Book Review: Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Disclaimer: I have voluntarily reviewed this book after receiving a free copy from Edelweiss+, thank you!

Title: Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Author: Melissa Bashardoust

Genre: YA, fantasy, lgbt, retelling

Rating: 3,5/5

Goodreads / Amazon / My Instagram / My tumblr

So like… This book has monster girlfriends and if that doesn’t convince you to read it I don’t know what will?

Soraya is a princess cursed by a div. She’d heard this story millions of times - the story of her mother freeing a woman in a forest and having her captor make her firstborn daughter poisonous to touch. Due to her condition, Soraya has been hidden away in the palace and kept a secret from most of the country. At least until her brother captures a div and brings it to the palace as a prisoner. On her way to find a way to get rid of her curse, Soraya may just have to question everything she’d known about how it came to be.

First of all - I love the concept. The inspiration from Persian mythology is refreshing, and the attempt of making the main character battle the temptation to join the dark side due to her family’s mistreatment is something I like to see in the book. The first 40% was super action-packed and it had me very excited for the direction it was going in.

Sadly it didn’t go in that direction.

Let me just say that Soraya was one of the most frustrating protagonists I’ve recently read about. She’s constantly moping and she’s naive to the point it hurts. It’s possible it happens due to the circumstances she’d been brought up in but it’s still not something I love seeing. Each time a character reveals their grand secret to her she immediately goes “oh that’s so sad, I can absolutely RELATE to you”. She’s not battling her dark side, she’s just easily swayed by any hot take she hears. The first half of the book had me like “this girl has SO MUCH villain potential” and have to be fair - there were some badass moments until the very end of the book but the stuff between those moments just made me roll my eyes. Not to mention the way her every plan was ruined before she even started to put it into life was very frustrating.

The rest of the characters were alright although I didn’t exactly care about any of them. Not gonna talk in-depth about the villain as it’s kind of a major spoiler but he gave me Darkling vibes. The love interest didn’t have much personality and while she and Soraya could have made a great power couple, the potential for that was kinda missed.

I feel the book would be better as a duology - that would allow for more in-depth worldbuilding, as the pieces of the world we’ve seen seemed really interesting to me and I’d love to see more of it. It would also let the characters be more developed. I liked the ending a lot and it does feel like a finished story and doesn’t have as many pacing issues a some other standalone I’ve read but somehow I always prefer when there’s more to read.

I would recommend this book to people who like YA fantasy, especially those who liked hero/villain dynamics similar to Alina and Darkling from the Grisha Trilogy. I did enjoy the build-up and it made my expectations soar, which may be why the second part felt like a bit of a letdown but it’s still a solid piece of YA fantasy.