Marlinchen is the youngest of three witch daughters who perform duties for their father to collect money from the town. But after going to the ballet theater, Marlinchen falls in love with the main dancer of the theater.
This book took me on a twisting roller coaster I was not expecting! It was a beautifully written dark fantasy with the smallest hint of romance and an interesting ending. I wished the ending was a little bit longer but I loved it. Would highly recommend.
Graphic: Gore, Grief, Gaslighting, Cannibalism, Sexual assault, Violence, Eating disorder, Domestic abuse, and Death
Moderate: Misogyny, Medical trauma, Alcohol, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, and Sexism
Minor: Body horror
If you’ve read The Juniper Tree you would know exactly what this plot is going to be. If not, I will tell you. The Juniper Tree starts with a woman who is in a loving relationship with her significant other but is having infertility issues. She goes to the juniper tree and asks the juniper tree to help her. She wants a child that has rosy blood cheeks and pale snowy skin. The juniper tree whispers to her that she can acquire these things if she gives food. She slices her hand and lets it drip near the juniper tree. After nine months she gives birth to a beautiful boy with rosy blood cheeks and pale snowy skin, and dies happily. The woman gets buried under the juniper tree.
Her son grows up and witnesses his father marry a horrible woman who also has a daughter. He enjoys his time with his new sister but is constantly getting punished for something by his step-mother. One day the step-mother gets so furious that she has him lean into a chest and slams the chest down, severing the boy's head. She panics and wraps his head back onto his neck with a ribbon and goes to her daughter.
The girl goes to her brother after being told to and nudges him which knocks his head off. The stepmother then cooks the boy into a stew and has the dad eat the entire stew. Afterwards, the girl buries her brother's bones under the juniper tree and he is reincarnated as a white bird. He goes through the town singing his song and collects a gold chain, ruby slippers, and a millstone. He returns to his house and starts to sing his song. He gives the father the gold chain, the ruby red slippers to his sister and then he drops the millstone right on top of the step-mother.
Now, you know a bit about how Juniper & Thorn is going to go. Marlinchen is the youngest sibling out of three and is the one who gets mistreated the most. Her older sister, Undine, is the meanest. She mistreats Marlinchen the most by smacking her around and demanding her to do things for her. Rose is nicer to Marlinchen and treats her with respect while still telling her off.
Marlinchen is described as the least pretty of the sisters. She doesn’t get much attention and the ones who come to her for help are usually disgusting asking her for sexual demands. The one who is nice to her that she has regularly is a normal factory worker who doesn’t believe in going to the doctor’s and goes to Marlinchen instead.
Marlinchen finally discovers something she enjoys that is more to her than her family and the monsters she lives with. She goes to the ballet theater with her sister’s and discovers that she enjoys the ballet theater, not only for the show but she falls in love with the dancer who plays Ivan. Savas is a mistreated ballet dancer who wants to escape and hates playing Ivan every weekend.
When Marlinchen helps Sevas, who she believed was just a sick drunk in the alleyway, they quickly discover an infatuation with each other. It isn’t long until they are trying to see each other again.
Sevas ends up at her estate because his instructor and abuser is trying to figure out what is wrong with Sevas with him constantly being sick. Marlinchen lies for him so he doesn’t get in trouble, which Sevas appreciates.
However, Marlinchen’s father is distinctly pissed off with how the ballet theater was waltzing into their estate. He decided to put a curse onto the entire estate. The sister’s cannot leave without acquiring a cup of black sand and anyone from the ballet theater cannot enter without being turned into a pile of snakes, in which he will end up eating them.
Marlinchen becomes distraught and decides to take a shower which she ends up finding black sand at the bottom of her bathtub. She collects the black sand and gathers it in her mother’s clamshell. After gathering up the sand she ends up going to her sister Rose who tells her she can only leave for one night and can’t bring anything back with her and she must be back before their father wakes up. Marlinchen feels blessed by Rose and decides to head out to find Sevas to warn him about the curse that was placed over her house.
She finds Sevas and asks him about the recent murders because they were happening quite close to where he was. She then tells him about the curse that was placed and Sevas felt happy that she was warning him about the curse. He decides that he wants to take her out on the town before she has to go back home. He takes her to the beach and to different places that she enjoyed heavily before she was almost late going back home.
Once back home she realized that she was a few minutes late and also found that there was no food which made Marlinchen’s father unbelievably pissed off but he admits he’s the reason there is no food in the pantry or fridge. After he ate everything he then blames that it is his daughter’s fault because they have been stealing the money for themselves.
Rose decides that they should sell some of their items so that they are able to acquire enough money to buy more food. After the auction, the sister’s ended up distraught because they had to sell some of their mother’s items.
Afterwards Marlinchen was given a weird sludge of juice after being told that he would go get more food for the household. However, Marlinchen doesn’t remember making any juice and thinks that he had a secret stash of juice.
Marlinchen kept going on with life until her father discovered that she had managed to escape the household. The only reason he figured this out was because Marlinchen and him had to go to a customer’s house and Sevas was there. In turn, the abusive man that controls Sevas had told Marlinchen she shouldn’t come around anymore.
Once he found out he decided to marry off all of his daughter’s. He got rid of all the magical wards and produced fliers to get attention from the townsfolk. Not long there were a number of men attending and paying to be there which was earning their father a large profit. However, a terrifying thing came to Marlinchen’s life.
The doctor liked to touch Marlinchen the most. He was mostly obsessed with her nipples and was constantly studying them. After telling her father countless times and him ignoring her, she finally asked if he killed those people that were nearby. However, he told her that he could tell her a story instead. She snapped, grabbing the clamshell lock and leaving the house to go to Sevas which she shared a passionate night with him before returning home to be in her father’s good graces.
Marlinchen slowly starts discovering the secrets of their family. Undine was sleeping with one of the monster’s and Rose had been sleeping with a number of the female villagers. She also discovered that she had been drinking potions by her father’s hand. The next day, Undine was dead. She was granted access to the attic where she faced the mirror of truth with Sevas and found that while he was broken, she was the monster that was killing the men in the town.
Marlinchen gave the doctor and her father the concoction while calling the police to their estate. The doctor had been killed but her father was just severely injured and ended up in prison. Marlinchen and Sevas decided to live together while Rose continued to be a practitioner in the town where she was able to make a bit more money without her father’s supervision.
I would recommend this book completely. It is a beautifully written standalone of a perfectly depicted dark fantasy. A lot of the scenes were disturbing and made me sit at the edge of my seat. The only thing that made me disappointed with this book is that it wasn’t longer! I loved Reid’s writing and would have loved to see Sevas and Marlinchen’s relationship in a few chapters after living those nightmares.