Juniper & Thorn: A Novel

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I haven’t had a five star read in almost six months and THE DROUGHT IS OFFICIALLY OVER. FIVE [VERY WEIRD] STARS. And we experience this world through the lens of a young witch who uses stories as a vehicle to move about her life and who learns to ask: who is the one telling these stories?

Between money problems, their father’s turbulent moods and explosive fury, and a monster who stalks the streets of Oblya murdering innocents, everything will fall to Marlinchen as she figures out the true depths of what her father has done to them, exactly what the cost of freedom could be, and if she can afford to pay it. The blurb for this book does describe the plot pretty well, it's indeed a dark fairy tale-inspired story that included serial murders and a family of witches living under the oppressive tutelage of their mage father, from whom they want to escape and enjoy life and love. The world it's set in is pretty much Russia just barely varnished with a layer of magic and new naming that doesn't quite obscure the real inspiration. And yet, the characters and the plotting proper are her weakness. There's no sense of moderation, no sense of directing her train of thought consistently, no good grasp of character progression, and above all, little command of plot structure. That eventually ends up harming her stories, because pretty words and on-point mood can only do so much for a book.

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This book was dark, disturbing, graphic, gross, unsettling, and disjointedly weird. And none of that in a good way. Don't come into this expecting another book like The Wolf and the Woodsman, even though it is set in the same world. This is a horror book filled with the terrifyingly awful things that humans can do to each other, described in a strangely off-hand and matter-of-fact YET disgustingly graphic manner. I missed Reid’s debut The Wolf and the Woodsman a bit ago, but Juniper & Thorn sounded like such a good fit for me that I was delighted to get an ARC. Thanks to NetGalley for that!!! The first thing that I can say about this book is that I wanted to keep reading it very badly and ended up finishing it in a day. There was definitely something about it that drew me in all the way until the end - it has grit and atmosphere and personality in spades. I think a lot of this has to do with the writing style, which I generally found to be beautiful, immersive and effective in creating a sense of a dreadful fairy tale with lots of interesting/charming little details, especially about the stories that Marlinchen loves. I do think it could have been cleaned up in places, however - I definitely noticed certain tics and repetitions and similes of dubious quality.

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. ♥️ From the list of trigger warnings, you know this is a dark and heavy book but it is one that I will hold dear to my heart. Juniper & Thorn takes every last drop of tainted blood from the original fairy tales and weaves it into something entirely new, surprising and entrancing. Reid does not hesitate to really delve into the brutal reality of these topics. It is a difficult read at times, but it is one that challenges you and your assumptions around victimhood. This is a grotesque, stomach-churning book that constantly reminds you of the horror waiting to sink its teeth into you. For "Horror", while there are certainly dark events in the book, they fall into one of two categories. There's the aforementioned people being assholes/terrible people, but it wasn't written dark in a "horror" way; it was without that creepy wrong undertone to it in the atmosphere to make it feel horror. On the other hand, there were a good few dark-fantasy events which could have led into horror played right, but they were heavily concentrated in the last third of the book all at once, and rather than building an atmosphere of horror they came as reveals. It feels mildly pedantic, but for me dark events or horrible actions alone do not horror make- horror isn't just the presence of dark or terrible things, it's inextricably tied to how they're written and presented. When there isn't really any suspense or terror, fear or repulsion, in the writing and atmosphere, it doesn't feel like horror. As an example, grimdark novels have plenty of dark events and horrible actions, but they aren't always written as horror; it's highly tied to the presentation, the atmosphere. It's why I lean more towards saying Juniper & Thorn is "dark fantasy" rather than "horror".The setting of the novel is all belching coal smoke and slimy fish guts and churning machines: pitting the dark underbelly of industrialization against grasping roots of history and tradition. This book does not blunt its edges: it is often unbearably violent and relentlessly dark, but all in the service of spinning a tale of horror so intractable that I'm going to be a while peeling the grit and gristle of it away from my bones. Perhaps most importantly, “Juniper & Thorn” offers a nuanced criticism of how patriarchal structures enable violence against women. Throughout the novel, Marlinchen is constantly seen by her father, her clients, and even herself as an object to be used by the men around her. Because of this, her self-objectification permeates the novel’s narrative style. This makes for a somewhat unsettling read, as the reader’s understanding of Marlinchen — as a young person unjustly robbed of her agency — conflicts with the unforgiving way that she views herself. For the most part, Reid handles this well and navigates this uncomfortable perspective with the necessary compassion and skill.

Juniper and Thorn is technically a fairytale, but not in the way we’ve been trained to expect. A magical Gothic horror story of monstrous fathers, untrustworthy sisters, and lost innocence, this is a tale where a heroine has to save herself from a viciously patriarchal system, but she won’t be able to keep the blood off her hands while she does so. (Either figuratively or literally speaking.)

Summary

I don't think Juniper & Thorn was necessarily a bad book, and I think it will definitely have its fans, but it didn't ultimately work for me. Primarily, I think this is because it wasn't what I'd been led to expect. It was labeled in the blurb descriptor as a "Gothic Horror retelling", but I don't really feel like "Gothic" or "Horror", the parts which had most intrigued me, are accurate descriptors at all. I'd say this is a dark "historical-fantasy-retelling" fantasy romance. By "historical-fantasy-retelling," I mean to evoke that it falls most in that genre of historical fantasy reminiscent of Madeline Miller or Naomi Novik (and presumably Reid's first work, The Wolf and the Woodsman, which I haven't myself read). There's also a strong focus on a romance, and the book is somewhat dark (particularly towards the end).

But personally, I think my favorite thing about this book, and about Ava Reid’s writing, is their protagonists. Ava writes real people. Marlinchen is morally grey in the way in the way that navigating the world is inherently a gray experience, especially when you’re raised within such a limited scope of understanding, especially when you’re taught corrupt and bigoted perspectives, and especially when you’re living with trauma. Ava Reid’s protagonists move about the world doing the best they can to protect themselves and their happiness. Marlinchen is no exception to this. She is the perfect portrayal of a survivor of CSA and abuse by not being perfect. By showing that there is no right way to handle trauma. By showing that every single day is different, but every single day she is alive and doing her best to live for herself. And isn’t that what we’re all doing?juniper and thorn is a loose retelling of “the juniper tree” and follows marlinchen and her two sisters, along with their father. i really enjoyed the writing style of this one and thought that it fit the story really well. reid’s lyrical prose helps the book establish its place as a gothic fantasy novel and kept me intrigued the entire time i was reading. As a fairy tale retelling, I think this book generally does a good job of taking the roots of The Juniper Tree and transforming it into something interesting and new that still stays true to the bloody heart of the original (extremely grim and grisly) tale. All of the magical elements worked pretty well for me. But I think it ended up being a weaker read for me in a couple of ways. This is especially true when it comes to the way that it remains true to fairy tale tropes with regard to Marlinchen’s love interest and sisters. Specifically, the love story progresses very rapidly and veers a bit too close to insta-love for my tastes and the sisters are frustratingly one-dimensional. Sevas, the ballet dancer who is Marlinchen’s love interest, only interacts with her a few times - they meet briefly in an alley, talk again briefly in her sister’s storeroom, have a date where they go to a tavern and the beach, and then they briefly see each other again while Marlinchen is trying to heal a customer - but they end up being more or less ride or die with passionate declarations of love for the rest of the book after these interactions. It didn’t quite work for me. Besides that, another catch is that Ava Reid's prose is lovely. She definitely knows how to write, her command of imagery and mood and feels is superb, and the flow of her words is smooth. That's another reason to want to love her books so hard.