A review by novelheartbeat
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

4.0

She had read enough stories to know that the princess and the monster were never the same.

I absolutely adored the Persian culture and lore!! It was such a rich and beautiful world that I wanted to crawl into the pages and live there. I loved reading about the div (demons) too!

I am super pleased with the twist the romance took! It's hard to talk about anything without spoiling it - I didn't know much going in and was pleasantly surprised, so I'll put the rest in spoiler tags!

Spoiler

In the first 80 pages when Soraya met Azad, I was not thrilled. The romance was moving WAY too fast!! I kept hoping that he was secretly the villain, and I about whooped out loud when it was revealed that HE was the Shahmar! That was a nice little twist that I thoroughly enjoyed. The romance reminded me a bit of Girls of Paper and Fire, too. Definitely one of my fave F/F romances!

I love that Soraya fought with her own morality, too. I adore morally gray characters that toe the line so much that they could easily tip over into villain territory. But even though she saw herself as a monster most of the time, she had a good heart. And it was easy to feel for her because she'd been shunned by everyone and lacked love and touch in her life.

Side note: I love how the title is worked into the story!

While this was a lush and beautiful Persian fantasy (there aren't enough of those!) and I enjoyed the lore, romance, and the villain, it was missing that extra something for me to give it a full five stars. I can't quite put my finger on it. I don't think I connected to the story quite as much as I'd hoped to, and I had forgotten key elements to the story fairly quickly (I had to go look back through the book to remember enough to write this review). So it didn't stick with me, but I thoroughly enjoyed while I was reading and it was a fast paced and beautifully written story! I definitely recommend!


This review was originally posted on Novel Heartbeat. To see a breakdown of my assessment, please visit the full review here.