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rebeccajost's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Alcohol, Body horror, Bullying, Cannibalism, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Murder, Vomit, Animal death, Body shaming, Drug use, and Gore
gabstersreads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book was…..heavy to say the least. Please read the trigger warnings before reading.
[TW: Animal death (for food) , Vomit (bulimia) , Xenophobia, Violence (graphic) , Sexual assault (graphic) , Sexual content, Sexism, Racism, Pedophilia, Murder, Gore, Cannibalism (implied), Classism, Emotional abuse, Alcoholism (moderate), and Death of parent (heavily mentioned)]
That being said, I did really enjoy this book. The writing is beautiful and it was easy to get lost in the pages. I was hooked from the beginning which doesn’t happen every often.
I’ve seen complaints on Marlinchen being too passive. Marlinchen is treated very badly by the people around her, namely her father and her sister. However, Marlinchen "allowing” herself to get pushed around is a result of growing up in a verbally and emotionally abusive environment. Marlinchen learned to do what she could to survive. Her way of surviving was (trying) to keep her father happy. This works until she meets Sevas, a ballet dancer that Marlinchen falls helplessly in love with. Her relationship with Sevas sparks Marlinchen to question her father and uncover his lies.
That’s all I can say for fear of spoiling it. Juniper & Thorn is by no means an easy book to read. The things that Marlinchen has been subjected to will make you angry, sad, disgusted, etc. However, this makes it all the more satisfying to see Marlinchen break away from her abusive father and make her own path in the world.
I would highly recommend IF you’ve read all the trigger warnings and are in a good headspace to read this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Animal death, Cannibalism, Classism, Emotional abuse, Gore, Murder, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Vomit, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Death of parent, Alcoholism, and Self harm
libraryofclaire's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Readers be warned: this isn't your usual dark fairy tale. Ava Reid comes out swinging with teeth, claws, and fangs in Juniper & Thorn (a loose retelling of the Juniper Tree) with heavy themes of sexual assault/abuse, child abuse, emotional abuse, and body horror.
Despite its heavy themes, Juniper & Thorn is decadent in Reid's signature delicious metaphors and horror-like atmosphere. Tension builds with every page, and the reader is constantly missing the right pieces to understand why — which makes it easy to get lost in the story for hours, unsure of when the next obstacle (or horror) will arise.
At times, this book did have some purple prose, and I wish the dialogue between characters could have been cleaner. Reid's adherence to older vernacular is wonderful for atmosphere, but unfortunately difficult to parse as a reader. Also, I wish the relationships with "secondary" characters were more fleshed out (specifically her sisters, who tend to fall into fairytale tropes). But these are small things compared to the meat of story, which kept me pickup and putting down my book because I was so nervous to learn what happened next, but too curious to stop.
This book needs big content warnings across it's few front pages, but for readers who are able to read these themes, this is a story you won't want to miss.
Despite its heavy themes, Juniper & Thorn is decadent in Reid's signature delicious metaphors and horror-like atmosphere. Tension builds with every page, and the reader is constantly missing the right pieces to understand why — which makes it easy to get lost in the story for hours, unsure of when the next obstacle (or horror) will arise.
At times, this book did have some purple prose, and I wish the dialogue between characters could have been cleaner. Reid's adherence to older vernacular is wonderful for atmosphere, but unfortunately difficult to parse as a reader. Also, I wish the relationships with "secondary" characters were more fleshed out (specifically her sisters, who tend to fall into fairytale tropes). But these are small things compared to the meat of story, which kept me pickup and putting down my book because I was so nervous to learn what happened next, but too curious to stop.
This book needs big content warnings across it's few front pages, but for readers who are able to read these themes, this is a story you won't want to miss.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Body horror
booksthatburn's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
JUNIPER Þ is a story built on a complicated tangle of self harm and exploration as Marlinchen, now a young woman, finally starts to defy her controlling father’s dictates. Especially early on, she has a variety of maladaptive behaviors including but not limited to self harm, disordered eating, and intrusive thoughts (ranging from negative self-talk to hypersexual fantasies). These are symptoms of and reactions to the ongoing all-pervasive abusive atmosphere which consumed her childhood and is set to rob her of normal adulthood as well. She and her sisters live in fear of their father, but as he’s made himself the only allowable source of affection in their lives they are desperate to retain his favor. As he’s also a wizard he’s threatened their bodies and lives if they disobey him, and can back up his threats with intimations of what happened to their mother before them. He controls their sexuality through threats and intimidation, as well as by using magical means to check whether they’re still “pure”, something which doesn’t stop Marlinchen from masturbating but makes her worried about how she goes about it.
Marlinchen is gaslit and abused by her father, and has toxic (often abusive) relationships with her sisters. The way that she’s constantly made to question her own perceptions but is also the narrator sometimes makes it hard to tell what things were supposed to be bad, or what things are stressful while not abusive. This had this overall effect that for the first half of the book I felt increasingly unmoored, hoping to find some part of her life that was actually okay and increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is a horror story and there’s not much that’s meant to be going well.
Marlinchen's relationships with her sisters is contentious. They're all trying to maintain access to the extremely finite resource which is their father's goodwill, but they have different ways of measuring whether they've achieved it. Marlinchen's yardstick seems to be whether his abuse stays verbal instead of escalating, which is a depressingly low baseline. There’s a pivotal scene midway through where the tactics in their father’s abuse have taken a sudden turn, and Marlinchen has a confrontation with Undine where in her exasperation Undine says things that explain her own survival strategy, and the flaw she sees in Marlinchen’s. This prompts Marlinchen to realize that she has options she never considered, and that perhaps her sisters have been employing completely different strategies with very different aims from herself.
Some little linguistic touches place this in the same world as THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN. I'm sure if I go back to re-read the other book I'll notice more things, but I noticed enough to be sure even before looking it up to see that I was correct. Because Marlinchen is only able to visit a few locations, there's a lot of detail about the house but less about other places within the city. This means that most of the information about the city and their place in it is gradually told as it relates to how her father feels about it (generally, how he hates it and why). This makes for a (plot-appropriate) gloomy mood.
The plot is well-constructed and engaging. It created a slowly-building feeling of dread which fit the story and was very stressful. The ending made a bunch of early inconsistencies have an explanation beyond "fairy tale logic", and I'm very satisfied with how things ended.
Marlinchen is gaslit and abused by her father, and has toxic (often abusive) relationships with her sisters. The way that she’s constantly made to question her own perceptions but is also the narrator sometimes makes it hard to tell what things were supposed to be bad, or what things are stressful while not abusive. This had this overall effect that for the first half of the book I felt increasingly unmoored, hoping to find some part of her life that was actually okay and increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is a horror story and there’s not much that’s meant to be going well.
Marlinchen's relationships with her sisters is contentious. They're all trying to maintain access to the extremely finite resource which is their father's goodwill, but they have different ways of measuring whether they've achieved it. Marlinchen's yardstick seems to be whether his abuse stays verbal instead of escalating, which is a depressingly low baseline. There’s a pivotal scene midway through where the tactics in their father’s abuse have taken a sudden turn, and Marlinchen has a confrontation with Undine where in her exasperation Undine says things that explain her own survival strategy, and the flaw she sees in Marlinchen’s. This prompts Marlinchen to realize that she has options she never considered, and that perhaps her sisters have been employing completely different strategies with very different aims from herself.
Some little linguistic touches place this in the same world as THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN. I'm sure if I go back to re-read the other book I'll notice more things, but I noticed enough to be sure even before looking it up to see that I was correct. Because Marlinchen is only able to visit a few locations, there's a lot of detail about the house but less about other places within the city. This means that most of the information about the city and their place in it is gradually told as it relates to how her father feels about it (generally, how he hates it and why). This makes for a (plot-appropriate) gloomy mood.
The plot is well-constructed and engaging. It created a slowly-building feeling of dread which fit the story and was very stressful. The ending made a bunch of early inconsistencies have an explanation beyond "fairy tale logic", and I'm very satisfied with how things ended.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Medical content, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Animal death, Gaslighting, Sexual assault, Sexism, Sexual content, Violence, and Vomit
Moderate: Incest, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Self harm, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Cannibalism, Child death, Death of parent, and Gun violence
Minor: Ableism, Racism, Antisemitism, and Drug use
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