Review by Booklist Review
After being poisoned by her stepmother, Snow White spent years trapped in her glass coffin. After 20 years, her glass coffin is shattered, and Snow White awakens to a new, horrific world. Her beautiful land of Roanfrost is more brutal than she remembered, and her dearest friends, the mossfolk, are willing to sacrifice her to ensure their safety. Snow White starts a dangerous journey with the one person she can trust to restore the natural balance of her kingdom. Along the way, she sheds her sweet and docile traits for something harder and less forgiving. Hannah crafts a fast-paced adventure that rejects the patriarchy, giving Snow White agency and space to explore her emotions and understand how her feelings were never valued in the past. While it would have benefited from more fleshed-out characters and a more descriptive world, its unique premise and familiar characters will make this dark spin on a fairy-tale classic an easy sell to potential readers.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Following 20 years of deathlike slumber in an enchanted glass coffin, Snow White, princess of Roanfrost, awakens to a changed world. Her father and stepmother are dead, and the kingdom has been ravaged by the Blight, a magical phenomenon marked by changing climate, rampant disease, and dangerously mutated wildlife. As Snow reconciles her memories with her new reality, her long-dormant magic begins to manifest in unexpected ways, and she is haunted by visions of a beautiful girl with a cruel smile. Snow soon realizes that to bring nature back into balance, she must depose Queen Iliana--the girl from her visions--and take her rightful place as the ruler of Roanfrost. But even as Iliana concocts increasingly elaborate and deadly ploys to maintain her power, Snow struggles to ignore their magnetic attraction. Using richly descriptive prose, Hannah (Where Darkness Blooms) reimagines the story of Snow White in a labyrinthine high-fantasy world of dark magic, greed, and suppressed sapphic longing. Via Snow's first-person narration and third-person interludes from Iliana's enchanted mirror, Hannah delivers on a slow-burning tale of desire and nature that lightly explores themes of misogyny. Characters cue as white. Ages 13--up. Agent: Victoria Marini, Highline Literary. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Snow White awakens to a grim and unbalanced world. The land of Garedenne survives through balancing the power of Nature among its territories, each of which is under the guidance of a Seasonkeeper and a king. Snow White, princess of Roanfrost, expected to become the new Seasonkeeper, but after her mother died, she ended up with a stepmother, Queen Grimhilde, who cursed her. Snow awakens, pushes her way out of the glass coffin she has spent two decades trapped in, and encounters a land in which animals, plants, and even people have been devastated by the Blight. Realizing she must claim the role of Seasonkeeper and return balance to the land, Snow seeks aid from her old friends the mossfolk, as well as a mysterious young man who braves the Blight-stricken Enchanted Forest. But her journey is fraught with surprises, including a slow-burn queer romance. The strong worldbuilding and creative magic of the kingdoms add intriguing depth to the familiar tale. Nature-related themes--the dangers of trying to control it, the need to share its magic equally, and societal constraints on one's wild, natural self--are smoothly built into the story, along with explorations of the dangers of hoarding power and unquestioningly believing in hierarchies and the impact of familial mistakes. Hannah also powerfully uses the original story's iconic mirror to disclose revelatory visions from the antagonist's past. Major characters present fantasy white. A dark, creepy, and complex fairy-tale retelling.(Fantasy. 13-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
