A review by sebastianslays
Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

slow-paced

3.0

This book is so badly written, the themes are terrible and handled with so little taste.  The main protagonist is so unlikeable and does herself no favours. I didn't totally hate the love interest, and their romance wasn't the worse I've read. But there are some disgusting and, to be frank, toxic tropes in here so please read trigger warnings because lord knows I didn't.  Every second paragraph made me so irritated, and yet, honestly, I had a blast reading this.
That being said I would only recommend it to people who would enjoy hating on it as much as I do.
I don't see how you can so plainly talk about things like sexual assault, eating disorders, child abuse, child extortion, emotional manipulation, addiction/alcoholism and basically every other trigger under the sun and not address how deeply traumatic all that is? Oh, but don't worry; love will cure it all.  
I was deeply disturbed by the way Undine's death was handled; in that it wasn't. 
Yet I was so on board for Marlinchen becoming the monster of her own story, but it happened too late to save the book.
Please stop repeating paragraphs. I do not care exactly what charms are on her mothers bracelet; certainly not enough to get the same paragraph handed to me 3 times.

I would have given it 2.5 stars, but it gets an extra half star for the monster f***ing.
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