juushika 's review for:

Thorn by Intisar Khanani
4.0

An unloved, abused princess is married off to a distant prince, but her precarious position is usurped via a magic spell. A retelling of The Goose Girl, this has a slow start but picks up after the goosening. It reminds me of Robin McKinley's style of fairytale retelling, with an emphasis on domesticity and work/life/family--cozy, a little idealized, but not toothless. The curse in particular is remarkably well-handled: it's functionally an open secret, so rather than being about the frustration of mis-/missed communication, it's about why people struggle to communicate, and about how the protagonist perceives herself and wishes (not) to be perceived. I haven't thought a ton about Thorn since finishing it, so it hasn't stuck with me like my favorite retellings. But it revived my love of this genre, and it's engaging and satisfying enough that it convinced me to stick with a first person, present tense YA novel with a romance plot--that says something.

(FWIW I read the revised, traditionally-published edition.)