The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

Volume XXVII / Issue 1 - September 4 / 2020
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass
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The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

Author: 
Adan Jerreat-Poole
Series: 
Metamorphosis
Toronto, ON: Dundurn, September, 2020
320 pp., trade pbk., $14.99
ISBN: 
9781459746817
Grades: 
Grades 8-12
Ages: 
Ages 13-17
Review by: 
Stephanie Johnson
1
Excerpt: 

Eli took another sip of coffee and flicked her eyes to a corner of the café. The ghost had taken the form of a middle-aged man in Clark Kent glasses…He hadn’t touched his coffee, which was a dead giveaway. Caffeine short-circuited a ghost’s nervous system.

She drew a dagger of glass, enchanted to be invisible to human eyes. Pasted on a nervous smile, the one she saw often on teenagers in the human world. Then she stood up.

It was time.

Eli wasn’t just a teenage girl with heavy bangs falling over round glasses, fighting with her mother and writing bad poetry in her journal (although she did some of that, too). Eli was an assassin.

She bumped into Clark Kent’s table as she walked past, spilling his coffee…
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Eli did her best squeal. “I’ll get you some napkins!” She lightly pressed the flat of the blade against the back of his neck, reflecting the magic inward. Trapping the ghost inside...

The blade had rendered the man docile. The body looked sick and confused. She’d never seen one so weak. Unless it was a trick…

“You should go wash up,” she told him. He nodded slowly. The man stood up, unsteadily, and walked to the bathroom at the back of the café. She followed him…

Through the door, into a room with flickering fluorescent lights and dirty linoleum. The glaring afternoon sun pouring in through a window. A mirror reflecting their images back at them: a girl and a man. Hunter and prey.

Usually the ghosts resisted, and the trick was to keep them in the human body by magic and force. But this one seemed tired and ready to die. Eli wondered for a moment if she found that thought comforting — that she was helping him find peace. Exorcising the demon. Putting the body to rest. Then she shook her head.

She was made to kill.

She was created to derive pleasure in a job well done. And she was close to completing another assignment.

She pulled out a different knife, cloudy, its color shifting and changing between greys, blacks, and pearl-toned whites. The man’s eyes widened. ‘What — ?’

Eli drove it into his skull.

Eli is partially human and was created from various objects, human and otherwise. Eli’s creator is a witch belonging to another world, and she sends Eli on missions to kill ghosts on Earth. Eli begins to discover that her targets are not all they seem and that the Coven has begun ordering assassinations that don’t sit well with Eli. She agrees to join forces with a group on Earth that wants to overthrow the Coven and take back Earth for themselves.

The story sounds like a fabulous read, but it just didn’t come together. I felt like I was wearing blinders throughout the book and everything came across as vague and hazy. Details like the setting were never described enough to create a picture in my head, and it was really challenging to understand what was happening and why it mattered. The characters lacked development, and I didn’t grow to care for their struggles, and, consequently, their decisions came across as rather arbitrary. The plot, itself, was not cohesive: some sections were vague, and yet the more descriptive sections often didn't contribute to the overall plot. I constantly had the feeling that I was missing something as I was reading, but I never ended up getting a firm understanding of the story.

This is not to say there weren’t positives to the novel. The style of the writing was quite lyrical and reminiscent of poetry in spots. The author has a youthful voice that will appeal to teen readers, and I loved that there were LGBTQ2S+ characters! This is the first novel I’ve read that uses they/them pronouns, and it was challenging at first to get into the flow of the language, but it soon became natural.

The addition of diverse characters and language gave The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass some good selling points, but unfortunately the story just wasn’t clear enough to maintain interest.

Not Recommended
Reviewer: 

Stephanie Johnson, a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Master of Library and Information Studies Program, is the Director of Devon Public in Devon, Alberta.