much development between them getting used to each other to lusting after each other. Definitely wanted more there so I could feel as invested as I wanted.

And yeah, the magic system and worldbuilding confused me. Lots of words borrowed from other languages or made up entirely, often times without much context to make it clear what it was talking about so there were entire sentences that just flew over my head. I usually don’t look up much stuff as I read so definitely is a me problem, but it seemed maybe a tad excessive. And the magic system seems to be vague on purpose based on the author’s note, which is fine, but it added to my confusion. I did enjoy the stories and Jewish folklore that are interspersed throughout, but I would’ve loved them even more if they were maybe written in the style of the person telling the story just to differentiate them.

The blurb sounded amazing and I made assumptions on what the story would be, which raised my expectations. Unfortunately it didn’t end up being what I had hoped for, but I do see people enjoying this. You’ll definitely learn a lot of Jewish folklore and customs from here, which was a highlight here.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tor Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Maiden and Her Monster is an incredible, vibrant adventure that explores timely resistance against theocracy and fascism through love; familiar, communal, platonic, and romantic. Maddie Martinez has created a beautiful world and fascinating magic system inspired by Jewish folklore and mysticism. Malka is a fantastic main character, flawed but still likable, and Nimrah makes a compelling broody enemies-to-lovers romantic interest. While the focus of the novel is more on the political drama and magic system, the slow-burn romance is still threaded skillfully throughout with a pay-off that’s worth the wait.

a lush fantasy rich in folklore. wish there had been more time spent in the creepy forest but otherwise very interesting political fantasy about how faith can be weaponized. also gae 💅

Special thank you to Tor and Netgalley for the advanced ebook in exchange for a review!
The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez
4.5/5
While it was the initial concept that drew me in: a forest that preys on women who venture in after dark, this story was so much bigger than I could have imagined. I will admit, I am not very well-versed in the Jewish faith or folklore, so most of what this story is based on is very new to me. I ended up finding this story completely fascinating and I could NOT put it down. It is very heavy and daunting to understand for the first 1/3 of the book, yes, but sticking through and learning ended up being so very rewarding.

It is such a beautifully written story about having hope and faith despite violence and oppression, as well as learning to let your own feelings come to the surface instead of shoving them down in order to take care of those around you. To me, this did not read as a debut novel at all. It was incredibly well written, and the way the story evolved was very intelligently put together. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction with a fantasy twist!

Goodreads review is live, I will review this book on retailer websites once published!

I appreciate the opportunity to read this ARC, but it was the first book in a long time that I have not finished.

I was really excited to read this due to the description, but boy did I have a hard time. I knew it was a retelling of Jewish folklore, but reading it was so complicated. The names of everything were entirely too complex, so I spent a lot of time rereading to see what I missed, who was who, and what was what. It became frustrating and tedious. I also couldn't connect with Malka- sneaking into the woods to drink with the enemy... odd given the abuse her townspeople had just suffered and apparently do on a regular basis.

This was not the book for me.

despite me having an arc, this took me MONTHS to get through because i just didn’t connect with this book. the writing was nice and i really was excited for the magic and lore but the mc was a pain to go through this story with. the relationship felt so bland. like there’s sexual chemistry there but ask me about anything else and i question why they’re together. this is the type of book that doesn’t leave an impression on you, it will fade from your mind in a couple days. you miss nothing by skipping it. and i know this sounds harsh but eh…after 70% it does get really interesting though and i binge read it pretty quickly. it’s not ALL bad, just very bland and underwhelming.