Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.įifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass.

Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone-has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. “An empowering and progressive original retelling.” - SLJ, starred review “Dark, fantastical, hauntingly evocative.” - Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Utterly superb.” -ALA Booklist, starred review Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Co.Melissa Bashardoust’s acclaimed debut novel Girls Made of Snow and Glass is “Snow White as it’s never been told before.a feminist fantasy fairy tale not to be missed” ( BookPage)! Though weighty foreshadowing mars plot twists, Bashardoust’s exceptional attention to folktale structure and Soraya’s hard-won acceptance of herself make for a lyrical, inspiring read. Scenes are lavishly detailed, Soraya’s inner turmoil is rendered with drama as she chooses whether to be “a mouse or a viper,” and the connection between Soraya and Parvaneh is stirring. But after learning that her cure requires the elusive, magical bird that protects the kingdom, Soraya finds herself in a perilous situation that challenges everything she knows about her family and herself. When female div Parvaneh is captured, Soraya seeks a way to end her own poisonous curse and live freely with Azad, one of her brother’s soldiers. Cursed with poisonous skin by a div, one of the Destroyer’s “demonic servants,” Soraya has hidden within herįamily’s palace walls for 18 years, fearful of staining the reputation of her twin brother, the shah of Atashar.

Bashardoust ( Girls Made of Snow and Glass) combines Persian language and tales, particularly “The Shahnameh,” with European fairy tales and Zoroastrianism to create a world replete with deadly gardens, mothlike beings, and haunting burial grounds.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust