A review by scrubsandbooks
The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The premise absolutely drew me in. These characters are basically stand-ins for popular fairytales and find themselves meeting the fates of their stories in some serious dark ways and the main characters have to figure out what is going on, all in the setting of a boarding school. And there are a slew of sapphic storylines. This whole thing read like my own catnip!

Why the rating is so low then? Well for starters, it was possibly the most stereotypical and offensive depiction of "severe OCD" in the main character. The trans character is a stand-in for the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. The ace-aro character is the Asian character who is also dealing with pressures of being perfect academically and personally, and comes off as cold and heartless many times. There was so much potential for this story, but the terrible depictions of representation overshadowed a lot of it. Read at your own risk, I guess. I did end up getting the sequel from Netgalley before I had finished the first book so I will likely read it and see how it fares in comparison to this one.
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