“No one is from here. And you can’t treat this world like yours. Everything has feelings. You have to treat everything like a lover and an enemy.”

___________________________________ The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Dundurn – Metamorphosis Books Pub Date – 10/6/20 #Bookreview ____________________________________
This book was very whimsical and magical and seems to have confused a lot of people who read it according to my review of the reviews. From the inspiration of the book at the foreword this book was written to explain their anxiety, depression, self-identity and grappling of sense of self in a world that doesn’t accept.

In that instance this book captures those feelings. I like searching for the under layer of inspiration in stories, the larger metaphor. This journey of a witch in this very fascinating dimension layered on top of the human world that is accessed by keys. This City of Eyes inhabited by witches and tools who are made like our lead character Eli to destroy the ghosts in the human world. But there is more that they don’t tell Eli that she is starting to question. The City of Eyes is alive and most of what happens in it is constantly moving and biting back and testing you. It’s a death landscape built to test like most internal challenges. I thought it was a mesmerizing liquid feeling through the story like you might melt into it. It’s hard following the world building when things change and there is no definite rules to the world explained because the main character was never taught how to survive completely so she had to rely on her maker but it makes it interesting and dangerous. I’m so glad that my dreams can’t effect the people around me yikes! I think the set up for Tavs book makes me wants to see how they fix what was broken and what the witches damaged. I like the whole galaxy part of it. I kept thinking of David Bowie’s Labrinyth when they were in the junkyard except on speed lol. 

There is LGBTQ representation with the main characters being non-binary and gay.  I am not sure what Eli identifies as she does not identify as human so I don’t think her sexuality would term like ours but maybe more pansexual. I loved Eli and Tavs chemistry.  Also Eli and Kite’s relationship was … toxic and I’d say dependent. 

Synopsis: Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven living blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.

Terrified that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli seeks refuge with a group of human and witch renegades. To earn her place, she must prove herself by capturing the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.  

Thank you @netgalley and @dundurnpress for the arc copy for my honest review.