ARC Review: The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole

The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Even teenage assassins have dreams.

Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven magical blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.

Worried that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli gets caught up with a group of human and witch renegades, and is given the most difficult and dangerous task in the worlds: capture the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.

Warnings: self-harm; character is deadnamed

This book had my interest in the start, with its ghosthunter protag and the magical world she belongs to. She is a witch’s creation and is tasked with hunting ghosts in the human world. Her latest mission sends her to hunt a human, however, and she is horrified by what she has been made to do; when the next mission strands her in the human world (City of Ghosts) until she completes it, she takes the help of a local group led by a Hedge Witch. Taking their help comes with a price, though, and they expect her to escort them to the Witches’ world, the City of Eyes, and during this quest, she finds out more about the lies the Coven has told her.

Look, at the start, I liked the world-building – with the City of Eyes and the City of Ghosts and the Labyrinth – it was unique and interesting. It was a bit Wonderland-ish in the logical working of the place, but as the story went on, it truly got out of hand with how things were not making sense. At some point in the second half I was like ‘This might as well happen’ because any rules about the world were taken and thrown out of comprehension. Sadly, with the plotline heavily relying on the world to advance, it meant that ‘This might as well happen’ also applied to the story, which is why the second half had me disinterested in the stakes and outcome, because I couldn’t engage with the storyline and the world-building on logic.

What I did like about the book though were the main characters, and the Eli’s story arc, and the new elements added in the ending. The witches’ plans had a good metaphor for climate change, but I am waiting to see how well it will be explored in the sequel.

Is it diverse? bisexual main character; non-binary Black major character; gay Vietnamese major character; sapphic secondary characters; written by a non-binary author

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Dundurn, via Netgalley.

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