Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

Book Review

The Juniper Tree just got darker.

As I write this review there’s a storm brewing outside. It’s definitely the weather for reading beside the fire and with a few days off over the festive break I was able to read this book in a couple of days. This book left me with mixed feelings, though.

Here’s the blurb:

A gruesome curse. A city in upheaval. A monster with unquenchable appetites.

Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya's last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world. But at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city's amenities and revel in its thrills, particularly the recently established ballet theater, where Marlinchen meets a dancer who quickly captures her heart.

As Marlinchen's late-night trysts grow more fervent and frequent, so does the threat of her father's rage and magic. And while Oblya flourishes with culture and bustles with enterprise, a monster lurks in its midst, borne of intolerance and resentment and suffused with old-world power. Caught between history and progress and blood and desire, Marlinchen must draw upon her own magic to keep her city safe and find her place within it.

Juniper & Thorn, went on my list as some of its write ups call it a retelling of ‘The Juniper Tree.’ ‘The Juniper Tree’ that I know is the Grimm brothers version, which involves a stepmother killing her stepson in a fit of jealous rage, feeding him to his father and then getting his sister to bury his bones beneath the juniper tree in the garden. Pretty gruesome and the stepmother’s end is befitting of her crimes. Spoiler alert - a millstone is dropped on her head by a magical bird, which was once the aforementioned son.

In the book there is a version of ‘The Juniper Tree’, which I can only assume has been written solely for the purposes of the book and is much, much darker with some distinct differences.

There are many things, within the pages of Reid’s book, which may be upsetting to the unsuspecting reader: sexual abuse, violent penny-dreadful style death and a central character with a hatred of her own body and an eating disorder. It’s not an easy read.

The one thing that saved it for me was the sprinkling of Slavic folklore and the magic that is found in the lives of the main characters, but even that ended up bitter sweet and tainted somehow, with the overriding theme of abuse.

I find reading about and watching films/stories etc that involve sexual abuse extremely difficult. I have never (thank the goddesses) suffered such abuse myself and I don’t believe it’s something that we should not be aware of, but it’s not my first choice for escapism, which is generally what I want from a fiction book. Morals and ethics within stories are also a good thing. I even like a bit of folk horror as a way of stopping people doing ridiculous things or even killing themselves, but I personally found this book to be far too raw and visceral.

In conclusion this is not a book I would read again or instantly recommend. If you are going to read it, this book takes you to dark places, just make sure you can find your way back.

You can buy Ava Reid’s, ‘Juniper & Thorn’ in all good bookshops. If you would like to buy a copy online, please consider visiting my page on Bookshop.org where I have gathered some of the books I read and recommend. Here you will find a plethora of myth, legend and folktale.

And don’t forget to support your local library too. See if they have a copy to borrow.