Review: Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Girls Made of Snow and Glass
by Melissa Bashardoust
Age Range: 13 & up
Release Date: September 5, 2017
Flatiron Books
9781250077738

“If they love you for anything, it will be for your beauty.”

Mina carries these words with her, spoken by her father years ago. Since Mina’s heart is made of glass, she is told this renders her incapable of love. At sixteen, Mina leaves her southern home and travels to the north, where she sets out to win the heart of the newly widowed king and become someone worthy of love, believing she must use her beauty to do so. Sixteen years later, Mina is queen and her stepdaughter has grown up. Princess Lynet is constantly told how strongly she resembles her mother, but she would much rather take after her fierce and regal stepmother, the only maternal figure she has ever known. As Lynet grows, she comes closer to taking the crown, and Mina knows that one day they will be at odds. For the queen has no intention of letting that crown go.

Bashardoust’s debut novel is a beauty. It is most obviously a retelling of Snow White, but Mina and Lynet’s story holds elements of other fairy tales as well, including The Snow Queen. The greatest hurdle retellings face is uniqueness. There are so many that it’s easy for them to get lost in the shuffle, especially when it comes to such a common story as Snow White, but Girls Made of Snow and Glass stands on its own merits exquisitely.

Two elements stand out as the key factors for this. One, our two heroines. Yes, two heroines. Despite holding the traditional role of evil stepmother, Mina is not what you expect from the villain. Her story starts at sixteen-years-old and alternates throughout the book with Lynet’s chapters. We see her learn of her glass heart, placed there by her cruel magician of a father, setting her on her path for power. But for Mina, a path for power is the same as a path for love. She wants so badly to be capable of being loved she sets her sights on a king, fighting not only for his love, but for the love of an entire kingdom. Her journey as the viewpoint catches up to Lynet’s time is enthralling.

Lynet is a different story. Growing up, she experienced nothing but dedicated love from her father. Only, Lynet worries this love is conditional, based solely on her likeness to a mother she never knew, and she worries how to tell the king that she is not the same person at all. But isn’t she? Early on, Lynet learns the truth about her birth. That she was never born, but created out of snow, made as an exact likeness of the queen. What does this mean for her? For her identity? Is she even her own person? Lynet’s journey of self-discovery and strength is a lovely mirror for Mina’s.

And this is the second key factor, the search for humanity and what it means to be an individual. Mina has lived her entire life believing she is incapable of both giving and receiving love. Her entire quest for power, and desperation to hold onto it, is dependent on this belief. Lynet has always been afraid of her identity depending on her deceased mother. Now that she knows she was made to be an exact replica of her, she teeters on losing her sense of self entirely. Both women are on journeys of self-discovery, and must also look to their relationship with each other to learn who they are, and what it truly means to be a whole person.

Though it may be based on the previously told, Girls Made of Snow and Glass is so gripping, the language used so lovely, one can easily be enchanted into forgetting this. Mina and Lynet’s story transcends the confines of the retold, and stands on its own as something new, unique, and truly beautiful. And though the wintery tale may find Lynet falling in love (not with a Someday My Prince Will Come prince, but a bold and stunning young lady surgeon), the relationship between the princess and the queen is at the true heart of things. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is no mere retelling. It is a breathtaking tale of love, identity, inner strength, and this gorgeous novel stands as an example of the very best sort of retold tale.

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