Kayleigh | Welsh Book Fairy's Reviews > Thorn

— 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 —

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Thorn
𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: Book 1 in the Dauntless Path series
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫(𝐬): Intisar Khanani
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: YA Fantasy/Fairytale Retelling
𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭: Audiobook
𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝: 24th March 2020
𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝: 2nd August 2023
𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: ★★★ ¾

“Perhaps I cannot fix everything in this moment. But I can do this: start somewhere and keep going.”

Thorn is the first in a series and is a young adult fantasy that also acts as a Goose Girl retelling. I found this book enjoyable and definitely worth the read. I can’t say I’m enthusiastically and eagerly awaiting to pick up the next book in the series, as it didn’t really have that much impact on me, but it was enjoyable to listen to.

I thought that Thorn was pretty faithful to the fairytale whilst putting a wholly original spin on it. I knew certain situations would arise due to reading the fairytale before and yet I found my eyes pricking with tears all the same. Khanani didn’t get me to fully invest in her characters, but the writing was strong enough to be emotionally evocative all the same.

Alyrra’s character was my favourite. I loved how she hated politics (even though she was actually pretty good at it) and was happy with her lot in life. I read that the author wanted the main character to be someone who has quietly survived trauma, continues to see the worst in humanity, and yet still strives to live to her own values, making morally good decisions through honesty and integrity, and more importantly: a character that kept plodding on despite the obstacles. All these traits were successfully conveyed through Alyrra and I genuinely found her character commendable.

Alyrra did live a multifaceted life and had dynamics going with people from all sorts of walks of life. Due to how fully fleshed out her life is described in the story, I found that the book ended up being quite slow paced because of it. I didn’t really mind this though.

Overall, reading this book is like taking a meandering walk through the woods. It’s an enjoyable and satisfactory experience, some things have become clearer, and yet more questions are raised due to the quiet in the mind being hard at work.

—Kayleigh🤍

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