By Meghan Mazzaferro
Content warnings: violence, gore, homophobia (referenced), body horror, abusive parent/child relationships, drowning/suffocating, murder
Eli is a made-thing, built by witches to be their eyes and ears in the human world. She has embraced her destiny as the Coven’s tool, one destined to hunt and kill ghosts that prey on humans and witches alike. When one of her targets turns out to be human, and the witch world begins to pull away from the human one, Eli is forced to ally herself with a group of humans desperate to steal magic from the witches. As Eli learns about her human companions, she begins to realize that there is more to life than being a tool and that being made doesn’t make her any less alive.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass, by Canadian author Adan Jerreat-Poole, was a challenging book to read, and it’s not easy to review either. The book establishes a dichotomy early on between the witch and human worlds, with the human world based on linearity, the laws of cause and effect, and rationality. In contrast, the witch-world is based on emotion, sensation, and desire. This book may follow the plot I’ve provided, but it uses the witch-world laws of emotion and sensation rather than human-world cause and effect, and much of the book’s description is based around complicated and sometimes vague metaphors. They evoke powerful emotions, and I spent every page of this book feeling, but the story itself suffers a bit since we (in the human world) typically need a bit more cause and effect logic than this book provides.
However, I cannot praise this book enough for its mastery of metaphor and evocative language, and the representation in this book is phenomenal. The book explores diverse races, gender, and sexual identities, which acts as driving motivations for each of the book’s characters. I feel like that was handled incredibly well and was one of the best-developed aspects of the story. I also really enjoyed the writing in this book; the best way I can describe it is as having Mirrormask energy—if anyone remembers that Neil Gaiman movie.
Would I recommend this book? I’m not sure. If you’re reading the book’s plot summary and looking for a YA story about a teenage assassin rebelling against a cult of witches with her magical human friends, I would say no, maybe don’t give this book a read. However, if you’re looking for a case study on metaphors and evocative writing, or if you’re interested in a unique and experimental text that deals with identity, individuality, and the driving motivation of all living things to survive and find their place in the world even if they have to carve that place for themselves, I would say definitely consider this book! I, as an aspiring writer, plan to revisit this book and it’s sequel and break down exactly how it manages to make me feel so much while explaining so little.
Be prepared to take your time, to not have all your questions answered, and I think you’ll really enjoy it.