Review: Juniper & Thorn

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I enjoyed The Wolf and the Woodsman, and so was very interested to read this book. But I did not enjoy it at all. I am not sure if there are enough trigger warnings for this book. It was a lot. This book dealt with child abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, eating disorders, sexual abuse, pedophilia, animal abuse and cruelty, sex trafficking, cannibalism, torture, xenophobia, and graphic depictions of gory injuries and death. And I'm probably leaving some out... It was too much. If the author was trying to make a statement about the horrible nature of these things, picking one or two to include in her story would have had a much deeper and meaningful impact on the reader than throwing everything in. It was almost like, "What know? Well of course they all ate the murder victim, killed their pet, murdered their family member.... Nothing else can surprise me in this book." Things that perhaps were supposed to be jarring and shocking became almost cartoonish by the end of the book. Another issue I had with the book was the overly sexualized nature of just about everything. Right off the bat I thought to myself, "Oh. Okay...we are going there...alright." And then things felt unnecessarily graphic and vulgar. The relationship between Marlinchen and Sevas felt rushed at best, terribly toxic at worst. These are two horrifically traumatized individuals who have just fallen into insta-love with the first person who has shown them glimmers of affection. By the end I couldn't wait to finish the book--not so I could find out what would happen, but because I just wanted it to be over with.
This book was dark, disturbing, graphic, gross, unsettling, and disjointedly weird. And none of that in a good way. Don't come into this expecting another book like The Wolf and the Woodsman, even though it is set in the same world. This is a horror book filled with the terrifyingly awful things that humans can do to each other, described in a strangely off-hand and matter-of-fact YET disgustingly graphic manner.
I would not recommend this book. And I am not sure I would read another book by this author, despite my opinions about her earlier work.

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