Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Title: Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Author: Melissa Bashardoust

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Year: May 2020
Pages: 311

ISBN:  9781529340976
Genre: YA Fantasy

Reading Time: 13 - 17 July

Binding: Fairyloot Hardback
Goodreads

Stars:
★★★☆☆

Blurb:

 There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away from everyone apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it's not just a story.

 As the day of her twin brother's wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she's willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn't afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.

 Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming . . . human or demon.

 PRINCESS OR MONSTER

Review:

 I'm going to try a new structure to my reviewing on this one, I read this as part of the Fairyloot read along to give myself some reading goals and want to have the review to show it!

 Characters

 I don't think we have any particularly surprising characters in this book. I'm going to go by known importance at the start and try not to spoil!

 Soraya is our main character and she hasn't felt the touch of a human since the days after her birth, her poisonous skin making any and all contact with living creatures impossible. I've seen a few people mention that this isn't something they've seen or read about before but it's certainly not unique. Rogue from X-Men, anybody? I've yet to really read about someone with this curse/ability that is a badass from the first page. There's always the loneliness and self-pity which is grasping Soraya a lot. She's the twin to the shah, Sorush, and so is a princess shrouded in mystery, hardly known by her own people. A kind of living legend. Sounds cool, right? Not really. I found Soraya boring and struggled to really root for her. In the first few pages she makes eye contact with Azad that is apparently some kind of order, I thought that was showing us she was going to be a real sassy character and then utter blandness followed.

 Tahmineh, that's a woman I could read more about and I love the complexity that surrounds her. A mother present in a YA book that we know holds a lot of secrets, even though we don't know why in the beginning.

 Sorush is the shah and doesn't get a lot of page time, though I thought he was a pleasant enough character that people were expecting to be cruel rather than understanding.

 Azad was also quite predictable, read anything he says and tell me you didn't find him suspicious and I shall laugh at you. He's cute and immediately loyal? Have you read YA recently?

 Parvaneh, another character I would have preferred to read a story about. There's years of fantastic stories there.

 Laleh is only marginally used, just a little side character and her brother Ramin has had some serious hate on the Fairyloot read along. Yes, he's pretty hateful but I thought he was one of the best characters!

 The Shahmar is a great character, a mirror for Soraya to despair at and the real reason there's any plot to this book. I want to read of his history. That'd be a really good book but let's make it adult because that's about to get bloody!

 Setting

 This is a nice fairytale setting and to begin with we realise that Soraya gets to experience nothing outside of the palace walls, indeed she's only really familiar with the secret and servant passageways to get around her own home.

 For this reason I quite enjoyed the setting, it grew with Soraya's experiences. There are horrors in the mountains which she can't imagine but there's also the terror of walking the streets of her own home for fear of touching and killing the citizens in a crowd. There is mythology and divs and pariks to evolve this world into our fantasy genre and the development is small yet suitable to the book.

 Plot

 Predictable, kind of formulaic in the way it ticks off every box of what you should expect in a YA fantasy book coming out in the current day. It moves along well enough, but just slow enough for you to also realise things a few chapters in advance. I need a little more surprise than that. Doesn't mean that many others will not be shocked or fall in love with this! It's very fairytale. I like things a little more hardcore.

Overall any enjoyable book, I just wish it had some more surprises in store for me!