Girls Made of Snow and Glass Review

Updated on October 9, 2026

Verdict: A thoughtful feminist Snow White retelling that puts the stepmother and stepdaughter at the centre and makes their bond the real love story, held back by a slow first half and a sapphic romance that stays firmly in the background. Best for: Readers who want a character-driven YA fairy tale about two women refusing the roles the story wrote for them, and who can accept that the girl-meets-girl thread is a subplot rather than the point. Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — glimpses and kisses) Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.76 Goodreads average across 14,309 ratings, three starred trade reviews, and a steady reader complaint about pace and a thin romance) Tropes: Fairy-tale retelling, stepmother and stepdaughter, dual POV, slow-burn first love, friends-to-lovers, magical creation, winter kingdom, wicked queen subverted, found agency, hopeful ending. Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust is a standalone young adult fantasy and the author’s 2017 debut from Flatiron Books — a Snow White reimagining set in the snowbound kingdom around Whitespring Castle, where Mina, a young queen whose heart is made of glass, and Lynet, a princess made from snow in her dead mother’s image, are pushed by everyone around them toward the old ending in which one of them has to destroy the other. It holds a 3.76 average across 14,309 Goodreads ratings, starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal, and a place on the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer List of feminist books for young readers. The reader reviews are warmer about what the book is saying than about how quickly it says it. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Girls Made of Snow and Glass About?

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a YA fairy-tale retelling first and a sapphic book second. The source is Snow White, the publisher pitches it as Frozen meets Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and the setting is a court kingdom where it snows all year. Mina is the girl who believes she cannot love: her magician father replaced her heart with glass, and she has learned that beauty is the only lever the world will let her pull. Lynet is the girl who cannot be herself, because her father looks at her and sees her mother. The chapters alternate between them, with Mina’s past told in flashback alongside Lynet’s present, so you watch the stepmother become the “wicked queen” from the inside while the stepdaughter tries to become anyone other than the dead woman she was copied from. The dual POV is the book’s whole argument — neither woman is the villain once you have been in her head.

What Makes This Sapphic Fairy-Tale Retelling Work

The stepmother–stepdaughter bond: The most-discussed element by far. Most of the popular Goodreads reviews name the relationship between Mina and Lynet, and readers describe it as the emotional core — complicated, loving, jealous and never simply a rivalry.
A feminist reading of Snow White: Kirkus called it a chilling feminist adaptation, and it made the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer List. Readers keep praising that the story is about women refusing to compete rather than a prince rescuing anyone.
Character work: On StoryGraph, 91% of readers say the characters develop strongly and 57% call it character-driven. Mina’s development gets singled out in the popular reviews.
A gentle sapphic thread: Lynet’s bond with Nadia, the court surgeon, grows out of friendship — a quiet friends-to-lovers arc that readers who like it describe as sweet and, pointedly, not instalove.
Winter atmosphere: The snow, glass and cold imagery runs through every chapter, and even a lukewarm reviewer calls the wintry magic perfect for the season.

Book Synopsis

Mina grows up in the South with a magician for a father and a stillness in her chest she has always assumed was normal. It is not. When she was a child he took out her failing heart and gave her one of glass, and she has come to believe the consequence is simple: she cannot love, and nobody will love her for anything except her face. When her father’s work takes them north to Whitespring, where the snow never stops, Mina sees a way to change her life. She will marry the widowed king and become queen. The king has a daughter. Lynet has grown up being told how much she resembles her late mother, and eventually she learns why — she was not born at all, but made from snow by the same magician, shaped in the dead queen’s image. Her father wants her to be delicate and still, a copy of the woman he lost. Lynet wants to be strong rather than delicate, and above all to be like her stepmother, who is the one person at court who seems to be made of something harder. Then Lynet begins spending time with Nadia, the young surgeon newly arrived at court, and her father makes a decision about the South that sets Mina and Lynet on opposite sides of the succession. The story everyone knows says the queen will try to kill the princess and the princess will return to take what is hers. The question is whether either of them can write a different ending — and whether the other will let her.

My Review

The central idea here is genuinely good, and I want to start with it. Most Snow White retellings swap one element and keep the machinery. Bashardoust keeps the stepmother, the mirror, the huntsman and the doting father, and changes the thing that actually matters: she makes the two women love each other, and then asks what it would take for the old story to pull them apart anyway.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust book cover

The second real strength is Mina. The flashback chapters, which show a girl learning that her beauty is the only thing her father and the court will value, give the “wicked queen” an interior life that makes every later choice legible even when it is cruel. StoryGraph’s readers mark it overwhelmingly as character-driven, and a 3% did-not-finish rate — a third of the 9% I flagged on Her Spell That Binds Me — says people who start it generally finish it. Where it struggles is pace, and this is not my personal gripe — it is the most consistent criticism in the lower-rated reviews. In a sample of thirty two-star Goodreads reviews, seven call the book slow, and one says the first hundred pages felt pointless. Around that sit the structural complaints: the magic is sketched rather than explained, the wider world stays thin beyond the castle, and more than one reader felt the climax skimmed over events that deserved more room. And the romance is the second theme. Readers who came for an f/f love story say plainly that it stays at the edges. That is the expectation to reset. The book is shelved and sold as a sapphic retelling, and it is one — but the love story it cares most about is between a stepmother and a stepdaughter, not between Lynet and Nadia. If a sapphic romance is what drew you, calibrate: this is a coming-of-age fairy tale with a gentle first love woven in. If you wanted a queer YA fantasy that is about more than the romance, relax — that is exactly what this is. My honest note: A clever, humane retelling that lands its big idea and makes you wait for it. If slow openings lose you, push through the first hundred pages or skip it. If you can give it time, the Mina and Lynet story is worth it.

Element	In Girls Made of Snow and Glass
Central relationship	Mina & Lynet (stepmother and stepdaughter) at the heart; Lynet & Nadia, the court surgeon, as a slow friends-to-lovers subplot
Core tropes	Fairy-tale retelling, dual POV, wicked queen subverted, magical creation, first love, friends-to-lovers
Setting	Whitespring, a castle in a northern kingdom where the snow never stops
Heat level	1/5 — glimpses and kisses
Series	Standalone — complete story, hopeful ending
Content notes	Death of a parent, emotional and parental abuse, blood and body horror, abandonment, violence, mentions of suicide and suicidal thoughts

How Spicy Is Girls Made of Snow and Glass?

A 1/5, and that is a description rather than a criticism. Unusually for a YA title, romance.io has an entry, and it rates the steam level “glimpses and kisses” — its lowest band — across 46 ratings. That matches the publisher’s 12-to-18 reading age and what readers report: the sapphic thread is tender and restrained, and the physical side stops at kissing. The thing worth knowing in advance is not heat but darkness. StoryGraph’s reader-sourced warnings put death of a parent and emotional abuse at the top, with blood and body horror at a moderate level, and one widely read Goodreads review adds parental abuse and mentions of self-harm. Nobody I found flags explicit content. If you want the same kissing-only register in another sapphic fairy tale, Ash and Cinderella Is Dead sit in the same band.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a fairy-tale retelling that takes its women seriously, you enjoy complicated family relationships more than straightforward romance, you like a slow, wintry, character-first read, and you want a queer YA book where the queerness is simply part of the world. You may want to skip it if: you need a fast opening, you want the sapphic romance to be the main plot, you expect a detailed magic system and a wide world, or you picked it up for the rivalry the blurb sets up and want someone to lose. In short: a smart feminist retelling with real emotional payoff, told patiently enough that some readers will not stay for it.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is a 2017 backlist title, and what keeps it moving now is not a viral moment — I found none. There is an organic TikTok footprint, with its own hashtag page and reader videos, but the one I could find with measurable reach had a little over a hundred likes, and it was mostly about how little magic the book had. I could not check Reddit from here. What it has instead is steady, long-term readership: 14,309 Goodreads ratings, 4,862 StoryGraph reviews at 3.78, 719 people currently reading it on Goodreads, and an Amazon average of 4.4 across 674 ratings. The trade side is unusually strong for a YA debut — three starred reviews, a Booklist Top 10 First Novel for Youth listing, a Junior Library Guild selection and the Amelia Bloomer List — and that library-and-school presence is most likely how new readers keep meeting it. The audiobook is part of that. It is narrated by Jennifer Ikeda for Macmillan Young Listeners, runs 12 hours 55 minutes, and came out on the same day as the hardcover in September 2017.

Prefer audio? Listen to Girls Made of Snow and Glass on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The relationship between Mina and Lynet, first and most consistently — 14 of the 20 most popular Goodreads reviews bring it up. Then the feminist frame: readers praise a Snow White where the women are not set up as rivals. Mina’s flashbacks draw specific admiration, and the StoryGraph crowd backs that up, with 91% marking the character development as strong and 74% calling the characters lovable. At least one reader who liked the romance singles it out for not being instalove — the opposite of what the romance’s critics say. What readers argue about and complain about: Pace, above everything. “Slow” turns up in seven of the thirty two-star reviews I read, and StoryGraph’s crowd splits 57% medium and 28% slow on pace. Here is the interesting gap: Booklist’s starred review praised the book’s “pitch-perfect pacing” — the one quality the readers who struggled mention most. The romance is the second theme: readers who wanted an f/f love story call it underdeveloped or pushed to the edges, and at least one calls it rushed. Third: the world. The magic is lightly sketched and the setting beyond the castle stays thin, and several readers say the book left them feeling cold. Beyond that, a minority find the characters flat, a few question whether the feminist label is earned, and at least one reader found the characters’ ages off. Opinions divide on the quietness itself — some readers call it peaceful and exactly right for a winter read. The standalone question worth asking first: it resolves. Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a single, complete book with a hopeful ending and no sequel. If it works for you, Bashardoust’s next novel, Girl, Serpent, Thorn (2020), is her most-read book, with 42,818 Goodreads ratings — but it averages 3.63, a little lower than this one, so the debut is the stronger starting point by the numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Girls Made of Snow and Glass a sapphic book?

Yes, but the sapphic romance is a subplot. Lynet’s relationship with Nadia, the court surgeon, grows from friendship into first love, while the book’s main emotional story is between Lynet and her stepmother, Mina.

How spicy is Girls Made of Snow and Glass?

A 1/5. romance.io rates it “glimpses and kisses,” its lowest band, and it is published for readers aged 12 to 18. The romance stops at kissing.

Is Girls Made of Snow and Glass a standalone?

Yes. It is a complete, single-volume story with a hopeful ending and no sequel. Melissa Bashardoust’s next novel, Girl, Serpent, Thorn, is a separate book, not a sequel.

Is it a Snow White retelling?

Yes. It keeps the stepmother, the princess, the huntsman and the mirror, but makes the queen and the princess the two viewpoint characters and turns their relationship into the heart of the book rather than a rivalry.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. It is narrated by Jennifer Ikeda for Macmillan Young Listeners, runs 12 hours and 55 minutes, and was released alongside the hardcover in September 2017.

If You Loved Girls Made of Snow and Glass, Read These Next

The natural next sapphic fairy tale is Ash, Malinda Lo’s lyrical Cinderella, which shares this book’s quiet pace and its sense that the fairy tale itself is the trap. If the feminist rewrite of a familiar story is what you loved, Cinderella Is Dead takes the same impulse and turns it into open revolt. And for a YA fantasy where love itself is the curse, Sweet Bitter Magic puts the romance much closer to the centre. For more like this, browse our full guide to YA sapphic fantasy books or the complete Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a retelling with a real idea behind it. The stepmother and stepdaughter bond is moving, Mina is one of the best-drawn “wicked queens” in YA, and the feminist rewrite of the ending is earned rather than announced. It is also slow to get going, light on magic and worldbuilding, and much less of a romance than its sapphic shelving suggests. But a reader who wants a thoughtful, wintry fairy tale about two women choosing each other gets a complete, hopeful book with no sequel to wait for. Check Girls Made of Snow and Glass on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Girls Made of Snow and Glass ranks as a quietly ambitious YA sapphic fairy-tale retelling — humane and genuinely thoughtful about its women, held back by pace and a background romance, and best approached for Mina and Lynet rather than for the love story.