I read the inside cover of “Girls Made of Snow and Glass” before passing judgement on the cover itself. I’d been burned before. The synopsis stated that the pages within held “a feminist story,” which was something I could get behind. I was so eager to read about two badass babes taking over a kingdom.

     Lynet is a 15-year-old princess from Whitespring Castle. When she is older, she will be the queen, but she doesn’t want that responsibility. She spends her days running around the castle grounds, climbing the castle walls, skipping her lessons and spying on the castle’s new surgeon.

     She’s itching to get out of Whitespring, but her father won’t allow it. Because she looks so much like her deceased mother, he treats her delicately, when she is anything but. Oh, she’s also made of snow.

     Mina is the 32-year-old Queen of Whitespring. She is originally from the South. When she was 16, she moved north to Whitespring to live comfortably with the nobles because King Nicholas owed Mina’s father a favor. Mina’s father is the magician who created his daughter, Lynet.

     Mina’s father wants Mina to marry a nobleman so both she and her father are taken care of. Mina has other plans. She wants to marry King Nicholas and plans on making him fall in love with her even though her heart is made of glass.

     Not much happens as we get to know both of these characters and how they got into the positions in which they find themselves. We learn that Lynet spends her days running around outside the castle and Mina spends her days thinking of her people in the South. Mina seems guarded when it comes to her relationship with Lynet, but Lynet seems to enjoy spending time with her stepmother.

     After the King’s hunting accident, things quickly spiral out of control. Lynet’s cushy lifestyle within the walls of Whitespring Castle is threatened, so she takes off. Mina realizes once Lynet is gone that she might love her stepdaughter, even though Lynet is a threat to her position as queen.

     Once she’s on her own, Lynet discovers her ability to control the snow and decides if Mina’s father won’t “cure” Mina and give her the ability to love, Lynet will be the one to do so. She comes up with a plan to save herself and her stepmother while also devising a solution to make them both happy.
This book was a little confusing at first because it tells the stories of both Lynet and Mina from their own points of view. At present, Lynet is a 15-year-old girl with Mina as her stepmother. But when we are reading from Mina’s point of view, Lynet is a child.

     It took me a minute to understand that when we switched to Mina’s point of view, we were about 15 years in the past. We eventually get to hear the present story from Mina’s point of view, and, just like her perspective when she was a teenager, her side of the story is also more interesting in the present.

     Lynet, like all YA girls in her position, doesn’t want the destiny that was placed upon her. She doesn’t want to be exactly as her mother was. She doesn’t want to be Queen. She wants to decide for herself what her life will be.

     Though I was rooting for both of the strong female leads to work everything out, there is potential for them to turn out to be enemies. Mina even recognizes that the two women are capable of creating armies to destroy one another. She also recognizes that she would likely lose this war.
I devoured the first 250 pages of this book. Somewhere around page 250, I got bored and had to force myself to read. I didn’t really care if I was reading Mina’s or Lynet’s side of the story anymore.

     So read the first 250 pages of this story and tell me what you think! And then finish the book and maybe we can rant about it together. But if you enjoyed the ending, I may not be able to put my biases aside long enough to have a tame discussion.